Blocking the baseboard heat

Question

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

Answer 1

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).