Technical Electrical Problem

With all the smart people here, somebody knows the answer to this. I have a 240V space heater in the bedroom. It had a disc thermostat that quit working a couple weeks ago. It was very simple, set it on low med or high and it would turn on or off. It had a wire going into the thermostat and a wire coming out, so as a quick fix I cut the therm out and ran a wire over to my bed and hooked it up to a simple off/on switch. This works good, but I have to do it manually. My question is, can I hook some kind of programmable thermostat to this heater? One where I can set it to come on at 50 degrees and shut off at 55. Or whatever. Or am I stuck with putting on the same kind that came off.

Beats me, but space heaters are dangerous enough and I sure wouldn't take a risk with one. If you are asleep and something goes wrong,,, or if you leave it on and you are gone during the day.. or anything... : if you have to ask a question about it, you don't know enough to monkey around with it. If the fire investigator figures out you did something wrong... he will tell your insurance company about it!

I agree with the Flea here. Mess around with the wiring and kiss your insurance policy good bye. However, if you are bold and adventurous, Home Depot should have an electronic thermostat which can trigger the circuit to turn on and off your heater at a predetermined temperature. You'd have to jerry-rig in a similar manner. Pretty much x - degrees, and the electricity for the unit goes on. Shuts off at y degrees. Hope that helps.

Bob;
With Martin King Luthor not here on the board I will attempt to give his answer:

Buy a new unit you cheap ***tard!!

You've created a FIRE HAZZARD!

You can get programmable thermostats for the HOME system. Doubtful that it will work with a space heater.

If this had been your home system, then I'd say that running the wire/switch is not a terrible idea, since the termostat wires in the home are low voltage running to a relay.

In a small space heater, the thermostat is a high voltage switch, so you've got a fire hazzard on your hands.

You should be able to find (or order) a replacement part, but an upgrade to programmable is probably out of the question.