Forum Archive

PSA: The coming day’s forecast is for real winter cold. Will your heating system keep up with outdoor air temperatures in the teens? Make sure the space around your radiators is clear to allow for air to circulate up from the floor so that it may be heated as it rises trough the vanes and releases out the top. This is critical to allow for what is called convection, one of three ways a radiator warms a living space.

Another way a radiator does its job is through conduction whereby surrounding solid surfaces are warmed and heat is released slowly to the room. And the third is by radiation: A human body, in the presence of a warm surface, releases less of its internal warmth than when in the presence of cold. This is where the advantages of radiant floor heating are evident, but you don’t need to warm your floors to experience radiant heat. In fact, most residences in Europe use wall-hung radiant panel radiators rather than expensive floor warming systems. Radiators that are covered and baseboard heaters provide little or no radiant heat. Bare cast iron radiators provide the most radiant energy in a room, but the newer modern panels do it in a much more attractive way and use much less space. Radiant energy is most efficient because it doesn’t need to release energy to the room. That being the case, the water running through the radiators needs to be heated less than for what it takes to heat by convection.

Too often, I see radiators being used as bookshelves or encapsulated by clothing, window drapes or furniture.Radiant energy has some of the same characteristics as light in that it needs a direct path to you for you to know it’s there. For instance, you get no radiant heat in a “shadow” created by a panel or radiator being blocked by a chair. Knowing how your radiators work may help keep your family warm in the coming days.

Master Plvmber

http://www.GatewayPlumbing.com