Can a baseboard mounted under floor work as radiant??

joe ervin

if system is cast iron its a lost cause. if system is fin type might be a little better. best to do whole floor with b/b or ultra fins on a seperate zone.

Mike W._3

I have a heating return under my kitchen which gets chilly when the temp drops. If I were to replace the portion of the return with a section of baseboard, would the warmth penetrate the wood floor of the kitchen??? Does anyone have any experience with this???

Dof3

Open fin

I have done this before up in the floor joist and panned it off with blue board or ductboard. It makes a warm spot in the floor and helps to heat the room.IMO

Weezbo

its done every day . it adds to the ability of the other heating

emmitters to meet the loss in an area .i would not hesitate to add in under sliding glass doors,in front of kitchen cabinets or small half baths with little or no wall space for a pannel or convector and simply incorperate it into the line that supplies the convectors or baseboard in the nearby room.

ScottMP

Two answers

First : No it won't work, copper fin tube needs convection to operate and circulate the air. A small space like a joist won't have the air space to heat well.

Second: Like the guy says it works at his house . The draw back is it only heats one bay and the output to the room is negliable.

I would think your time would be better spent insulating the floor under the kitchen really well. If your going to put some floor warming in, do the whole floor.

My Two Cents

Scott

To Learn More About This Professional, Click Here to Visit Their Ad in "Find A Professional"

Boilerpro_3

Whole homes are heated in a similiar way

There are many homes here in the Northern Illinois that are solely heated by this type of heating using fin tube in ceilings under insulation and these systems have been in use for nearly 50 years. Triad Co. out of Chicago marketed these systems. Typically the fintube was run perpendicular to the joists to heat all the bays and then the space enclosed.

Boilerpro

Kal Row

funny how air finds a way...works in my daughter's kitchen...

if the water is 160-180 even if the top of the fins are touching above and below like in a square tube enclosure, there is still a little air space between the tube and the floor and it will convect in that little area - enough to give it better air conduction than if the air was stationary - don’t expect to get the 400 some odd btu per foot you can get out of it. In another part of my daughter's house, the front of the baseboard was missing altogether and i just 3inch drywall screwed a very tall fancy molding in front of it 1.5 inches of the floor but the height is more than the usual baseboard front, and it's real nice even with the water temp below 140, the taller the chimney, the faster the air flow, more btu per foot extraction - but boy, it cost me a lot more than two cents - un-usual molding is "much mo mun-ay"

- they aught to sell a tall metal font covers with thin 3/4 tubing clips behind it for all those people that cant seem to keep the covers on, or have carpet blocking all but 1/2 inch of the bottom