One of the most important things you can consider when you are looking to purchase a new home or to remodel your own home for either resale or energy efficiency is the type of heating system.  Radiant base board heating is one of the most common ways homes and apartments are heated.  While radiant base board heating is not the most effective or efficient of all possible heating systems, it can be beneficial in many ways.

Radiant base board heating systems work by taking in cold air and returning warm air to the room.  The process of heating is called electric resistance; this means that there are electric cables inside the heating units located in the base boards of the walls.  These electric cables warm up the cold air as it passes through them, thus radiating heat into the room.  As a result, the system is called radiant base board heating.

Radiant Base Board Heating

In order for the radiant base board heating unit to access the cold air and radiate warm air, there must be both an inlet and an outlet.  The inlet is on the bottom of the base board unit.  It takes in the cold air from the bottom of the room, near the floor.  This cold air, as was mentioned above, passes through the electric cables inside the base board unit and is re-released into the room as warm air through the outlet on the top part of the base board unit.  As with all types of heating units, radiant base board heating systems will continue to process the cold air into warm air until the temperature of the room reaches the temperature set at the thermostat.

It may seem odd that this is one of the most popular types of heating systems since it is neither cheap nor efficient.  However, the benefits of having radiant base board heating are that they do not take up very much space and work independently with the direction of a thermostat.  Radiant base board heating systems also do not need ductwork installed, and this makes them fairly cheap to install, if not as cheap to use and run.  As with all heating projects, accessing your local HVAC handyman or contractor for information about your specific project is a great place to start.

Tags: heating, HVAC, radiant base board heating

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 27th, 2008 at 8:45 am and is filed under HVAC. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.