Old Heaters

Tom_133

Hey all,

I was finally able to buy a house! The market is nuts. So like most I overpaid AND need to do a bunch of work!! Oh well. Anyway, it has some what I believe are 6" deep Sterling FS-A heaters. I like the heaters, but they are all - except one - mounted directly to the outside wall, meaning recessed in the wall with no insulation behind them. I know they made recessed heaters, but man! the inner cheapskate is crying. What kind of difference will it make to pull the heaters out of the wall, insulate, and reinstall on the face?

and yes the purplish, blue floor will go...

STEVEusaPA

What's the wall construction?
Do you have access from below to move piping if necessary?
If there is stud framing, you could remove rads, spray in foam.
If not and you have some space, maybe you can slide 1" foil faced foamboard, but that could look ugly and you really shouldn't leave foil faced foamboard exposed.
Is the rest of the wall insulated?

I guess you could pull them forward, if you can get to the piping, trim the sides and make a nice, bigger window sill. But remember their main purpose was to save space by recessing them.

Tom_133

Steve,

I gotcha. Yeah I got access, they can be pulled and walls repaired. I assume they never "Needed" to be recessed? This is a late 1940's house so its plaster board, and very little to no insulation in the outside walls. I will be addressing that some. I am curious if the consensus is that I would save A LOT by removing each unit? It would require insulating, repairing the wall, then drilling new holes and remounting units on the wall so if the savings was 50 gallons of oil a winter I may not do it, because it would take more than 10 years to get that back. But if we felt it would save 150 gallons a winter I would. I know the gallons illustration is exaggerated but you get the idea.

kcopp

If it were me and was going to go to all that trouble to pull out and insulate I would install panel rads and scrap the convectors.

mattmia2

I would probably just air seal around an in the box ant especially the floor inside the box and leave it. Could also maybe add foam on the outside if you ever need to reside it.

bburd

The small savings you might achieve will almost certainly not be worth the time, effort and money required to relocate your heaters.

You would be better off going for the low hanging fruit: air sealing, attic insulation, good storm windows if the existing windows are single pane, generally tightening the building envelope.