Superhuman Dead Men?

At the very least, you need a proper hand truck with straps to hold the radiator on. Furniture moving dollies work well too if you can lay the rad down on them and hold them with straps.

Are you sure those rads will handle HW? Post a pic and let's have a look at them.

I have always figured out a way to move things but that being said I am not going to minimize the description of how tough that would be to move.

Maybe they bought some of the bigger rads in sections or knocked down to some extent.

I have seen a lot of old stuff, 8", 10" 12" threaded pipe when they barely had electricity. I was told they would lay out a piping job by running strings for each pipe, taking all the measurements back to the shop and cutting and threading with steam or water power. Then haul it to the job with a horse and wagon.

I would have like to see them put together one of the old "Snowman" or "robot" boilers as we called them with horizontal sections. Pretty hefty to lift those sections and put them in place. Old cellars with no headroom for a hoist. Don't know how they did that.

Those look like standard column-type radiators, closely resembling the American Rococo radiators. As long as the sections are connected at the top as well as at the bottom, they will work on hot-water.

If these rads are held together by rods and nuts, you should be able to get them apart to get them out of the building. You can get replacement push nipples from Oneida County Boiler Works if needed.

Mark Eatherton said:

Build a sled. 3/4" plywood, bunch of 2 X 4's. Flip radiator on its top for good stability. Strap and crib to comfort zone. Use pieces of 1/2" or 3/4" PVC as "bearings" to move it around with one hand, or use those furniture moving slider pads from HomeCheapo if floors finish are a concern. Use carpet underneath it to traverse stairs and give it a bit of glide. Control its speed from above with ropes, and stay out from in front of it just in case...

Or, hire a moving company, and stand back and watch. I'm into working smarter and not harder :-) That's how we handled heavy stuff when I was in the biz...

ME

The old dead men had an appropriate saying, still useful today.

"Always keep one end on the ground". Let the Earth/Gravity hold up one end of the weight.

I had a project to remove CI rads from 2nd floor. After nearly losing one down the stairway and thru a wall, I got a long strong 4X6 timber to straddle a window or doorway as an anchor. Then with a block & tackle could slowly let the rad down the stairs on the sled or appliance cart. (Lucky for me the utility company I worked for at the time loaned me everything I needed.)

Just think how challenged we are today to take them downhill with gravity assist. Imagine going up a 100 years ago . Maybe this is what they did with ropes & pulley then.

"Has anyone had any experience using powered stair climbing dollies? I've seen their promo video and they use it to move a very heavy looking commercial water heater. I'm planning on renting one to bring 2 short but long 3 column rads to the second floor. "
Yes, excellent piece of equipment. The only caution I have is the feet can damage a stair tread as it hoists itself up or down to the next step. Protection is recommended. Make sure it's fully charged before you head up a staircase as well. I'm not sure how I know that....

Just found this thread while searching for information on Ringen radiators. There are a couple of things that are unique. They have a single rod at the top, which passes through the center of the push nipples. Second, while most 3 column radiators are 2 1/2" wide per section, the Ringens are 2 5/8" wide. Just enough to throw you off if you're trying to replace a cracked American or US Radiator model. My memory is that these seemed to be a bunch heavier than their competition too.

I bet that's an ordinary pipe plug, and the rods and nuts are hidden inside.

These shots are taken on a couple of radiators in our house, running on a hot water system. Always thought these were very nice rads, but you don't see them too often.

I am pretty sure all those big rads were hoisted up using some kind of mechanical advantage rope systems - whether it was block and tackle or some other hoisting means. There is no way these were 'carried' by a few strong men using dollies. Several old steam books I read talk about building projects and having steam men come in as the floors are being laid out so that carpenters and steam men can work together. If we can learn anything from reading old books, it is that the people living before the computer age, internal combustion engines, or even electricity, were equally intelligent at using resources known to them then (horses on location to thread 10-12" pipes, block-and-tackles, etc), and at discovering new technologies in line with their place in the space-time continuum. To me, this is quite fascinating!

Aside from anti-gravitation levitation here is another idea:
Just wired some electric hammers for church bells. Looking at these bells of a hundred years ago and weighting several hundred pounds each, being 80' off grade. The bell guy said they roped them up thru the floors. There is a trapdoor that is about 42" square in the first upper floor and with the entire steeple done there would have been a place for the sky hook. They were winched up and then the next upper floor built under them. No crane available then.

So for huge cast iron rads, some floor boards could have been left out and a block and tackle fastened to beam spanning several ceiling rafters, maybe some temp jacks, the rads could have passed between floor joists 16" OC. Just a WAG.
I know what back aches are and would have tried it that way if I were a dead man.

Yes, that is the most practical solution.
I just wanted to tell the bell tower story as being a possibility.

I think there is little doubt that radiators were assembled on site, just like we still assemble larger sizes of cast iron boilers. I have seen vice clamp devises used to press push nipple radiators together. Apparently the rods were not considered to be strong enough to draw them together, just strong enough to hold them together. And of course American Radiators with their screw nipples had special tools to install them as well. I makes no logical sense to assemble anything other than very small radiators at the factory or in the shop when they could just as well be assembled at the installation site.

With all that said, it still stands to reason that radiators sometimes did needed to be moved and a cart designed for that purpose is shown below. It comes from one of the U.S. Radiator catalogs.

A few years ago I was able to salvage a couple medium sized radiators from "Overview" mansion across the street from our "Grandview Mansion" apartments. I needed a 22 section radiator and there were a couple of abandoned radiators on the second floor of Overview that totaled 30 sections. I took both radiators apart and carried the sections down, about 2 at a time to my car. Carried them over to the foyer of Grandview, and used the pieces to create a 22 section, 110 sq ft radiator to replace one that had gone missing. See photo of radiator in foyer.