Prior to Pex

John R. Hall

No, the basement was heated by wall mounted radiators (I have the pics showing them about two feet off the floor). The contractor gave me as much of the history as possible as these were designed to heat the floors above. Besides, how could this heat a room if the theory of "heat rising" applies?

John R. Hall

Old radiant floor heat

I came across this interesting sight recently while researching for a story on this 1923 mansion built for actress Julie Harris in Grosse Pointe, MI. For a moment I thought I was walking on the wall. This house is chock full of surprises. The steam heat system is drawn through the home using a vaccum pump, which I was told was very unusual for the time it was installed (1923).

I am writing this story about the contractor who will be replacing the system with a 900,000 Btu commercially-sized boiler and will also add a Unico system to provide a/c, which he home never has had. There will be a lot of pics in the story for our 11/11 edition. Stay tuned.

Mike T., Swampeast MO

What's above?

Bathroom? Pantry? Makeup/dressing station?

Steve Levine

Radiant heat? Are you sure?

I think that there were many cases were they wanted to heat the basement, and they installed radiator type devices like the one you show. I think they didn't do it to heat the area above.

Steve Levine

I didn't say that they were always correct-

In addition, it would provide SOME heat to the area. It surely would be much cooler at the floor.

tombig

Cieling Radiators

It looks like the radiator is mounted below a concrete cieling so maybe the installer was trying to warm the floor above. Many one pipe steam systems from that era used that type radiator for heating the room it was in. Maybe the nearby return was too high for a wall mount. Just because it is a vacuum system doesn't mean the condensate will flow uphill!

Boilerpro

Hot air rises, not heat!

I see these ceiling mounted rads very often in basements of older structures. They provide radiant ceiling type heating to the finished space below...Typically they are the only heat source for the space. I am sure they also provide heat up due to upward radiation and hot air rising, but from what I've seen thier chief function is to radiate heat downward.

Boilerpro