| Author |
Message |
    
Yonti2323
Citizen
Username: Yonti2323
Post Number: 10
Registered: 6-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, October 21, 2003 - 4:20 pm: |     |
My 85-year-old house has steam radiator heat, but one bedroom on the 3rd floor is unheated. It has been suggested to use electric baseboard heat for the one room. Does anyone have any experience with this? Who would install it? Thanks. |
jgberkeley
Supporter
Username: Jgberkeley
Post Number: 3224
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Tuesday, October 21, 2003 - 4:31 pm: | |
Yes,
An electriction.
Question, Got lots of money? |
tjohn
Citizen
Username: Tjohn
Post Number: 1842
Registered: 12-2001
| | Posted on Tuesday, October 21, 2003 - 5:22 pm: | |
IMHO, you might be able to run steam to this bedroom, depending on the alignment of the bedroom relative to existing steam pipes. This would require the following:
1. Opening up the wall in the bedroom below the 3rd floor bedroom in order to run a steam riser to the 3rd floor.
2. Violating the orthodoxy of not having more than a single radiator on a riser. As a practical matter, when I first moved into my house, I had three radiators on one riser and it worked fine. So as a design principal it is sound. However, exceptions can work.
The installation cost would be a lot higher. The operating cost would be a lot lower. I am willing to bet the reduce operating costs would cover the installation cost gap pretty quickly.
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lamojo
Citizen
Username: Lamojo
Post Number: 43
Registered: 7-2002
| | Posted on Tuesday, October 21, 2003 - 5:29 pm: | |
I'm interested in this for our third floor too. What kind of money are we talking about, for both options? |
amandacat
Citizen
Username: Amandacat
Post Number: 282
Registered: 8-2001
| | Posted on Tuesday, October 21, 2003 - 5:31 pm: | |
How often will the bedroom be used? As long as the answer isn't "24/7", and as long as the heat is only turned on when the room is in use (and always turned off when the romom is not) it might not be all that costly to heat that way.
We have electric baseboard heat in our Maplewood Room and it works just fine for us, but we use that room rather infrequently. |
soresident
Citizen
Username: Soresident
Post Number: 78
Registered: 10-2001
| | Posted on Tuesday, October 21, 2003 - 6:03 pm: | |
Don't know if this is a workable option - but.... We have electric heaters that we installed for supplemental heat in several places in our house (ex: a cold child's bedroom, on the 2nd floor and the opposite side of the house from the furnace in a house with 1 zone heat; in the kitchen which is next to an unheated garage, installed when we renovated and added a slider and 2 glass floor to ceiling windows). They look like a regular vent (so not very intrusive). They have a thermostat control. Electrician put one in, contractor did others. Believe cost was about $1000 each time. We only turn them on for a short time when we need them (like when I come into a cold kitchen first thing on a winter morning), so I don't think the cost of using them is very high. However, these rooms do have some heat already; I have no idea if this is an appropriate solution when you've got a totally unheated room. Might be worth checking out. |
bobk
Supporter
Username: Bobk
Post Number: 3656
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Tuesday, October 21, 2003 - 7:26 pm: | |
Also, expect a visit from the tax man. Heated third floors are assessed, unheated ones aren't.
Electric baseboard is expensive to operate, but relatively cheap to instal, assuming you have the juice coming into your home, preferably 200 amp service.
As the old add says, "pay me now or pay me later".
It all depends on how much you use the room. |
tjohn
Citizen
Username: Tjohn
Post Number: 1843
Registered: 12-2001
| | Posted on Tuesday, October 21, 2003 - 7:42 pm: | |
The cost of the steam option, if feasible, I would guess to be in the neighborhood of $1K. The assumption is that you can branch off a the riser feeding the radiator in the bedroom below without any more trouble than opening up the wall. Of course, you could always run a riser from the basement steam main, but this would mean opening up a wall in the first floor also. |
JGTierney
Citizen
Username: Jtg7448
Post Number: 60
Registered: 6-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, October 22, 2003 - 9:39 am: | |
Sorry to jump in on this thread, but here I go...
Right now we have all the walls and the ceilings to our kitchen and dining room open to the studs. Yep, fun plaster removal...
We want to reroute two steam risers. One from the basement to a new location in the kitchen. And the 2nd from the basement up into a bedroom. This 2nd one is right where we want the
new refrigerator to go.
Is this as simple as it is my mind? Do you just tap into the main in the basement and reroute new
pipes? The one going to the bedroom on the 2nd floor really just needs an elbow to move it over about 6"-8".
Also, someone I work with told me about some sort of vent that can go under the kitchen cabinets along the toekick? This is in lieu of moving the radiator.
What's he talking about? (Or what am I talking about for that matter )
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Master Plvmber
Citizen
Username: Master_plvmber
Post Number: 112
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, October 22, 2003 - 10:13 am: | |
He's talking about a toekick heater that is not easily workable when installed on a steam system. My advice is to move the riser if you can.
I'm sure you can just add the elbows as you've described. Just keep upward pitch in mind when you do it.
Master_Plvmber
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jgberkeley
Supporter
Username: Jgberkeley
Post Number: 3228
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, October 22, 2003 - 12:09 pm: | |
Tgierny,
It depends,
A few years back in my house remodel, we needed to re-route a riser since we were moving walls.
We got lucky. In the basement just about 10" from the exact spot we needed to tap into the Mains, we found a stubbed out riser off the Main with a cap.
As the Master said, keep the pitch. |
MSB
Citizen
Username: Msb
Post Number: 5
Registered: 6-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, October 22, 2003 - 2:36 pm: | |
If you go with the steam route, be aware that your existing boiler may not be able to take the additional output. I had to replace my furnace last year as the previous owner had run the steam lines up to the third floor and it killed my furnace about 7 years before it should have. I ended up installing a smaller furnace just to heat the basement and attic. More expensive in the short run, but pays for itself in extending the life of the furnace (I hope!) |
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