Electrified Cast Iron Radiators!?! Anyone have any experience with these?

Hi All: first time poster.

We are in the process of renovating a 4 story brownstone in Crown Heights. The unit has cast iron stand-up radiators throughout and an old (40+ years) hydronic boiler.

We were interested in getting a new boiler and possibly zoning the system, but as you can imagine, it’s a pretty penny to bring it up to speed with all of those mechanical pumps and fine tuning.

We stumbled upon a company out of Canada (newly landed in the US – Connecticut) that restores and paints your cast iron radiators, fills them with an antifreeze solution, and inserts an electric element where the water once came in. The electric elements are wired the same as baseboard so they can be easily tied into a modern thermostat, and/or equipped with a wifi dongle for electronic zoning. This means you can place them wherever you like as long as there’s electric.

The company is called EcoRad – https://www.ecoradusa.com

We had a mechanical engineer take a look at the site and they were confident that it’s a more efficient system as 100% of the electrical output goes into t he heating as opposed to loss of heat via pipes and water with oil or gas. Up front costs were his primary concern.

Does anyone out there have experience with this system?!? Cost of its installation? Usability? Operating costs?

The company says there are residential installations in Brooklyn, but aren’t comfortable giving people’s info out (I get that).

Guest User | 6 years and 11 months ago

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Guest User | 6 years and 7 months ago

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@smokychimp – we feel exactly the same way! It was good to have a sounding board like this forum in order to hear so many takes on it. I’m sure it has its place somewhere, but Brooklyn isn’t a good fit.

Smokychimp | 6 years and 7 months ago

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So glad to hear you went with the conventional approach, that was a bullet dodged.

Smokychimp | 6 years and 7 months ago

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JHCovert you should be very, very careful about making a decision like this based on a company’s online marketing brochure. Your mechanical engineer may be right that the heating efficiency of the electrical energy would be 100%, but i’m very surprised he/she gave you this answer without more context.

A modern high-efficiency gas fired radiator system would just barely be behind the electrical in efficiency, somewhere around 90% rated efficiency. So gas to electrical efficiency is not much of a factor.

Instead the major factor is the cost of the energy itself. Electricity is approximately $37 per MBtu, whereas natural gas is approximately $10/MBtu. So even factoring in the slight efficiency improvement of the electrical heat, you’d be paying greater than three times more for any given use of your heater if it’s electric versus gas. That $100 gas bill is $330 instead if you’re electric.

lkrshacmzcy | 6 years and 7 months ago

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We have followed some of these closely but rarely get any true feedback; would be awesome if you could updates us on your decision and how it works out!

lkrshacmzcy | 6 years and 7 months ago

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We have followed some of these closely but rarely get any true feedback; would be awesome if you could updates us on your decision and how it works out!

Guest User | 6 years and 7 months ago

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We did NOT upgrade the radiators. We had a heck of a time getting reliable information from them and we heard a couple of horror stories about the rads leaking and ruining floors (although, to be fair, only a very few). Also, the cost of electrical work needed to make things work as promised started piling up. We ended up getting a reliable modern boiler and breaking our domestic hot water out into dual hot water heaters (all water had been running through a 40+ year old combi boiler) – we’ve been quite happy with it so far, though I would still love to have a zoned system. Perhaps somewhere down the line we’ll make that happen. Please share your experiences should you decide to go that route.

Guest User | 6 years and 7 months ago

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Hi, we are also looking at ecorad to convert our HW radiators to electric. Did you upgrade your radiators with them? Thank you!

Guest User | 6 years and 7 months ago

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Hi, we are also looking at ecorad to convert our HW radiators to electric. Did you upgrade your radiators with them? Thank you!

RobertGMarvin

in General Discussion 6 years and 10 months ago

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Has blowing insulation into your wall cavities caused any condensation problems?

coconut | 6 years and 10 months ago

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I love my cast iron radiators. However I found out that the walls to my brownstone were not insulated. I allowed the guy to make a small hole in the wall and much my surprise no insulation. Federal Conservation put in an eco-friendly insulation that not only push in a liquid that turns to foam. It is fire resistant, kills termites because it coats them with an oil. Well now I get complaints about too much heat which is music to my ears because I have been able to lower my heat and save money. Things break down but a cast iron will stand the test of time and the heat is just incredible. Use the option Federal Conservation 1-800-675-1660. Ask for Joey. Keep your heating system.

davfgreene | 6 years and 10 months ago

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I strongly recommend insulating and air sealing the heck out of your brownstone. Reducing your heating load that way will probably have a much bigger impact on reducing your heating costs than just putting solar panels up (but by all means, do that too).

murph | 6 years and 11 months ago

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I have a corner brownstone town house(104′ of exposed masonry, 3,554 feet of space with only one attached neighbor. Heavy heat load in winter so it’s over-built with radiators. During each of two renovations we removed one radiator but with a supersized furnace we are quickly cozy warm.

There is a calculator on the internet to ascertain your radiator needs which also dictates the load you need from your heating source. The original set-up was a coal-burner with air ducts supplanted with gas burners in fireplaces. About ninety-years ago it was converted to oil and hot water radiators. The ducts and fireplaces were sealed. I upgraded to NG and an independent-fired WH(works off the furnace), an energy audit, under-the-roof insulation, double-pane windows and sealed everywhere. Saves you both in winter & summer.

The City should be telling all buyers that they should really look at this essential upgrade when a sale is registered. After a washer & dryer it’s your best investment.

Solomonsmines33 | 6 years and 11 months ago

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Yeah– I don’t have anything different to say. We love our steam heat. It was very tricky to re-balance the system at first because we replaced some radiators, but otherwise great now that it is running.

Guest User | 6 years and 11 months ago

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@Murph – Ha! It’s really starting to shape up that way.

murph | 6 years and 11 months ago

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Go to Canada and check it out. Cheaper than guessing wrong.

Master Plvmber | 6 years and 11 months ago

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There are lots of devices and methods for creating multi-zone heating in water-based systems and yet many homes are heated as a single zone. Balance is the end game here. Steam is heated with properly sized air vents and pressure settings while hot water systems are balanced with flow rates and water temperature settings. Energy delivery requires a specialist heating tech and having a plumber’s license doesn’t automatically put a person in that category. We heat buildings with water-based (hydronic) systems differently now than we did 10 years ago and with an eye on efficiency like never before, we’ve stopped doing things like flooding buildings with heat to appease that one cold tenant or difficult-to-heat area of the structure. Again, I teach a class on this subject at www.GeneralSociety.org and the misconceptions and lingering bad practices, even within the industry, are surprising and numerous.

Guest User | 6 years and 11 months ago

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@camp6ell – that’s a really good point. You’d think that they’d be passing their client’s info around so that they can crow about how great it is. I did manage to get the email address of a woman in Germantown, NY who has had them installed in two homes. I will reach out to her just to be sure, but as I mention in the comment above, we’ve decided that this route is simply too much hassle and too many unknowns (and likely too much money) to move forward with. Single zone hyrdonic it is!

Guest User | 6 years and 11 months ago

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@houndmama – Very good point re: repairs, in fact, one my wife pointed out tonight. And after this very informative thread I think what you suggest is just what we’re going to do! Electrical cat iron radiators: too much trouble and too new a technology, and likely entirely too expensive as so many on here have pointed out (in both installation and operation). I’m convinced. Perhaps in a few years we’ll have saved up the money to zone our hydronic system, but for now we’ll make a single zone work for our needs.

houndmama | 6 years and 11 months ago

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Hi there. Interesting discussion and
intriguing idea re: the electric radiators. However. Given that it’s very new, cutting edge technology and not at all adopted here in NYC, I would be very concerned about choosing this option. If you have any problems, who will you call to fix it? If there are no trained technicians or mechanics you could be in a world of trouble.
Why not replace the boiler, keep it gas / hot water or steam, and use the solar panels to cut out the Con Ed bill. Seems the least disruptive, easiest approach.