Blown Air Heat BEGONE! Hot Water Radiator Replacement

 

That pictured is what remained of the 30 year old heating system you had for this house. Sitting in the yard, waiting to be picked up. Begone!

I hated that system. I hated that system to the tune of $30K. Not so much $75K, which was the price my dear and beloved long time contractor pitched to me. He's not happy, but I have other projects and those may be fine for having him be all expensive and whatnot. He's knocked the price down to $50K but still. I put it on hold thinking I would just replace the old blown air heating system with a new one.

But then I happened to chat with a neighborhood plumber who lived not too far away. I mentioned how I hated the drying heat of the blown air and how freaking loud and annoying it was. 

Oh, let me tell you.

Our bedroom was right above the basement furnace. You, previous owner, were upstairs. So you didn't really hear the system kick on and bang when the blower fan was done. It would wake me up in the middle of the night and I HATED it. 

You had several other options to heat the house. Upstairs you had electric baseboard heaters and the mini splits. The heating was just for the basement and the first floor. I hated the heat it produced. After 19 years of living with cast iron radiators, heated air was just inferior. 

So I was chatting with a plumber about the system and he supposed he could do it for $20K. $20,000? I could do that. It wound up being $30K in the end.

It took 2-3 weeks for them to pull out the old system and put in the new system. 

Come this winter we'll know how good a replacement it was.

I want radiators part 2

 Continued from Part 1.

Let's talk about what I want.

I want modern radiators.

This is Hudson Reed's modern single flat panel radiator. It is 25" high, 16.5 inches wide and a little over 2" thick. Output for this is 420 Watts (1,433 BTUs). That' not enough for our largest room

I plugged in a calculator and so we need about 12,000 BTUs.

 

The large vertical panels look like the kind we need, but I don't know if I care for those. I like the horizontal radiators for the sole reason that I want to put gloves on them and then put on toasty warm gloves.

 This one puts out 8893 BTUs. So this on one end of the room and another on the other side.

I also like Runtal's baseboard radiators.

Runtal has some other good modern looking radiators.

I want radiators part 1

 So thank you previous owners for the various heating and cooling options in the house.

The main source of heat is the blown in hot air which is gas fueled. 

Gas. Love it. That's one of the reasons why we bought your house.

There are other options. Love that the Mitsubishi mini splits are in most rooms, providing another option for heat.

But, I miss my radiators.

Look at that beautiful thing. I loved putting my gloves on top of the radiator and a bathrobe fresh off a radiator is a special luxury.

The blown in hot air is not working for me. It's not working for my husband, as it irritates his sinuses blowing dust around.

So now I am fantasizing about replacing the hot air system that appears to have been around since the house was built in 1940.

I miss that warmth.