Need to add or replace some baseboard for additional heat..ANYONE DONE THIS???

[crazy charlie]

My home has oil fired boiler with hydronic baseboard heating.Boiler is brand new
Peerless with Riello burner.The main livingroom and dining room tend to be cooler than
the rest of the house.There is 17' of standard baseboard on the outside wall where there
a 110" bay window above the baseboard.There is also a 7' standard baseboard on the adjacent wall also an outside wall.Shouldnt be a big deal but my options are to replace
all or part of the 17" of standard baseboard with H2 Jumbo fin high output baseboard ,
or extend the 7' of standard baseboard and additional 6' which there is room to do.Curious if anyone has done similar with good results??? Not sure which route to go
but I am sure I need to do something for more heat output. BTW I have a section of H2 jumbo fin high output in our den at the opposite end of the house and it makes a huge difference in heat output.Charlie

 

[poconojoe]

Good luck. It seems you are on the right track. You certainly know more about these matters than I do. I didn't know there were jumbo fin radiators. Good to know.

My current house has oil fired baseboard heat which works pretty good. I do have one small bedroom that gets way too hot. I wish there was a way to balance things out.

I do miss the steam heat that my first house had. Those cast iron radiators took up a lot of space, but they held heat for a long time.
And one of the best things about that one pipe steam system was that by adding adjustable Danfoss valves, you could balance the system so no room is too hot or too cold.

Either way, I believe these systems are much better than forced air. The only advantage to forced air in my opinion is you can easily add A/C.

Where I live it is more common for homes to have 240 volt electric baseboard heating. Every room has it's own line voltage thermostat. People think it's great, but I wouldn't want their electric bills.

Hope you figure it out. Changing out the baseboard heaters to jumbo units sounds like the answer and not hard to do.

 

[Bob_VT]

Find a GOOD plumbing supply place and ask. One of my good friends is a salesman for a large plumbing supply place and he has been through countless schools to do proper heat calculations. I would honestly run the questions through the store Baseboard is not cheap and I would advise pro advice........... considering the price of fuel.

 

[Scott06]

My home has oil fired boiler with hydronic baseboard heating.Boiler is brand new
Peerless with Riello burner.The main livingroom and dining room tend to be cooler than
the rest of the house.There is 17' of standard baseboard on the outside wall where there
a 110" bay window above the baseboard.There is also a 7' standard baseboard on the adjacent wall also an outside wall.Shouldnt be a big deal but my options are to replace
all or part of the 17" of standard baseboard with H2 Jumbo fin high output baseboard ,
or extend the 7' of standard baseboard and additional 6' which there is room to do.Curious if anyone has done similar with good results??? Not sure which route to go
but I am sure I need to do something for more heat output. BTW I have a section of H2 jumbo fin high output in our den at the opposite end of the house and it makes a huge difference in heat output.Charlie

I would replace the section under the window with the high output stuff. a window that big even if it is a good quality window will be a huge source of heat loss.
could also be impacted by thermostat location would want thermostat in colder areas.

is the roof or ceiling above similar R value insulation to other areas ?

 

[harringtondav]

I've had only one experience with hot water heat. It was in a NJ house we rented for two years. First room from the boiler was the warmest, then they became cooler. The last room was downright cold.
The house registers were plumbed in series. The supply fed and returned the registers in a circuit and fed the next register before reaching the boiler. Cheaper installation. Since the basement was unfinished, this could have been upgraded to parallel with separate supply and return mains. That way each register would get its fair share of hot water, and return separately to the return main.
Don't know which you have, or if you have access to the plumbing to make a change.
As far as electric baseboard heaters, we have three in our river house totaling 4.9kW. I kept them as a third level of backup to our new heat pump with 7.2KW electric heat strip.
Heat loss calculators are available on the web, but you almost need a degree in math to figure them out. In my mind a larger baseboard heater is better...within main panel, circuit wire size and budget. 12-2 cable on a 240V, 20A circuit will give you 4.8kW ....16380 BTU/hr. A larger baseboard heater will draw more kW, but for a shorter time than a smaller one. Same electricity usage per day.