Baseboard Question - One Cold Room

[Dave Gallant]

Greetings:

My house is heated with hot water baseboards - two loops, one for upstairs, one for downstairs.

One room in particular, a small bedroom, is the coldest room on certain days in the upstairs loop. Despite having a baseboard along the longest wall in the room (18' of baseboards in an 18'x10' room) it is still the coldest. The baseboard seems to get as hot to the touch as the rest of the upstairs, and the rest of that loop warms the upstairs quite well. The baseboard is no more obstructed in this room than in any other.

The room is perhaps the most exposed to the winter winds (east coast of Canada). While we are surrounded by trees, this room faces the driveway and the only opening on the property to the winds - it faces North/West, a popular direction for winds this time of year. Presumably, this keeps the outside wall of the room colder than the rest of the house would experience.

However, when the winds are from the East or South, there is no problem. This is the office where my wife does her work from home, so it is used quite a bit.

Question - aside from ripping off the siding and installing top notch insulation (30 year old house), would it be the best solution to simply add more baseboards? I've talked to my plumber who said he could cut the line, run another 8' of baseboards and simply loop it back under the fins to the return hole in the floor. While most of the basement has drop ceiling, this room is above the only part of the basement without it - so access to piping is not good from below.

We have discussed going with an electric baseboard to supplement the hot water, but we'd hate to leave that unsupervised. Besides, the plumber gave us a good price on the extra 8' if we wish to go that way.

Sorry for all the details, but I thought it best to be descriptive.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

Dave

[Paul Franklin]

From your description, it does sound as if the existing baseboard isn't sufficient for the colder, windy days.

An alternative to adding baseboard would be to replace the existing baseboard with a style that has higher heat output per foot. This would give you more btu's for the same radiator length. There are a lot of new styles available (most imported from Europe) and some of them have higher heat output per foot of length.

Before you do this, you should have someone familiar with Hydronic systems check your water temperature and capacity of your boiler. You may be able to increase the water temperature (either all the time, or only on the coldest days using a special control), which might also help your problem (although it might now overheat the other rooms).

HTH,

Paul

[Joseph Meehan]

I suggest you try one thing. Get a thermometer and measure the temperature of the walls in the room in question and one of the warmer rooms. You can get a good, reading by attaching the thermometer to the wall and covering it with a box or plastic etc taped to the wall. Try to use a tape that will come off and leave the paint on the wall? What you want to do is isolate it from the room air.

If the wall(s) in the problem room are colder than the others, then you may want to address that problem.

Also note that the floor, if over an unheated area like a garage, or the ceiling may also be the problem, as may drafty windows.

Of course it may be just insufficient heat supply as others have suggested.