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Heating baseboard (C) Carson Dunlop Associates Guide to Baseboard Heat
Heating Baseboard Inspect, Repair, Cleaning

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Hot water baseboard heating systems:

This article describes the types of baseboard heat used in buildings and we explain the diagnosis and repair of heating baseboard troubles including no-heat or leaks or other problems. This article focuses on the installation, diagnosis & repair of hot water heating baseboards.

We discuss: How to inspect, diagnose, and repair problems with baseboard heat. Inadequate linear feet of hot water baseboard: factors that determine how much baseboard is required. If your hot water baseboard is cold and the heating system is "on" - here we diagnose the problem.

Where leaks occur on hot water baseboards; Guide to unusual heating baseboards in buildings. How to raise up heating baseboard that lacks adequate clearance from the finish floor surface.

This article series answers most questions about all types of heating systems and gives important inspection, safety, and repair advice.

We also provide an ARTICLE INDEX for this topic, or you can try the page top or bottom SEARCH BOX as a quick way to find information you need.

Baseboard Heat: How to Identify and Diagnose Problems With Hot Water or Electric Heating Baseboards

Heating baseboard (C) Daniel FriedmanHow Does Heating Baseboard Work?

Hot water heating baseboard is warmed by hot water circulating through either finned copper tubing or through cast iron baseboard sections.

Our photo of a heating baseboard at left and also Carson Dunlop Associates' sketch (below left) and oshow a typical modern hot water heating baseboard system installation.

Heating baseboard warms the room by a combination of radiation (the hot baseboard radiates heat onto surfaces in the room) and convection (cool air enters at the baseboard bottom, is warmed, and exits at the baseboard top - see Carson Dunlop Associates (found at page bottom, Click to Show or Hide) 's baseboard sketch at the top of this page).

[Click to enlarge any image]

If your heating baseboards are not in fact getting warm when your thermostat is calling for heat and the boiler is indeed running,

see AIRBOUND HEAT SYSTEM REPAIR by WATER FEED VALVE.

How Does Cast Iron Heating Baseboard Work?

Cast iron baseboard (C) Carson Dunlop Associates

Carson Dunlop Associate's sketch of cast iron heating baseboard shows the heating water and air flow pathways of these heating units.

You can see by the larger water volume as well as the increased mass of the cast iron, that cast iron heating baseboards have more thermal mass than conventional finned-tube baseboard.

The increased thermal mass means more even heat distribution as the baseboards will continue to radiate heat for some time even when hot water stops circulating through the system.

Sketch of a cast iron heating baseboard courtesy of Carson Dunlop Associates (found at page bottom, Click to Show or Hide) .

How Many Feet of Baseboard Heaters do We Need to Heat a Room?

The answer is ... it depends. Electric heating baseboard is figured at five to eight watts per square foot of the room.

And for hot water heat, running a heat loss model such as the excellent program provided by Slant Fin™ can give a good estimate of the number of linear feet of heating baseboard will be needed for a given room or building area. But the following variables make an enormous difference in the answer:

Guide to Diagnosing & Fixing Cold Heating Baseboards

Heating baseboard testing (C) Daniel FriedmanCold Heating Baseboard Diagnostic Guide: how to diagnose a heating baseboard section, loop, zone, or room that is not receiving heat.

Make sure that your room thermostat is set to a temperature higher than the temperature in the room - so that it is calling for heat.

See THERMOSTATS.)

Make sure that your heating boiler is working, that is that the heating boiler turns on and off normally.

A hot water heating boiler may not turn on immediately when you turn up the room thermostat: if the water temperature in the boiler is already above the aquastat's cut-in temperature the circulators will send hot water to the radiator and the boiler will turn on later when its temperature is dropped by returning water from the cooler radiators in the building.

If your heat is provided by baseboards there will not normally be individual shutoff valves at those devices, but if your system uses one circulator and provides multiple heating zones (and thermostats) there will be zone control valves (usually near the boiler) that are opened or closed by the room thermostat(s).

Air-Bound Baseboard Heating Zone Diagnosis

Once your thermostat is calling for heat and the heating boiler has been running for ten minutes or more, just feel the baseboard. Don't cut your fingers on the fins, and don't bend them if you can help it.

If some sections of baseboard are not easy to access that's ok - you can simply feel the start and the end of a section of baseboard to determine where the loop of heat piping is hot and where along the system the baseboard piping first feels cold.

Our photo (left) shows an older finned copper tubing baseboard system with the end-cover removed - it's easy to just touch the copper pipe to feel its temperature - hot or cold, that's all we need to know.

If just some sections of an individual zone or loop of heating baseboard are not getting hot, feel along the piping entering and leaving each section of baseboard in each room to find which sections are hot and which are cold - this is a first diagnostic step in determining what's wrong.

If your heat is distributed entirely through one zone (one thermostat, one loop of heating piping & baseboards) and if part of that loop is warm (usually just the beginning portion of the loop), then there is a good chance that your heating zone or loop is air-bound.

We provide detailed, step by step procedures for diagnosing and curing an air-bound hot water heating system, beginning

at AIRBOUND HEAT SYSTEM REPAIR by WATER FEED VALVE.

Also see heating baseboard air bleed valves discussed

at AIR BLEEDER VALVES for more details.

Since on many hot water heating systems a key air bleeding or air vent point is at the air scoop or air separator closer to the boiler,

see AIR SCOOPS SEPARATORS PURGERS.

Thermostat, Zone Valve, or Circulator Pump No-heat Diagnosis for Baseboard Heat

If your heating system is divided into multiple zones of baseboards or a mix of baseboards and radiators: If the heating boiler is running and some baseboard sections or rooms are hot but others are not, first check to see if your heating system uses multiple thermostats and multiple heating zones.

It may be that the thermostat controlling the "cold" rooms is not calling for heat or is not working.

See THERMOSTATS.

It could also be that the circulator (see Circulator Pumps & Relays)

or zone valve (see ZONE VALVES, HEATING) controlling flow of hot water to that heating zone is not working.

If your heating baseboard is installed over a carpeted floor, be sure that the carpeting has not blocked the air inflow space under the bottom edge of the metal baseboard cover. Blocking this air intake will drastically reduce the heat output from your heating baseboards, thus increasing your heating bill.

Heating Baseboard Defects

Missing baseboard end cover © D Friedman at InspectApedia.com

Missing baseboard end cover © D Friedman at InspectApedia.com Dirt dust clogged heating baseboard © D Friedman at InspectApedia.com

Heating baseboard installation © D Friedman at InspectApedia.com

Tepid or Cold Baseboards: How to Fix a Baseboard that Does Not Get Hot - Quick Advice

Make sure that your room thermostat is set to a temperature higher than the temperature in the room - so that it is calling for heat.

Make sure that your heating boiler is working, that is that the heating boiler turns on and off normally.

A hot water heating boiler may not turn on immediately when you turn up the room thermostat:

if the water temperature in the boiler is already above the aquastat's cut-in temperature the circulators will send hot water to the radiator and the boiler will turn on later when its temperature is dropped by returning water from the cooler radiators in the building.

Complete details about diagnosing and fixing cold radiators are found

at COLD HOT WATER BASEBOARD / RADIATOR
and

at COLD STEAM HEAT RADIATORS

Reader Question about a Cold Baseboard Heat Room on a Single Zone - do I need to replace the aquastat?

2/13/2014 Question - Honeywell Aquastat Control Replacement  said:

Hi Just wondering if I'm about to get ripped off or should i tell this person not to do the work. I have a 1800 sq foot 2 story house and the farthest bedroom on first floor (2 outside walls) away from the furnace in the basement (consistently freezing cold outside) has been much colder than the rest of the house (tenants keep heat at 75 and this room hovers around 64-68) It's a gas furnace

- He told me its a Peerless Boiler and he is factory authorized dealer and the date on the boiler is May 2012. I have hot water radiator heat.

This new heating guy says the one year old Aquastat Control needs to be replaced - that it is a part failure unrelated to the workmanship of the previous contractor who did the work last year (i switched from Oil to Gas). That if he repalces the control that there is a 70% chance that this will solve the coldness problem in the back bedroom will get warm.

If the whole rest of the house has been warm without any problem - is this really the problem, wouldn't the rest of the house be cold too? He wants to charge me $535 for the control 4 hours of labor at $65 an hour.

Now - its 2 days later, the room is still cold and now he's saying the baseboard heaters were installed wrong and need to be 'reworked' for $450.

That they are upside down and this is why the room isn't warm (same original contractor who put in the new furnace put in these baseboards in last year). I called the original contractor (wish i brought him over this time to begin with) but I'm working with a property manager now).

He says that what this guy is saying is not true - that they were put in correctly. It was me who decided to use a 4' shorter length on one of the walls and this could be the issue, but why then did this new guy have to replace the control for $795. Do they really cost $535 or is that way high? Thank you for any help or advice anyone can provide. -Paula

Reply:

Heating baseboards, typcial installation (C) Daniel Friedman

Really? I can't make sense out of the explanation given by your service tech.

The aquastat turns the boiler on and off, and may control one circulator. I can't see how it knows one room of the home from another. The tech may be honest but a lousy communicator, but from just the information in your note, I don't get it.

In the article above you'll see more photos of normal baseboard installations. I've never seen heating baseboard installed upside down - I wouldn't even know how to do that.

At left I have inserted a photograph of a normal hot water heating baseboard installation with the baseboards "right side up" and with decent clearance between the baseboard bottom and the floor surface. [We'll ignore for now that broken electrical receptacle cover hazard.]

[Click to enlarge any image]

Use the CONTACT link to send me some photos of your baseboards and we can comment further.

Reader Question: contractor re-routed baseboard piping, now some rooms don't heat-up

I just bought a house with baseboard heat, oil boiler. I have no experience with this type of system.

We hired a contractor to remodel our kitchen and in the process he replaced some pipe in the baseboard area. We asked that a portion of the baseboard heaters be removed so that cabinets could be installed along that wall. Instead, he replaced the pipe and lowered the pipe that runs along the wall with the new cabinets so that the pipe is touching the hardwood floor beneath.

The cabinets are installed above the pipe- he cut out a notch for them. My first question is: is this safe?

My second question is: since he replaced lines, the thermostat in that area of the house always reads about 10 degrees lower than the setting. I have check the valves- they are all open. He says he bled the lines of a lot of air and yet still it is not right. Any ideas what he can do to get the temperatures to even out? - Anon: 5 Mar 2015

Reply:

The contractor would have trouble completely "removing" a section of baseboard if that section was carrying hot water on to heat another portion of the home as s/he would then have to find some new (and more costly) route to get the heating water to that second area. That's why it's more common to do what you described.

As long as the heating pipes have adequate clearance to quietly handle their slight expansion and contraction as the piping heats and cools you'll avoid an annoying noise problem.

The temperature of water in your baseboards is unlikely to be much over about 180F and is not going to start a fire.

If you had some different safety concern in mind let me know.

Second if temperature in the house is never reaching the thermostat setting for that area then the heat would run continuously - which would be costly. It's possible, especially if the baseboard piping was cut and drained during the work you describe and moreso if there are long horizontal runs, that the system is airbound or partly air-bound.

The symptom would be that the boiler and circulator run and zone valves open (if you've got zone valves) but baseboard doesn't get hot.

See AIR-BOUND HEATING SYSTEMS [live link is at "Continue reading" just below]

A second possibility is that if you removed too much baseboard from the heating zone controlled by the thermostat that you cite, the problem could be that the heat-loss rate of the home in that area simply exceeds the heat supply rate from the remaining baseboard sections.

If that's the problem then you'd see that your baseboards are hot and the boiler runs for long intervals or constantly but the room just doesn't get warm. If that's the trouble you'd need to add more baseboard, improve insulation, stop air leaks, or add auxiliary heat.

 

 

Reader Q&A - also see the FAQs series linked-to below

On 2022/09/05 LB said: - our heater is badly damaged & we want to replace it but we don't know what kind it is

Damaged baseboard heat needs repair or replacement (C) InspectApedia.com LBI can't tell from your photo if your heating baseboard is - forced hot water- electric

I THINK I might see a plumbing fitting at the left end of your baseboard in the photo but the view is so limited I can't be sure. (IF so then it's a hot water baseboard). 

And it's usually possible to buy just replacement baseboard heat front covers or louvers from a local plumbing & heating suppliers. The front vertical cover and adjustable louver (if present) simply clip on to support brackets inside the baseboard.

On the other hand if the baseboard fins are badly bent and damaged or if the baseboard pipe itself (if it's hot water) is corroded and leaky, the baseboard needs to be replaced entirely. 

But both of those types are easily replaced in sections or rooms - with help from a plumber (hot water baseboard) or an electrician (electrical baseboard heat).

Before going further we need to know what you've got. 

Is your home heated by a hot water heating boiler or by electricity?  

Look at your wall thermostat: does it say "electric" or "electric heat"  - attach a photo. 

Tell us the age and location of your building. 

If you don't know what kind of heat your building uses, we explain how to figure out the answer at HEATING SYSTEM TYPES - https://inspectapedia.com/heat/Types_of_Heating_Systems.php

Types of baseboard heat are explained at BASEBOARD HEAT  -  https://inspectapedia.com/heat/Baseboard_Heat.php

Electric baseboard heat is described at ELECTRIC HEAT - https://inspectapedia.com/heat/Electric-Heat-Repair.php

On 2022/09/05 LB said: - we want to replace this heater but we don't know what kind it is

We have this kind of heater and just trying to replace some parts of it and don't know what brand it is. - Anonymouos by private email

 

On 2020-12-02 by (mod) - so why are the baseboards or radiators not working?

Thanks Peter.

Bottom line: if the thermostat is calling for heat and the circulator pump(s) is (are) running, and/or the zone valve (if present) is open, and if the baseboard or radiator itself is not air-bound then the most-common cause of cold baseboard or radiator will be that the system hot water or heating piping is air-bound somehwere en-route or on occasion, the circulator impeller itself is not working or is clogged.

At the Recommended Articles below you'll find the detailed diagnosis and repair articles we recommend.

On 2020-12-02 by Peter

Actually your explanation how it works and should be done is not saying why is not working these radiators. These radiators was invented by stupid liar. Because no matter what these radiators was bedly designed.

These fins not absorbin enough heat and never can create heat standa up or old fashioned cast iron radiators,plus these radiators can not be serviced,because there is no bleeders. Very stupid design and shpuld taken from market at all.

Actully companies installed all sold these bad radiator should pay back for of radiator in north America or install better radiators.

On 2020-09-18 by New flooring

We currently have hot water baseboard heat. We are installing new flooring 3/4 thick over existing flooring. Will this significantly degrade the efficiency of the heat by reducing the airflow to the bottom of the baseboards?

On 2020-05-14 by Dave

I recently bought a house in new England with cast iron baseboard heat throughout. I like how well it works but I'm concerned about the efficiency as in many rooms the floor has been redone so the bottom of the radiator basically touches the floor now, the original feet sit in pockets in the new floor.

Clearly this means much less air is getting under and around the radiator than should. They do heat the rooms fine, but my super low ceilings are really making the life easy there.

My question is would it be worth the hassle of somehow raising them up? I'd have to cut the plumbing and extend it an inch on each end some how to get to the normal installed height, but if that saves me a few hundred in oil each winter it would be very worth it. Or am I just making a mountain out of a molehill

On 2020-05-12 by Ann

Hot water baseboard heating of 1973 has 2 zone valves (one on main floor and one in the finished basement). I have an on-going problem that the tech/plumber doesn't acknowledge and is dismissive about. Both zone valves open/close properly. Both thermostats were recently replaced to see if that is the problem.

It wasn't. Problem: If main floor thermostat is set at say 70F and basement one is set at 65F, all seems good.

But if main floor thermostat is set low, say 60F and the basement thermostat is set at 70F, the main floor rads will still heat up even though the actual room temp may be 75F due to sunlight or cooking. The main floor rads (as well as the basement rads) seem to be affected by the basement thermostat

. The reverse doesn't happen. ie, the upstairs thermostat set at a higher temp rightly doesn't cause the basement to call for heat. Any idea? (By the way, the plumber didn't even bother to feel the upstairs rads for heat; simply said "Everything is working as it should". It isn't. )

On 2020-03-16 by CAROLYN

Hi, My apt suite was built in 1963 with the old baseboard heater (boiler).
My question is:
Every winter does the Landlord (have to bleed the pipes) cause you constantly hear water running, splashing, etc & we quite often have no heat.
Landlord never comes into our suites to bleed it, he has it running all year.
Thank You Carolyn

On 2019-03-10 by Lee

Hi - I need to find someone to check my baseboards - bleed air, determine if circulator pump is working properly and is right size. One zone of my 3-zone house outside Boston, Massachusetts has not been heating properly this winter.

Who should I look for to help me with this? If you can refer me to a specific company, great. If not, a general description of who I should look for is fine. Thanks, Lee

On 2018-11-19 - by (mod) - thermostat or heat won't turn off? Airbound baseboards?

John, at the end of this article in the More Reading links see AIR-BOUND HEATING SYSTEMS

Gale see THERMOSTAT WON'T TURN OFF found in the ARTICLE INDEX Above

On 2018-10-17 by john

no water going to baseboards. is circulator pump

On 2018-10-14 by Gayle

The baseboards never stop running and it turned down to 1 on the knob and it’s still way too hot in the apartment. Is the baseboards not suppose to stop running once it gets to a certain temperature?

Question: hot water heat freeze-ups

(june 19, 2014) anonymous said:

I have hot water baseboard system boiler in my crawlspace (.Basement) im thinking about replacing the boiler with a horizontal warm air furnace adams furnace. I keep getting freeze ups and they are very difficult to repair.

The furnace adams make is supposed to be 95 percent efficient. Plus the fact there are no pipes to freeze is the warm air furnace the way to go? Thanks paul

Reply: Sorting ouit: hot air heat (furnace, forced warm air) is different from baseboard heat (water or electric)

Paul,

You were commenting about hot water and hot air heat on a steam heat article - so this may be a bit confusing to other readers, but in general, conversion to another heating method is fine if you can bear the expense; each heating type has its pros and cons so IMO there is not a single "right" answer.

Keep in mind that when you change from steam heat or hot water heat to forced warm air heat, your costs are much greater than just the heater itself as you have to install a heat delivery system : air ducts and registers. That can be convenient in some building designs and quite costly in others.

See details at ANTIFREEZE for BOILERS

and at WINTERIZE A BUILDING - home

On 2015-02-16 - by (mod) - draining building water supply pipes affected baseboard heat?

Val it would be odd for draining the building water supply piping to have an impact on the heating system piping - UNLESS - there were a failed or missing check valve or backflow preventer between the boiler and its water supply piping. If that were the case you'd think that if the building were drained entirely the boiler would have been completely emptied.

Try the diagnosis and repair steps shown at More Reading above in the article titled

AIRBOUND HEAT SYSTEM REPAIRS

On 2015-02-16 by val

water company drained all water pipes in order to change meter. once water was restored I bleed radiator at highest point, I turned the heat back on. raditors got hot but the hot water baseboard heaters did not get hot.

On 2015-02-16 by Anonymous

small baseboard heater is bathroom not getting hot

On 2015-02-13 by ChicagoCatt - smell strong solvent odor & noisy baseboard heat

I actually have 2 questions for you.

I've been living in a garden apartment in a 1950s building in suburban Chicago since September. The building has baseboard heat. When I first turned on the heat in the late fall there didn't seem to be any issues.

In December, new building owners/landlord changed our thermostat and have since been doing a lot of work on the building mechanicals, but not the individual units. Since late January, whenever the heat turns on, I smell a strong solvent-like odor.

It slowly dissipates as the cycle runs, but returns again when the system kicks back on and it is making me sick with headaches and nausea. This is only in 2 (living room and bedroom) of the 4 rooms that have the baseboard heaters (both on the same outside wall of the building).

The other 2 do not produce this odor (kitchen is on a different external wall and bathroom is separate internal wall). The (new) landlord doesn't have any suggestions for me on what might be causing this or how to resolve it. Do you have any thoughts on what this might be?

Question 2: The last 2 days, I have also been noticing a lot of water noise from all of the units and (my bathroom wall is shared with the mechanical room) boiler.

Last night it actually sounding like a swimming party in the boiler and like I have water features installed for the sound (or I live in an aquarium store). My temperature does not seem to be impacted. Do I need to worry about this? Should I call the landlord to report a problem?

Thank you for any direction you can provide!

On 2015-02-05 - by (mod) - how to adjust baseboard heat in different rooms

Usually yes

On 2015-02-04 by Anonymous

If I close the vent in another room, will it be warmer further down to other rooms that are not as warm?

On 2015-01-13 - by (mod) - how to find replacement covers for heating baseboards

Anon stop by your local heating supplier: there are a number of manufacturers of replacement baesboard covers. Keep in mind that only the hung-on front cover and possibly the moving louver can be replaced without completely removing all of the baseboards from the walls.

On 2015-01-13 by Anonymous

what to replace old slant fin covers with a third party better looking cover, is this possible? Do you have a line a such company.

On 2015-01-12 by Anonymous

Wendy

On 2015-01-07 - by (mod) - piping baseboard heat in series versus in parallel

Anon

Indeed this is a surprise: when a heating system is air-bound we expect the warm pipes and baseboards to be on the incoming side of the air-bound location - that is, hot water flows from the boiler as far as it can get before it is blocked by air (or more rarely by something else). But your heating system baseboard piping is an unknown.

If the baseboards were piped in parallel rather than in series, the problem could be air within individual baseboard sections. If there are no air bleeders on those baseboards I'd ask the heating service tech to add them as part of a project to properly purge the system from air.


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Continue reading at AIR-BOUND HEATING SYSTEMS or select a topic from the closely-related articles below, or see the complete ARTICLE INDEX.

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Suggested citation for this web page

BASEBOARD HEAT at InspectApedia.com - online encyclopedia of building & environmental inspection, testing, diagnosis, repair, & problem prevention advice.

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INDEX to RELATED ARTICLES: ARTICLE INDEX to HEATING BOILERS

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