This article describes a methodology and an apparatus used to evaluate the onset time of free convection in hot-wire experiments. The evaluation of the onset time is useful to obtain a measurement interval that is suitable to estimate the thermal properties of a fluid. If a pure conduction regime is present, the hot-wire temperature increment versus time is a straight line in a semilog plot, whereas the convection effect induces a deviation from this trend. An algorithm based on the F test is proposed to evaluate the onset time of free convection. The experimental facility has the particular feature of allowing an easy change of the hot-wire inclination angle up to 118.3 mrad. The wire is kept in a tilted position by a permanent horseshoe magnet, and the tilting angle from the vertical is measured by a theodolite. Some testing results using water are discussed for vertical and inclined wires. A good agreement between the experimental onset times and the theoretical ones is found in the case of a vertical wire.