Sarah,

In my heart of hearts I long for cast iron radiators, so I say no.

I have a solid fuel stove in my kitchen but I lust after central heat with C/I radiators.

Perhaps a heating company could suggest one of the newer flat panel (more Euro-style) radiators. I'm not sure if you can combine those with the temps for needed cast iron, though. Is your system steam or HW?

Molly~

We have a 100 yr. old farmhouse and we renovated our kitchen about 2 yrs. ago and I had them reinstall the cast iron radiator. DH and I also gutted the kitchen ourselves and every bit of the kitchen is new except for the radiator! I've not been sorry - although I'm thinking about having the corner bench seat rebuilt over top of it. IMHO. If I were you I'd keep it if there is any way possible.

The most important question is...

Do you have steam heat, or forced hot water heat?

If steam heat, then the electric toe kicks would be the most logical option.

If, however, you have forced hot water you can easily use hot water toe kick heaters. My parents redid their kitchen in their 1903 house and put in two hot water toe kick heaters to supplement the cast iron baseboard in that section of the house.

I had a similar problem in a 1904 house whose kitchen I was remodeling.

I can't see your radiator in the picture so I don't know if this would work for you?

I rotated the radiator 90' so instead of being parallel to the wall and taking up several feet, it was perpendicular to the wall. I then put the stove/oven next to the radiator and put a cover ( you know wood with metal mesh ) over it.

It then took up 6" of wall instead of 3' and I had a place to put things to keep warm in the winter like bread dough etc.

Hi,
I removed my cast iron 400# monster radiator last month. I'm putting in a fan-forced toe kick radiator, w/9600btu.
It's going right at the main sink, close to where the old unit sat.
Casey

These are two pictures of the type of radiators in our house (forced hot water). I can't get into the back to take pictures of the actual one in the kitchen because that's still our tenant's space. But it's about 4 feet long and maybe 2.5 feet tall.

I don't really want to have a heater in the same location because we really NEED to utilize that wall top-to-bottom for something--there just isn't enough space otherwise. So I guess I really don't want to replace the old radiator and put something in that location--that would kind of defeat both purposes. The KD recommended looking at Aga stoves (always-on) that would serve for food prep and heating the kitchen.

It seems like the general consensus on this website leans AWAY from Aga...but it would serve our purposes. Otherwise, the only other practical solution I see are toe-kick heaters (but how much cabinet space do they take up? And how big would one need for a rougly 17X17 kitchen? Would you only use one vent? Any good websites that sell these?)

Thanks for your responses already...this is THE most helpful site!!
-sarah

Hi,
The one I got is a Myson, from houseneeds.com
heres a link.

Here is a link that might be useful: Myson toe space heater

I wish my rads were as nice!!

Can you move the rediator to another location? Your kitchen sounds just HUGE to me, mine is 16 X 8 LOL.

Is there another location in the kitchen that might work? Is there another smaller rad in the house that you could switch out?

Does any of this help?

Add another vote for a toekick heater. I put one in the kitchen of our 1905 house a few years ago, in part as a result of advice from kframe. I put it on its own circulation pump since I didn't want heat blowing out from under the cabinet when the oven had been on all day roasting a turkey. I'm no plumber but I was able to do it myself. The instructions from Myson were a bit vague, but it works.

I am jealous of your Aga Cooker. I wanted one so much and DH said NO! He figured it would cost us abt $750 more per year to have the Cooker. But what a dream of an appliance and I still want one.

I hate to see the radiator go, but for your size house you have got to have a good sized kitchen. So I'd say out with the radiator.

I'm not quite sure of your layout for the kitchen or adjacent rooms but do have a few suggestions anyway and if no applicable just ignore. ;)

Have you thought about instead of having the kitchen open to another room to install a partial wall for more cabinets? Is there anyway you could have a walk-in Pantry for more storage? Or perhaps a Butler's Pantry as a pass through to the Dining Room?

Well, since you asked, msafirstein...here are the VERY preliminary sketches of the kitchen...and it's not really 17X17, once you really look at it--it's actually smaller (so maybe one toe-kick heater?) Didn't have to twist my arm to share more pictures/ideas! ;)

(I know the measurements on the left wall are a bit off--my FIL did them really quickly for me before I went to a cabinet guy...but you can get the general idea of the layout)

There are two open entrances to the dining room--but in between them is the back staircase up/down to 2nd floor and basement...so no wiggle room there. You can see where the heater in question is located...along that wall. It's maybe 2.5 ft. high and 4 ft. long.

Someone installed a toilet (no sink--gross!) and closet back in the 50's, so we're planning on taking that out and opening into the room behind it (currently our kitchen, will be laundry/playroom), thus making the floorplan a little more open and gaining access to the better, full bath. So that gives us another bit of space. (see the first picture I posted--that whole faux wall with the pictures is coming out) This bathroom at the far left is staying, so that (unfortunately) makes the kitchen more L-shaped than square. Beyond those two rooms at the top of the diagram (not shown) are the parlor (left) and main entrance/staircase (right). That's the whole downstairs.

I'm trying to keep the fridge as close to the dining room as possible and away from the far left wall, simply because I don't want everyone traipsing through the kitchen for every forgotten item at dinner or for snacks.

I had originally liked this idea I drew out for the kitchen (keeping the radiator), but the more I research, the more I think having the cook-top in front of the window is a bad (and sometimes, not up to code) idea.

So any suggestions are welcome!!!!

Oh...and just for kicks, I did find this old photo of our house from the 40's...and I thought people on this board might enjoy that kind of stuff:

Thanks again for all of the help and brainstorming!! Keep the ideas coming!!

:)
Sarah

After you remove the 1/2 bath I would make that entire area from the full bath wall over to the dining room wall a Butler Pantry. This will help greatly with storage and would hide the basement staircase. My Butler's Pantry also has the basement stairs in it and I even removed the door from the top of the stairway which gave me a bit more room.

One other idea is to relocate the double french doors near the full bath and then move the mudroom to the play/laundry area. This way the bathroom would be right near an exit and the kids would not have to go through the kitchen to get to the bathroom. If you could relocate the double french door to the this area that would give you more room in your kitchen. I am not sure of your exterior so this might not be possible.

Otherwise I just can't seem to place the sink, range and refrigerator so that it is a convenient kitchen to work in. I think your new kitchen will take a bit of time to work with before you can be successful.

Years ago (c. 1955), we utilized a wall with a hot water radiator by building a cabinet with shelves in front of it, putting a normal counter on it, and having a vented section above the double cabinet doors. The shelves were obviously shallower than they looked from the outside. This was a great place to store dry goods through the winter. The crackers and cereal always stayed crisp. The heat wafted up through the vent. This was a pretty standard cabinet unit at the time. This same arrangement was devised in the early 1970s when the kitchen was remodeled.

Damn that's a nice house!

Wow...thanks for the compliment, kframe! And the other ideas for the heater and changes are very helpful, senecastren and msafirstein!

We have so many problems with this design, it's not even funny!! I think the heater is the least of our worries right now!

Thanks again...off to the kitchens board to try to get some other mundane kitchen questions answered!

Sarah

The house is just gorgeous, Sarah. Best of luck with it!

FYI, I removed a long but not at all comely radiator from our sunroom when we did our kitchen remodel and installed two toekick heaters-- one under our window seat, one under a three-drawer base cabinet. Can't even notice them.

I like the cabinet idea, if it works for your space.

One other thing, if you do end up removing the radiator - pleasepleaseplease stick it in the garage or something so it'll be around, as part of the original house, in case a future owner wants to put it back. Your house has BEAUTIFUL rads!

Yes, the radiators are lovely so you will want to keep that one around. Have you thought about radiant heat in the floor?
Your house is beautiful!

Your house is gorgeous!!! It has a great feel about it.

Toe kick heaters should be perfect for your problem. Most are about 24 inches wide and fit under a base cabinet.
The area is usually open and unused anyway (though drawers are available).
You need to size the toe kick heaters to make up for the lost capacity of the big radiator.
Make sure they leave access into the darn things also. I rework the bottom of the cabinet to a panel.

Thanks again for all of the input--we CERTAINLY would not get rid of the radiator!! We have all of the original doors in the house, original moulding, and even bits and pieces of the old wood shutters/wood porch railing so that we can hopefully get replicas someday when $$$ allows. My husband is a pack rat anyway, so it will be around...believe me!

I know it's great to keep old houses as authentic as possible, but I hate having to plan an entire kitchen around the radiator!! A window or door...fine...but a radiator? So, I'm thinking that toe-kick heaters would definitely be the way to go in this room, since we're gutting it down to the studs anyway.

I doubt we'd be buying toe-kick drawers anyway, since I'm trying to keep costs down as much as possible.

Thanks again for all of the help--this and the kitchens forum have been GREAT!

Sarah from NY