Cast iron radiators or baseboard for old farmhouse?

wflather

Art, I'm not a heating contractor, but have an old house with both. There are advantages to either. In my opinion, stand alone radiators deliver more heat, but are intrusive and can displace furniture. Cast iron Baseboard is less intrusive, but will require a pretty long run to replace a single radiator. Also, they are typically installed flush against the wall, which will require ripping out baseboard trim. If the baseboard trim is original 200 yrs old, that would cause me a great deal of anguish since I try to think of myself as just a temporary, if long term custodian of a historic structure, so I try to do as little damage as possible while bowing to modern conveniences such as central heat. If installed in front of the baseboards, all furniture will be pushed away from the wall the additional thickness of the heaters. I believe Burnham Baseray is at least 2" thick.

Tough choice. Bummer about the ruptured water lines.

Art Schmidt

I have an early 1800s stone farmhouse with cast iron hot water radiators in each room. The boiler quit and all radiators froze and broke.

Repairs are insured, so I can afford new radiators, but I am wondering whether cast iron baseboard would be less conspicuous and thus more appropriate for the old house. I can't imagine that the existing radiators were there when it was built.

I'm just afraid that though less conspicuous, the baseboard radiators would have a more modern look, even further spoiling the feel of the old house.

Any experience / opinions?

Thanks,
Art Schmidt

TJ_2

Check out www.burnham.com

Burnham sells some pretty good looking cast iron rads. Alternatively, there might be a dealer in used rads in your area. They will help you maintain the look and feel of your older house.

nick

I had a similar situation and opted for radiators because in my old house the floor slanted in a lot of odd ways and it is hard to get a clean straight look from baseboard in that situation. i went with burnham classic radiators and they have a look that blends in nice with my 18th century structure.

Unknown

ci rads

art,

a cast iron radiator has more mass and thus cools slower the ci baseboard. the cooling rate is said to be more like your infiltration rate on an early home like yours.

to consider replacing your CI bbd you first need to see if you can get enough heat in the rooms to match the CI rads OR start over and have someone do a complete heatloss on the house.

CI BBD will deliver 600 BTU/ft or 3.3 sq feet of radiation. The radiators in one of the houses I just looked at did three times that amount in ONE SECTION.

Burnham makes a really cool book called the "Burnham Heating Helper" if you care to look at some radiator information to help size your existing. (www.burnham.com) Or e-mail me your address and I will send you one.

If you have insulated, upgraded windows in the house you may want to just start over and resize the entire house.

wheels

Steamhead

Art, if the radiators froze

you might have some burst pipes too. This would mean more work.

If you have to re-do the piping, why not install steam rather than hot-water? The radiators will be smaller, and they won't freeze. If the boiler quits, the only parts of a steam system that will retain water are the wet returns in the basement, and the boiler itself. And if you do a one-pipe system, there will be fewer pipes.

We did this when rehabbing an old farmhouse a few years ago. It worked great!

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