Baseboard heaters

Baseboard heaters have long been a great source of heat in residential and commercial applications. They operate on a very simple, time-tested process. Hot water goes through plumbing pipes because a re-circulating pump keeps it moving. Hot water leaves and cooler water returns to be re-heated and sent on its way again.

Early Applications

Long before air conditioning was a regular part of construction, radiator heat was the typical way of heating large commercial office spaces, schools, and multi-level apartment buildings. In earlier days, baseboard heaters were not the slim, low profile design as they are today. They were called radiator heaters because of the large coil of pipe housed within a metal encasing resembling an appliance or piece of furniture.

All baseboard heaters worked on the premise of a central furnace to heat the water to be distributed to various rooms. In the late part of the nineteenth and early part of the twentieth centuries, coal was the typical fuel for the furnaces.

Coal was a cheap although very messy source of fuel, which burned for long periods. It was also very labor intensive because someone had to be in charge of stoking the fire in the early hours so people would be warm when they got out of bed.

Why Hot Water Baseboard Heaters are Desirable

Although baseboard heaters were used on single level structures, they excelled in multi-story buildings because of the tendency of hot water to rise. This natural phenomenon kept the water rising, cooling, and returning to be heated again. Because the rising of hot air and water was common knowledge, furnaces and water heaters were always placed in basements to use the scientific advantage.

With the growing popularity of heating oil as a fuel, baseboard heaters no longer presented such hard work in the cold wee hours of the morning. The first boilers with heating oil used timers that automatically started the furnace at a preset time. This migrated to the use of thermostats to control the operation on most systems.

One of the best reasons for the use of hot water baseboard heaters is the extreme comfort that comes from moist heat. Electric and gas will heat an area, but neither has the natural feel of hot water heat.

Drawbacks of Hot Water Baseboard Heaters

On single story buildings especially, long runs of the water line result in hot and cold spots. The areas that get heated water first are warmer than those further down the line. Most systems don't have a single circulation loop for this reason, but have zoned areas. Additionally, rooms on exterior walls get a higher concentration of heat. Usually baseboard heaters are on outside walls and located under windows.

When the outside air heats up enough that the furnace is not needed as much, hot water baseboard heaters are still hot and temperatures may rise to uncomfortable levels before the water cools down after the furnace stops heating. Maintaining the proper heat levels is the most problematic part of hot water heating.

Plumbing pipes do wear out and develop leaks. There are maintenance issues with hot water heating, and many of the plumbing lines remain exposed, which is unsightly.

Electric Baseboard Heaters

The use of electric baseboard heaters is ideal in structures that aren't large enough to afford a central system or are only used occasionally. An addition that would tax the heating unit of a building might be a typical place for baseboard heaters. Electric heaters are not inexpensive to operate because they do not work on heat transfer, but the strip heating that works instantly.

The same locations are used for electric heaters as the hot water type. That is under windows to compensate for where most cold air penetrates into the room and on exterior walls. The newer heaters are designed compactly and come in several colors to compliment different room decors.

Comfort or Practicality

A small home with a basement is an ideal place to use a hot water heating system, but most homeowners will choose the heat pump so that the one system handles both heating and cooling. Limited applications are better served by electric heaters, but the one thing that remains true, hot water is the most comfortable way to heat a home.