Electric kickspace heater in kitchen?

Boston_DIY

We're remodeling our kitchen (1930's house), and in the process removing the old steam radiator.  The radiator takes up a good amount of space, which we are looking to reclaim to improve the overall kitchen layout (plus, the radiator is fairly inefficient). 



We were considering electric radiant heat under an engineered hardwood floor, but were a bit put off by the high cost. 



A friend suggested we look at installing an electric kickspace heater in the toekick of the cabinet (or possibly two heaters).  The kitchen is not huge (150 sq ft).  It seems reasonable from a cost perspective (much cheaper than the radiant), but not sure about the efficiency for heating a larger room.



I've seen toekick heaters installed in bathrooms before, but not in a kitchen.  Looking for any thoughts/advice (pro's/con's) about whether this is the right application. Thanks.

Charlie from wmass

How is

a radiator inefficient? That steam costs a lot less to heat with than the toe kick will and steam radiators can not catch fire.

Jamie Hall

How's that again?

Doesn't seem to me like a particularly good idea.  The overall wellhead to room efficiency of an electric heater is on the order of perhaps 30 to 40%, when all the losses are taken into account.  A good steam system and radiator will give you around 75 to 80 percent, ditto.  So from a "green" standpoint, uh, sorry, no.  From a cost standpoint, again... at least last I looked in the Boston area, a BTU from the electric company cost a lot more than a BTU from the oil or gas company.



Presumably you are removing the old steam radiator because it is in the way or unsightly.  I can understand that.  But why not put in a steam radiator or two which fits the space better, if that's the case?  There are a lot of options...

Boston_DIY

Thanks

Thanks for the replies. 



The 'inefficiency'  is more a result of the single zone heating of the radiator system.  When it kicks on it puts out a heck of a lot of heat, but difficult to maintain a good temp.  Kitchen is over the garage, so will always be colder than the rest of the house (even now that we are insulating the walls/floor since we have them open for the reno).  In order to get the kitchen warm, we'd need to jack up the heat in the rest of the house.  Even with fiddling with the valves on the radiators in the other rooms (opening some more, others less) to try to even out the temps, we didn't really think it would be possible to maintain a good temp in the kitchen. 



Jamie: Correct about the rationale for moving the radiator.  It's current position prevents the basement door from opening all the way.  Since we have everything open, we could just relocate the steam pipe 10-12 inches, but were looking at alternate heating options since we're down to studs anyway.  We were trying to control temp of the room, while improving the aesthetics by trying to find a "hidden" solution (hence the toe kick heater idea).



You mention "other options"... anything other than just replacing the current radiator with another one?

Ironman

Hot water loop

You could run a hot water loop of off the boiler to a toe kick or some other form of hydronic rad.





http://www.heatinghelp.com/article/17/Hot-Water/76/Condensate-Hot-Water-Heating

Charlie from wmass

Base Ray?

You could with due diligence install base ray base board of the proper size to warm the room . If you have the wall space and the pipes can be run that way.