5 ms·
That’s an artifact of how heating is setup inside your home. Which is more efficient depends on where you’re dumping heat inside the home, levels of insulation,
by Retric 2y ago
That’s an artifact of how heating is setup inside your home. Which is more efficient depends on where you’re dumping heat inside the home, levels of insulation, etc.
Energy moves from hot to cold linearly with temperature differences. Hypothetically, if the pipe was the same temperatures as the inside of your home all the heat transferred would be outside the envelope. The hotter the pipe the better this ratio becomes. This is true regardless of what percentage of the pipe is inside the envelope.
However, heating along the exterior of the home under windows and such then you’ll heat the exterior walls to higher temperatures than the interior thermostat thus losing more heat to the outside. Radiant heating on the other hand largely avoids this effect.
- DamonHD 2y agoI moved all my radiators away from under windows (and upgraded the windows to triple glazing) to avoid maximising the temperature differential and energy loss through the wall under the windows, while eliminating the cool drafts that the under-window radiator placement was intended to counter.
- HPsquared 2y agoWhat do you do for ventilation?
- DamonHD 2y agoThe windows all still open, but in winter we have (nearly) enough MHRV (Mechanical Heat Recovery Ventilation) not to need to ventilate directly, eg see: https://www.earth.org.uk/MHRV-mechanical-heat-recovery-ventilation.html https://www.earth.org.uk/MHRV-mechanical-heat-recovery-venti...
- sudahtigabulan 2y agoDo you mean you moved them to another wall, or just increased the gap? (not a native speaker here)
- DamonHD 2y agoMoved them to another wall. Eg: https://www.earth.org.uk/note-on-superinsulating-bedroom.html https://www.earth.org.uk/note-on-superinsulating-bedroom.htm...
- Benanov 2y agoRadiators were originally designed to heat more than needed, so you could open the windows. In New York, at least - the standards were never changed to accomodate for closed windows in 1920. Snopes has a rundown. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/apartment-radiator-pandemic-spread/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/apartment-radiator-pandemi...
- organsnyder 2y agoMy house (built in 1916) was insanely over-provisioned. When we upgraded to a modulating-condensing boiler, we halved the BTUs and are still able to easily keep the house heated to any desired temperature even on the coldest winter days.
- DamonHD 2y agoI'm really confused about (not complaining, just not understanding) the downvotes. These are statements of neutral fact, and the whole process is described in some detail on my site, for each room that we retrofitted. I don't understand if I have caused offense or something: apologies if somehow so!
- joncrocks 2y agoI'm not sure, but I think that the reason that radiators are placed near windows (at least historically) was to avoid hot/cold spots in rooms. By placing the radiator near the place that is likely the coldest place in the room, you ensure that the room is an even in temperature as possible. Rather than to counteract 'cool draughts'. I think. So perhaps people thought that your initial comment was wrong/misleading. But if you have triple glazing and this mitigates the heat loss, then the coldest wall of your room may no longer be the one with a window, so you may well be doing the right thing for your room(s).
- DamonHD 2y agoEven if the coldest wall is still the exterior one (it should be, thermodynamically), best maintaining comfort in the room need no longer be by pumping heat out through that wall (or window) to reduce thermal gradients in the rest of the room. Those residual gradients (and, eg, cold drafts down those cooler exterior walls) can be small enough to not need fixing any more.
- looofooo0 2y agoLook at ISO 7730, a lot of comfort comes from non-cold walls and their radiant heat and small difference of wall temperatures to air temperatures. So having a thoroughly heated home allows you to lower your air temperature. Apart from that modern gas and even more heat pumps greatly gain efficiency by lowering flow water temperatures.
- Retric 2y agoIt’s a deep rabbit hole as condensation, humidity, etc also enter the picture. Efficiently lowering temperatures for sleeping further complicates things. That said, heat loss is through exterior surfaces so you really want to avoid spot heating of poorly insulated exterior walls. Thus the design of baseboard heaters can make a larger impact than you’d think.
- looofooo0 2y agoBaseboard heaters need very high temperatures. I would not recommend installing this anywhere. Having big Typ 33 heaters for temperatures below 45°C will greatly increase efficiency of your heating system. Otherwise, a split air con is also an efficient way of heating.
- sokoloff 2y agoBaseboard heaters are often sized such that very high temps are needed (because that's what cheapest/lowest labor/least space used), but they don't have to be sized that way. In the attic bedroom, we have baseboards around the entire perimeter on two walls and same in the bath. I run the attic zone on the same water temp (outdoor reset controlled to be quite low) as the rest of the house (mostly large cast iron rads, one cast iron convector). Good insulation and air sealing in the attic means that the attic zone calls way less than the downstairs.
- looofooo0 2y agoWhich is not exactly efficient. 40C or less is desirable.