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Heating & Air Conditioning

sizing baseboard heater and other questions

17 years ago

To make a VERY long story short, this summer we are going to be replacing our oil fired boiler with a gas one (already have gas to the area, our oil tanks are on their last legs, the boiler is also pretty old and we have no way of getting new oil tanks down to the basement). At the same time we need to track down a leak in our ceiling which is under the shared wall between the master bedroom and the bathroom. This wall has two radiators back to back, including a humongously oversized one in the master bedroom. Our house is 120 years old and we have a single pipe hot water system and old cast iron radiators. All of our bedrooms are the same size but for some reason the master bedroom has a radiator that is 1.5x the size of any other bedroom.

I figure while we are doing all of this work and have the ceiling open below it would be a good time to change out the master bedroom radiator. I can't stand sleeping in a very hot room... my preferred temperature is right around 67-68 degrees. The second the heat starts to come up in the house our bedroom shoots up to a stifling 75 degrees. The radiator is 36" wide x 32" tall x about 5.5" deep. The other bedrooms have 24" wide radiators and are pretty comfortable.

So my question is this... We are thinking about maybe switching to a baseboard radiator as long as we are going through the trouble. Our bedroom is small, 12x12, and I wouldn't mind losing the huge radiator. The question is, how much baseboard would I need to feel comfortable in that room? The bedrooms are upstairs so I think we tend to get some of the heat rising from the first floor. Would it be possible to do with a single 12' or so (maybe more like 11' realstically) run of baseboard along one wall? If I have to wrap the entire room with the stuff I will very likely just go with replacing the radiator with something smaller.

Also do you know anything about cast iron baseboards? Is this something I should be looking into as well?

Thanks for any help. I know we need to get someone in but I'd like to have some idea about whether what I want to do will work. The other option is finding a salvage smaller old radiator and just replacing the big one, which may end up being the right option anyway.

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Comment (1)

georgehvacnj
17 years ago
There are air vent on the end of the radiator.
If you do a goggle on maid o mist. you will find that each radiator gets a different vent according to the distance from the boiler................. you could try getting an adjustable vent for that one radiator and closing it. adjusting these vents can be tricky and getting them all to correspond to the same heat pattern at the same time can be a little tricky. if you can draw a floor plan with the piping length and size of piping to each radiator and size of room and how many Btu's the boiler is. then bring it to a heating/ plumbing supply house and talk to someone behind a desk. they may be able to tell you what You need and if they feel it may be to tricky for you as a homeowner they will set you up with a local guy hats good with steam and be able to balance your house out evenly. once again its kinda tricky but can be done.
I would stay with the radiator and either by the right size one or paint the old one so it looks nice. It does add class to a room. Especially with a new shut off valve.
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