Most efficient, (and comfortable), baseboard heater

Grif2

We have hot water baseboard heating from the 70's, made by Intertherm, that we are slowly replacing. What do we look for that is the most efficient, energy-wise? TIA.

Harvey Ramer

Something like this will take less wall space and allow you to use lower water temps. That would be an advantage if you have a condensing boiler.

http://smithsenvironmental.com/heatingedgegreen-brochure.pdf

http://www.sterlingbaseboard.com/documents/DL-SG-1.pdf

Gordy

Those are electric Hydronic baseboards. A watt is A watt. It takes1000 watts to produce 3412 btus. It will take X amount of btus thus X amount of watts to heat the space.

Now if you had a boiler based hydronic heating system, and that boiler was High efficiency we could say install more baseboard to lower the water temps to heat the space using say 140* water instead of !80* water on the coldest day of winter, and much lower than that on warmer days which would use less fuel.

As far as a more efficient electric baseboard I really dont think there is a more efficient electric verses electric. Your post indicates you have already replaced some of the base board. What did you replace that with?

Harvey Ramer

Looks like I gaffed I didn't see anything but the word baseboard.
Sorry for the confusion.

SherlockOhms

Gordy said:

Those are electric Hydronic baseboards. A watt is A watt. It takes1000 watts to produce 3412 btus. It will take X amount of btus thus X amount of watts to heat the space.

Now if you had a boiler based hydronic heating system, and that boiler was High efficiency we could say install more baseboard to lower the water temps to heat the space using say 140* water instead of !80* water on the coldest day of winter, and much lower than that on warmer days which would use less fuel.

As far as a more efficient electric baseboard I really dont think there is a more efficient electric verses electric. Your post indicates you have already replaced some of the base board. What did you replace that with?

Electric resistive heating is 100% efficient in converting Watts to BTU's, the only way to improve electric heating is to use a heat pump which is around 300% efficient.

Gordy

You could say that but then the heat pump would require an entirely different emitter system than base board heating. To keep it simple lets just say an electric base board replacement is going to be apples to apples to the old one except styling no?

The only thing that may be a stretch is element style could be quicker response time, but then I like the little extra mass water, or oil filled base boards provide. Slower to heat up, but lags cooling down really it's a wash energy wise.

Gordy

"Electric resistive heating is 100% efficient in converting Watts to BTU's, the only way to improve electric heating is to use a heat pump which is around 300% efficient."

Efficiency from its originating point of production to the point of use should be considered in that percentage but never is. There is transmission losses, and the efficiency of the power plant producing the electricity.

As far as what you pay for, and use yeah. As a whole no.

icesailor

Years ago, there was an article about that subject. Plant efficiency. The article might have been from the 1970's or 1980's.

In it, they stated that the most efficient generating plant in the world was an oil fired plant in Switzerland at 32+% efficiency. The second most efficient plant was the oil fired plant in Sandwich, MA. Canal Electric, beside the Cape Cod Canal. The Canal Electric plant was slightly lower but still over 32%. Where I lived, all power came from diesel generators. Their best efficiency was 12 1/2%. The Canal Electric's efficiency was because of the design of the combustion chamber area bt Stone + Webster Engineering. Coal fired plants ran in the mid to low 20% range. An oil crisis came along. So, the Coal producers proposed turning the oil fired plants over to coal. Most all coal plants could be converted to oil but not the other way around. The combustion area was too large. Except for a few, designed by Stone & Webster. So, after a big kerfuffle (soot on the neighbors cars, houses and clothes) it was converted.

Efficiency is lust another way of stepping over $10.00 bills to pick up pennies.

People think that because something is more "Efficient", they save money.

With that baseboard heat, regardless of how it gets hot, if no energy goes in to it, it stays cold. So whatever you put into it to make it how, its the cost of the energy to make it hot that you measure.

More efficient compared to what? No one explains that to us. Its all a big secret. So they can screw us to the wall higher and deeper.

SWEI

Modern combined-cycle power plants run just under 60% efficiency (BTUs in to kWe out) but distribution losses bring that number closer to 40% in most cases. This stuff matters a lot for carbon calculations, but for the average consumer at this point it's all about kWH at their meter and dollars at the end of the month.

icesailor

Its called "Fun With Numbers". The story I relate was from an independent source, not paid for results by any for-profit entity.

But you bring up a very interesting point. Distribution losses. I did a lot of houses where the "designer" had a personal thing about any utilities being seen on his masterpieces. SOmetimes, he had a electrical meter on a post, hidden in bushes, 1/4 mile away from the 8,000 Sq. Ft "cottage". Some owners were so cheap that they would drop a penny on the ground and hope it would split in half so they had two pennies. If they had any idea of the line losses in their 1/4 mile secondary service, they would have had a coronary. The power companies love them at the street. They get paid for their line loss.

There's no deal on a free lunch.

BobC

I suspect we were really better off when towns each had their own power plants because it gets rid of a lot of the transmission losses. I know in my area the towns with municipal power plants run cheaper and have less downtime.

Of course municipal plants are unamerican because nobody at the top gets to take home millions of dollars every year and the board members all have to actually go out and find a real job.

Bob

icesailor

They ALL have real jobs. Screwing the public, and getting paid well. Even when they screw up badly. Jamie Diamon comes first to mind.