eli5: Why are radiators in houses often situated under a window- surely this is the worst place and the easiest way to lose all the heat?
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I get the idea and tradition of countering a down draft and avoiding poor convection flows, but how much of this is really tradition and hypothesis (which predated our ability to accurately model this) Vs practical reality?
(I) a lot I’m pretty sure came down to building design convenience and tradition,.under the window is a handy place to fill with radiator that is often hard to use for anything else, on another wall a radiator will take wall space, esp traditional horizontal ones.
(Ii) laying pipes to outer walls tends to extend pipe run (sometimes hugely), under many national codes these don’t need to be lagged, this will lead to loss, and a greater pressure drop & demand on the system
(Iii) heating air next to any window also increases the temp gradient, and that (disregarding flow) increases heat loss, almost linearly with temp gradient. The point of the Q I think, and v good Q IMHO.
(Iv) it puzzles me how many radiators are positioned to flow hot air behind a curtain or blind, rather than using the curtain as a thermal barrier, newer blinds might also be pretty helpful in disrupting down/convection currents
It’s a looong time since I studied thermo, but back then there was no way near enough computing power to model a fridge, let alone something as complex as a room! Got a feeling we could do with revisiting yesteryears’ hypotheses here’s with some tests and modern modelling.
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