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This is what my old wall heater looks like. I want to remove it, but I want to safely terminate the two white wires (top left of picture). There's a conduit on the outside of the house with access to the wires, too (I believe...I haven't opened it yet).

If you look at the exterior pictures... The bottom of the conduit is basically where the white wires would exit the structure.

Is it safe for me to terminate the wires in the conduit and then just plug up the hole on the inside wall?

heater conduit conduit closeup

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  • Answers go in the answer box, not in the question. If you feel that other people will really benefit from seeing what you did, post an answer. You’re allowed to. All SE sites are designed around the concept of question/answer pairs. “What I ended up doing to fix my problem” should never be posted as part of the question.
    – nobody
    Commented May 7 at 23:37

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I would try to remove the cover of the conduit body and disconnect the wires in there. Be careful not to break off the screws or that will create a bigger problem. Then just remove the white wires from the short conduit and wire nut the other wires in the conduit body. Then disconnect those wires at the main panel, cap them and leave a note explaining what you did for future use. Conduits going outside from a panel always seem to come in handy.

** Update ** From OP

After following the advice given in the accepted answer, I opened up the cover plate of the conduit body. I disconnected the wires and kept the wire nuts on the loose ends that connect to power.

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I was then able to pull the white wires from the heater through the conduit and remove the heater.

enter image description here

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  • The breaker is for multiple things… not just the heater. There may be a junction box somewhere between that conduit and the panel. I can’t tell bc the wiring is in the wall/ceiling.
    – milesmeow
    Commented May 2 at 14:33
  • The conduit body might have connections. But it is quite likely that exists solely to enable easy pulling of the wire (sometimes actually required due to the number of conduit bends/turns). But still a good idea to take a look at that because removing the wire (which is the reverse of pulling the wire in the first place) is the best way to solve the problem.
    – manassehkatz-Moving 2 Codidact
    Commented May 2 at 14:48
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    If you can't find the junction box where you can disconnect these wires, you can replace the heater with a small junction box, and leave the wires capped in there. Don't hide it in the wall, use a blank cover plate painted like the wall.
    – jay613
    Commented May 2 at 15:38
  • One curious thing is that when I had the two red wires separated from each other...I powered up the circuit. The non-contact voltage sensor read a high voltage on one wire but low voltage on another.
    – milesmeow
    Commented May 5 at 17:57
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    @nobody I disagree with your edit of the OP's question. The "update" isn't an answer, it's an update on the results of following the advise in the actual answers. This is done a lot and we encourage people to do this. If he had posted it as an answer, it probably would have been deleted as a duplicate. How about rolling it back to include the update.
    – JACK
    Commented May 6 at 12:18
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The two white wires are likely connected to other wires behind the heater enclosure, possibly inside that conduit body. You can cap them off, as long as they remain accessible, or as long as you disconnect the other end of the wire at the breaker as well.

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