Cast Iron Baseboard

Does anyone know the BTU output of cast iron baseboard radiators? I'm considering replacing my copper finned baseboards with cast iron on our first floor. They seem readily available used from places like craigslist but I want to make sure this is a smart investment in money and time to refurb them before I commit to doing it.

billw wrote:Does anyone know the BTU output of cast iron baseboard radiators? I'm considering replacing my copper finned baseboards with cast iron on our first floor. They seem readily available used from places like craigslist but I want to make sure this is a smart investment in money and time to refurb them before I commit to doing it.

Go to Burnham Boilers on line. They still make cast iron base board. They call it Base RAY.

Cast iron base board is the most comfortable heat ever made.

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RS

Burnham rates theirs at 520 BTU per linear foot with 170 degree water.

Slant Fin rates their cast about the same, just a few more BTUs output but most of the old used stuff will be more like the Burnham style.

billw wrote:Does anyone know the BTU output of cast iron baseboard radiators? I'm considering replacing my copper finned baseboards with cast iron on our first floor. They seem readily available used from places like craigslist but I want to make sure this is a smart investment in money and time to refurb them before I commit to doing it.

Hey bill read this it gives cast iron radiator BTU output you can always find someone getting rid of them most of the time there free

Pictorial: Cast Iron Radiator Sizing Charts, BTU Output

That was the thread I was going to turn him on Coal Berner.

Baseboard manufactures rate their units by standard IBR tests. There is a little understood thermal rating coefficient called the "heating effect factor". It's 15% and allows a manufacture to overrate the engineering tests by +15%. In effect the product data overstates the actual real performance. The origin of this "heating factor" is somewhat of a mystery. Some claim when fined tube baseboard came to the market it's performance was superior to cast iron radiators, so to equalize the comparison the heating factor was invented. Look closely at manufactures baseboard data sheets and if you see something like "IBR conversion multiplier = 0.84" in a footnote, reduce the BTU heat output rating by 15%. I don't know if this applies to cast iron baseboard units but it definitely does to copper fin tube units.

More detail design information is available in the textbook Modern Hydronic Heating 2nd ed., by John Siegenthaler, P.E.