Building wood fintube covers

[Deleted User]

We are remodeling older home with nice tall baseboard trim. We are adding new fintube but feel the standard metal cabinets don't get it! Plan one building wood covers with the same material/stain as the rest of the trim to blend in. Saw a articial in Fine Home Building years ago but can't find it. Need some advise, do's, don'ts, tips, ect...

Steve Levine

Wood baseboard enclosures

can present some difficulties. Every dimension of regular baseboard, affects the heat ouput. The amount of air flow restriction, the height of the element within the enclosure, the amount of air that can bypass the element, the height of the enlcosure itself, etc., all contribute. It is almost impossible to accurately predict the output of the baseboard unit that you construct.

Mark J Strawcutter

some alternatives

Since you don't like the look of modern fin-tube (I don't either :-) and have an older home with nice woodwork, consider using period cast-iron radiators.

Or, take a look at cast-iron baseboard.

Mark

Dave Holdorf

or take a look

at RadiantPanel.

1" thick by 5" tall aluminum extrusion. Typically you need to use twice as much as a finned tube, but you can dress it up nicely with a shoe and cap moulding and then finish the other two walls with pine to finish it out.

www.hydronicalternatives.com

Dave H.

[Deleted User]

Steve, just for the reasons you mentioned I planned to incorperate as much of the cabinets as possible. The back 1/2, the fintube hanging brackets, and the dampner. Pretty much wrapping the cases in wood. I have some older style Slantfin casings that I have been playing with and I do understand that the prouduct was designed for max output, thats why I was asking for any advise. The wife does not want the old cast iron radiators. Thats what we are taking out, they are not pretty and ornate like I have seen posted here.

John@Reliable

Baseboard

I have seem what your talking about,on one job they left baseboard but painted it to match woodwork even had grain couldn't tell unless you really looked hard!and heat was great.