Blocking the baseboard heat

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I have baseboard heat in my house. We have one baseboard that is frequently blocked by coats hanging on a coat rack. When this happens my wife is upset because she thinks that it will prevent the house from warming up effectively.

But this doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. With an unblocked baseboard the heat radiates off the baseboard fins into the air which is now warmed and the house is comfortable.

In the case of a baseboard blocked by coats wouldn’t I just have a situation where the baseboard warms a coat and then the heat dissipates from the coat into the air? There’s heat rubs no less frequently or intensely as the thermostat is in a different part of the room. So the same net amount of heat is being generated. It just has a detour before it gets into the air. No?

Thanks for explaining.

In: Physics

7 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Most baseboard heat units rely on convection currents they create to effectively heat a space. Heated air comes out of the top slot since heated air is less dense, and new cooler air moves into the bottom slot to replace it, moves over the heating unit, and then rises. If you block up the upper vent with anything, the air will not convect. Yes, the coats will get warm, but the heat they’ll eventually transfer by conduction won’t approach the amount of heat moved into the room by convection currents from the unblocked heater.

Anonymous 0 Comments

All that would do is to slightly slow down the rate at which the radiator warms the room. Once the room is already warm, it should have no real effect.

Unless you manage to set the coats on fire.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Isn’t baseboard heat practically radiant heat? Basically your warming objects instead of the air. With forced air your super heating air. Heat rises and as is cools the semi warm air falls to technically the “living space” but as far as your situation. You’re just warming the coats and therefore the coats are radiating the heat off them. In theory.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Baseboard heating works primarily by convection, meaning the process of heating the air creates the air circulation, albeit slow circulation. They’re designed with the fins not only to provide surface area for heating, but also to be a medium that air can pass around easily.

When you the coats are “covering” the radiator, do you mean just in the in over/in front of it, or actually on and around it? If they are just in front of it and not blocking it, the difference should be negligible. If they are actually covering the radiator, then you may notice it doesn’t work as well because hot coats can’t transmit energy (heat the air) as well as a very hot heating tube.

One more recommendation, very important, if your baseboard heaters are electric heaters, as opposed to hot water pipes, you shouldn’t have coats near them at all. Electric heating elements can get up to several hundred degrees, so they can be a legitimate fire hazard if you aren’t mindful.

Anonymous 0 Comments

In addition to what the others have said about convection, the way a heating system works is by turning on and off. Setting the temperature only tells the system when to turn on and when to turn off. It doesn’t tell the system how hot to make the water, or steam, or electric elements.

If your house is at 64 degrees and you set the thermostat to 68 degrees, then the system will turn on and make heat until the thermostat is slightly above 68 degrees. While this is happening, you system is using fuel, be it electricity, home heating oil, natural gas, or something else.

If placing the coats over the baseboard means it takes longer for the thermostat to reach the set temperature, then that means the system is running for a longer time and that means you are ultimately using more fuel than necessary which is a waste of money, resources, and an unnecessary burden on the environment.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Heat from a radiator reaches you in two ways. One way is that it warms up the air and objects in the room, which causes you to lose heat to your surroundings less quickly. The other is that radiative heat, i.e. photons in the infrared spectrum, comes out of the radiator and bumps into you, heating your body directly. Anything you put in front of the radiator will block some of that radiative heat. Radiative heat is also responsible for that nice glowing warmth you feel when the radiator is on, and why it feels a little warmer in the house when the radiator is on vs. when it is off, even for the same ambient temperature (as recorded by the thermostat, for instance).

Your coats will also block heat from spreading as quickly through the room. Yes, the heat will spread from the hot coats to the room, but you’re wasting time heating up a bunch of fabric. Also, depending on where the coats are w.r.t. points of heat loss like windows and walls, you may be allowing more heat to escape before it has a chance to reach you (since the coats will radiate their heat in all directions).

So yeah, I’m inclined to side with your wife there (of course I don’t know how severe this effect is because that depends on the specific circumstances, but she’s right in principle).

Anonymous 0 Comments

It’s less effective if you block the heater. Let’s take it to the extreme and imagine you placed the heater in a different room. Imagine how hot the room with the heater would have to get to heat the room with the thermostat in it. The hotter any area is compared to outside ambient temperature the faster heat is lost to the outside.

Your coats are a less extreme version of that but does create a hot spot that will lose heat to outside at a faster rate. Not to mention the fire hazard.

The other thing to consider is that for you to feel warm, which is the whole point, the air being warm is important. Objects being warm has a much less effect on comfort ( with the exception if the floor). But takes significant energy. Circle back to the heat lost to the outside and you can see why warming the walls (for example) doesn’t really efficiently affect comfort.