[Greenbuilding] Baseboard Radiators

[John Salmen]

I just completed a renovation design for a similar house with hot water
baseboards on an electric boiler. It was difficult to work with the heating.


Couple of things with the heating is that typically they were not balanced
or installed terribly well so the main system may need to be tweaked with
newer pumps and controllers. Also these are generally convection style
(slant fin) baseboards installed with valves that typically leak over time.
You can get rid of the valves entirely if the main has proper shutoffs -
otherwise you will have damaged floors.

They are not efficient in any real sense as you are limited to the
efficiency of the electric boiler and losses in the system (runs along
exterior walls, etc.). We don't yet have heatpumps that can produce enough
hot water for this style of heating. They are coming ... but I've often
grown tired of waiting for decent products. Heatpump air to hotwater will be
the solution for making these systems more efficient. Solar hot water is
also an efficiency option but again storage and temperature are an issue.

Switching to cast iron radiators can increase efficiency insofar as the heat
is radiant and can produce more comfort at lower temperature.

Dealing with this system in a renovation we took a varied approach of adding
baseboards to allow for lower heating temperatures with heat pump
applications as well as introducing electric radiant (twisted) where we
could.

-----Original Message-----
From: Greenbuilding [mailto:greenbuilding-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org]
On Behalf Of Steve Houlihan
Sent: November-01-12 3:42 PM
To: greenbuilding at lists.bioenergylists.org
Subject: [Greenbuilding] Baseboard Radiators

I am contemplating buying a house that has a boiler and baseboard radiators.
The house was built in 1975.  I've never experienced these so was wondering
how they work, are they maintenance problems, are they quiet or noisy (like
a wall furnace), are they an efficient way to heat?

These are rare here in Coastal California.

Thanks for any insight you can provide.

Steve


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