Hot water baseboard below NOWL

Joe Plumb

I have a client with a steam boiler and of course steam radiators on a one pipe system with gravity returns at the end of the mains which run below the slab and back to boiler via Hartford loop.

Has anyone out there ever taken a return line and incorporated a section of commercial fin tube to heat a space? My thinking is that the water is hot, returning to the boiler, so it doesn't  care how it gets there as long as it's inside a pipe. Please let me also mention we are making hot water with an internal coil. I figured if we're not making steam in the off season, there should not be a problem with heating that section of baseboard while the boiler runs on hot water demand.

Feedback please........

Jamie Hall

Can't think of a good reason

why you wouldn't get some heat out it.  As long as you made sure the whole thing stayed wet, and had a decent way to drain any low points, it should work just fine.  Only thing is, don't expect to get that much heat out of it -- and it would be almost impossible to predict, ahead of time, just how much heat you would get.