hotwater baseboard

What liquid are you circulating in the rest of the system?

Antifreeze doesnt transfer heat as efficiently as water, it will cost more to heat with 50-50 antifreeze. Some mechanic put in 100% antifreeze in my car, it overheated for years and wouldnt heat the inside of the car until I found out and got it to a 50% mix. www.heatinghel= p.com is where boiler pros are.

There are specific types of antifreeze made for domestic heating systems, typically non toxic. Check with the manufacturer of your boiler for their specific recommendations.

The entire system is the same system. Same water flows through all.

i don't know that answer, but you won't want to dilute rv antifreeze.

Don't the non-toxic solutions contain propylene glycol?

TDD

Yes they do

You are better off having a seperate system, unless you dont mind increasing you home heating costs 5-15% from adding antifreeze to a water only designed and rated system.

That's hard to believe. A car heater works equally well with water in the radiator or antifreeze.

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Au contraire, good buddy...

Look at the heat capacity table in particular as well as the following notes are informative.

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Mixtures almost always have a higher boiling point and a lower freezing point than either of their constituents alone.

Which has nothing to dowith the heating capacity. HOWEVER, the amount of heat reqired to raise the temperature of a given mixture can be higher or lower than straight water (which is 1 BTU per lb per degree F) Antifreeze mixtures do not transfer as much heat as pure water, but I'm not convinced it will make as big a difference in heating cost as has been stated.

snipped-for-privacy@snyder.on.ca wrote: ...

The combination of flow work and volume to provide equivalent heat flow of a 50:50 ethylene-glycol mixture compared to pure water is +32% at

I've not verified their calculations, but I've never found a significant computational problem at EngineeringToolbox.com so I'd venture they're in the ballpark, anyway.

I can believe the problem in a radiator w/ 100% if it was closely sized capacity to begin with which many smaller, more recent vintage vehicles are where weight and size were serious constraints to try to push mileage ratings.

It's just a consideration we normally never think of...

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