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determining hot water baseboard needed

R

Rkh

Member
Have a room 8x27 with 10ft ceiling. How many ft of baseboard do i need? Have 2 doors on each end, 15" of insulation in ceiling, the 2 doors on each end are 2x4 walls with insulation, 2 other walls are interior walls.
 
It depends. What is your boiler water temp? How much insulation? How many and how large are the windows? What is the heat loss of the room? Baseboard heat output is rated on the entering water temp, hotter water gives more BTUs per foot. Heatinghelp.com is a great website to address issues like this. Also depends on your brand and type of baseboard, there are many types and sizes. There are many variables to consider. Good luck, baseboard hot water is the second most comfortable heat known, following radiant in the floor heat.
 
One more variable is where are you located? Every location has what is called a design difference. Both for heating and air conditioning. Each location has a lowest temp it usually gets to in the winter (average) and a hottest it gets to in the summer. You would install a lot more baseboard in Minneapolis than Nashville.
 
If I am understanding your explanation correctly, the doors are on exterior walls where you need to put heat? If so, I don't know how you will get enough length of baseboard to heat much of anything. Heating baseboard needs to be on exterior walls with sufficient length and water temperature to heat the room.

We had a super insulated house in Fargo, so didn't require a lot of baseboard, but your conditions may vary.
 
I have 13' there now, because there is no room for units on the exterior walls. The exterior walls are 2x4's with insulation. The room is 5-7 degrees colder, it is used as a utility rm & if you put a blanket over the entrance door into kitchen, it becomes 10-12 degrees colder.
 
If you go with the average of the coldest days, you'll wake up some morning with a cold house. Design the heating system for 10 degrees colder than you have ever seen and it will be close. My heating is designed for a low of -50 and when it hit -57, my house started getting cold. It took hours for it to warm back up.
 
Most heating contractors will come out to your site and give a free estimate with a choice of options.
 
Would need a lot more info to figure. Heating degree days, how cold it gets your location the heat loss of the room and so forth. Then, are you doing an electric, plumbing into current boiler, or......

There isn't an easy button to push and make up an answer out of thin air.

Gotta do the math.

It sounds like you need 'more' tho, and of cousre the only good location for a baseboard is on an exterior wall.

Paul
 
Looking at this from a more empirical standpoint, typical 3/4" residential baseboard puts out somewhere in the 500 BTU per foot range with 180? water flowing at a couple of gallons per minute.

So, if that's near the conditions at which yours operates, roughly, the BTU output of what you have is in the 6500 BTU range.

I'm gonna GUESS it's not zoned, so it only heats while the thermostat for another area call for heat for that area?

Also, is the entering water at least at 180??

One option... make it a separate zone so it's duty cycle can be greater and the entering water will possibly be hotter.

Also, a typical household space heater uses 1500 Watts, giving about 5100 BTU's, so running one in that room will DEMONSTRATE what adding about 10' of baseboard would do.

Another option would be to add a second run of baseboard over the first, or switch to a (bulkier) commercial baseboard that has a much great BTU per foot output.

I hope you find this other way of looking at the problem helpful!
 
Another option..Danfoss makes a RTU (remote temp unit) that can control a small circulator. So after you determine the amount of baseboard needed, and what water temp is used, you could use a small Grundfos, B & G or Taco circulator to come on when the RTU calls for heat in that room.
 
Boiler water temperature is 180 & it has only one zone, with thermostat in 2 rooms beyond this room.
 
Not necessarily correct....but this is what I did for my addition.

I calculated the feet of baseboard per square foot in the existing rooms in the house and I used that number to calculate for the new rooms. The brochure for the baseboard suggested a lot more than what I had in the existing house. Since everything is on one zone, I didn't want the new rooms considerably warmer than the old.

So far so good, but I also have very few doors up yet, so that may change slightly. All of the old part has been re-insulated and tightened up with new windows as well so it is pretty similar conditions throughout.

My original 2 bedrooms did not have the baseboard on the outside walls. One would be impossible because of the floor framing. Not sure why on the other, but never had any real issues. Always warm enough in them.
 
(quoted from post at 21:17:45 01/12/16) Boiler water temperature is 180 & it has only one zone, with thermostat in 2 rooms beyond this room.
Click to expand...
ow about this for a off the wall out of the box fix. Is this the last section of base board in the zone before the boiler ?? If so the water temp is not going to be 180. The quick and cheap way to get more heat to this area would be to reverse the flow of water to this section of base board by switching the supply and return pipes of the entire system. Then this section would get the 180 degree water and the other end of the line would be a bit cooler, if you could live that room a little cooler then that's what I would do..
 
Look over your system, you may already have some flow controls on your hot water pipes that can restrict the flow into one room to send more heat into another room.

Another alternative would be to split off the cooler room into it's own heating zone, you might not need more baseboard heaters if they can heat longer.
 
(quoted from post at 00:09:02 01/13/16)
(quoted from post at 21:17:45 01/12/16) Boiler water temperature is 180 & it has only one zone, with thermostat in 2 rooms beyond this room.
Click to expand...
ow about this for a off the wall out of the box fix. Is this the last section of base board in the zone before the boiler ?? If so the water temp is not going to be 180. The quick and cheap way to get more heat to this area would be to reverse the flow of water to this section of base board by switching the supply and return pipes of the entire system. Then this section would get the 180 degree water and the other end of the line would be a bit cooler, if you could live that room a little cooler then that's what I would do..
Click to expand...
i like that idea, will look at that option.
 
(quoted from post at 00:09:02 01/13/16)
(quoted from post at 21:17:45 01/12/16) Boiler water temperature is 180 & it has only one zone, with thermostat in 2 rooms beyond this room.
Click to expand...
ow about this for a off the wall out of the box fix. Is this the last section of base board in the zone before the boiler ?? If so the water temp is not going to be 180. The quick and cheap way to get more heat to this area would be to reverse the flow of water to this section of base board by switching the supply and return pipes of the entire system. Then this section would get the 180 degree water and the other end of the line would be a bit cooler, if you could live that room a little cooler then that's what I would do..
Click to expand...
i like that idea, will look at that option.
 
I had a situation at an old place, always cold in one room with baseboards along both outside walls. I heating contractor friend put a "toe kick heater" in line with the baseboard and problem solve. The toe kick heater has a fan that comes on when the water temp is about 150 or higher and blows over the hot water coils and out into the rooms. They are often used in kitchens where they are in base cabinets but can be used in metal enclosures sold for use in other places.
 
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