Dead Men Tales: How They Rated Radiators

HeatingHelp

How They Rated Radiators

From the paint-the-floor method to the American Radiator Company's Institute of Thermal Research, Dan Holohan explores how the Dead Men developed radiator ratings.

Listen and subscribe here.

Thank you to SupplyHouse.com for supporting this podcast.

Adk1guy

weighing the water that had condensed seems very accurate, but how did they determine the sf of the radiators better than the paint method? Which has never been exactly explained but the square footage of radiation would be the actual surface area of the radiator? Hard to measure with a ruler.

DanHolohan

The surface area of the radiator is just a part of it. Most depends on the difference in temperature between the air outside the radiator and the temperature of whatever is inside the radiator (hot water or steam). American Radiator took what was a useful rule of thumb and turning it into pure accuracy.

scott w.

I am sure with todays technology some where there is a machine that could scan a radiator and give the exact square footage of a radiator.

DanHolohan

The square footage is just a piece of the puzzle. It's what you bring to it that matters. Note how they moved the radiators around the room, looking for differences, and how they strictly followed ordinary methods of construction for the times. They wanted to be as accurate as possible and that's what made them revered in the trade.

mattmia2

The shape and area of the inside surface and the material between the inside and outside surfaces are also important.

DanHolohan

Yes

Larry Weingarten

Hmmm, This makes me wonder why radiators were never made of brass, with its thermal conductivity roughly three times that of cast iron. Also, it might be interesting to test carbon fiber as a radiator material. @DanHolohan , you stir up fun thoughts!

Yours, Larry

DanHolohan

Thanks, Larry. I suspect the price and availability of different metals played a role. I stumbled onto something that's in an upcoming article for one of the magazines: Germany was the first country to make plastic pipe (PVC). This happened in the late-'30s, when they were developing plans for other uses for the their iron and steel. So world politics also comes into play.

I mentioned in a previous article how Trane invented the copper convector (they didn't use that name). A shortage of pig iron at the time played a part in that move.

umichaelx

I have a few questions. I would greatly appreciate any feedback: I have several Investment properties in Queens, New York.

(1). Natural Gas Steam Boiler - Can someone please recommend the BEST BRAND of natural gas steam boiler? I am currently using a BURNHAM which is almost at the end of its life cycle. This equipment is 40+ years old, absolutely no issues until recently. I was advised that steam is now slowly leaking out of the boiler.

(2). What is the requirement for a CONTRACTOR to have his/her business listed, here on the heatinghelp.com, website under the "Find A Contractor"?

Hiring THE BEST CONTRACTOR is 98 percent of this equation, even if hypothetically speaking, I spend one million dollars on a new equipment.

DanHolohan

Find a Contractor is paid advertising. All are welcome to advertise and share their story. 

EdTheHeaterMan

What color was the paint in that vat? Ideal had a Redtop boiler series... I remember vacuum cleaning many of those oId gals in my youth... Is that where they got the saying "Paint the town Red"?

DanHolohan

Ouch.

CLamb

scott w. said:

I am sure with todays technology some where there is a machine that could scan a radiator and give the exact square footage of a radiator.

Actually that wouldn't be so easy. Laser scanning would give the highest precision but that requires at least two lines of sight to each surface. It would have to be a very high resolution scan because a radiator surface is not smooth but highly textured and that texture greatly increases the surface area.

fentonc

I bet you could do it with modern photogrammetry software, and once you have a model calculating the surface area is pretty trivial (just add up all the triangles!).

dopey27177

Amazing at how simple it was for the dead men to rate the EDR of a radiator by using simple math. BUT the whole thing depended on the fact that some guy had to figure out the test procedure to allow some one to do the simple math.

I always wondered how the few dead men were able to sleep at night when their dreams were full of the stuff like wow much fuel is needed to make steam to produce an EDR

Here I go ramble on.

I can tell you all that in my 60 years in the business I know all the answers, but I do not know the questions.

Jake

mattmia2

Modern engineers take a lot of shortcuts to reduce complex things to simple math as well...