Mixing bb heat with ci.

deeps3019

A house I am flipping utilizes bb heat throughout. The bb in the kitchen severely limits the placing of new base cabinets. There is not enough remaining wall space to simply reposition them . So I'd like to remove the bb in the kitchen and replace with a radiator under each of the two windows, piping into the existing bb plumbing loop. From what I'm reading, that's not a good idea. There's no way to adjust the water flow to the radiators to reduce heat output? It's only one room, would it make that much of a difference? What if I put smaller radiators in than what's called for to help off-set the radiant heat effect? This appears to be a major - and costly - problem for me. Any ideas?

Jamie Hall

How is the existing system piped? That makes all the difference. Series? Parallel? Monoflo? If it's a series or momoflo loop, it's not quite as simple as popping this out and popping that in. If it's a series loop, you would need to match the output (EDR) of your new radiators as closely as you can to the old baseboard to avoid upsetting the balance of the whole system. If it's monoflo, you may get away with it... or may not, as monoflo is quite sensitive to the flow resistance in the two pathways. Parallel flow -- piece of cake.

hot_rod

A kickspace heater under the cabinets is ideal for those situations, depending on the piping as @Jamie Hall mentioned.