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
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.
Latest Answers