Heater choice

wire 2 100 watt bulbs in series, leave them on at all times. they will operate at 25% rating or 50n watts. That will heat the box up above ambient and they will last 100,000 hours unless shaken

< heater may run always> when Motor is OFF. Allow holes for cold inlet/hot outlet.

200 Watt rated is fine.

no, you do not want 2 bulbs in parallel, running at full voltage. They will only last 800 hours or so on all the time.

in series they will consume 25% of their rated power and last forever. This is a common way to heat small insulated pumphouses in cold areas.

Why don't you add some m of 8BTV heat tracing: you can leave this uncontrolled and it is ATEX/EX approved

The heat is also nicely distributed.

Light bulbs and sockets are cheap and universally available and tracing is not, for easy retrofitting, but tracing is the better solution for protecting pipes etc from freezing and would be the thing to do when you build the facility

Light bulbs are indeed cheap but not very efficient, when you let air circulate, all the heat is gone with the air and the objects remain cold.

Heat tracing can heat up the objects that you want, without risk of overheating.

To prevent condensation you need to heat the components to approx 10K higher than the environment.

A bulb will heat by radiation all faces that are visible, the moisture will condense on the interiors and unheated surfaces.

8BTV is available over the whole world, in both channels: industrial and construction. Or go to the website of the producer: www.tycothermal.com

I know that they have subsidiaries in south America.

I have no complaints with heat trace wire and I have used it many times. I have also done pumphouses with bulbs and the trick is to keep the bulbs at a low point close to the piping, you then have a convection driven circulation. A socket costs $2 a 100W bulb 50 cents, and wire 25 cents/foot, no switch, lest it get turned off, so for about $7 a pumphouse can be protected by heat. Insulation will add to this, but will also be low in cost as a pump housing will often be smaller than a 1 meter cube and be low to the earth or embedded. The place also needs to be sealed and in severe cold areas needs insulation as well. runs can be wrapped and have some heat trace inside as well.heat trace wire is often $1/foot or more, so if you have 10 feet of pipe =$10 plus wrapping, other wiring etc. so bulbs cost about half the trace cost. If you call an electrician his wages dominate and you would use the ssuperior tracing.

hi