Why not design them with a visually appealing aesthetic that compliments a home's interior? The basic design for all hot water baseboard heaters is nearly identical from every manufacturer that ever existed in the industry. The installation methodology has also remained pretty much the same with thin gauge steel consistently being the material of choice for the covers.
It is however the method of selling and servicing baseboard heaters that is the most important consistency in explaining why the covers are so prone to rust and dents and yet are not designed to be easily replaced. Once the baseboard heaters are installed in a home, it's just a matter of time before the covers become an ugly mess.
And this is normally the time when a heating professional will be called to propose a solution. When the heating contractor is invited into the home, it becomes a great opportunity to sell stuff like a new boiler, a heating system inspection or perhaps new baseboard heater covers. It will be apparent from the above description of the electric circuit as illustrated in FIGURE 6 that the heating element 20 has two control means which serve to energize and de-energize the circuit.
The first control means is the thermostatic safety switch 86 which serves as a safety device and prevents overheating the heating element. The other control means is the thermostat 90 which is responsive to the temperature of the air at a remote point in the area being heated. The various controls 86 and 90 are arranged to permit the heating elements 20 to not only heat the liquid passing through the conduit 14, but also to heat the air adjacent to the respective heating elements From the above description, the flexibility of my improved heating system becomes apparent.
One can select the area in which the heating elements 20 are positioned to not only heat the surrounding air, but also heat the liquid within the conduit Further, one can select the respective positions of the heat-distributing members 22 to properly and efiiciently transfer the heat contained in the liquid as it is circulated through the conduit The unit fits upon the conduit 14, and it is enclosed in a baseboard enclosure designated generally by the reference number As shown in FIGURES 10 and 11, a portion of the conduit within the enclosure 98 is increased in diameter to increase its effective heating area and this enlarged portion carries an electric resistance heating element which is supplied with electricity through connections within a junction box The electric resistance heating element comprises a copper tube within which is a nickel-chromium resistance wire separated from the inside surface of the tube by a dielectric material having high thermal conductivity such as magnesium oxide.
The magnesium oxide conducts heat generated by the resistance wire to the copper tube and at the same time electrically insulates the resistance wire from the inside surface of the copper tube.
The heating element extends from the junction box along the length of the portion of the conduit, and near the end of the portion away from the box, is reversed to extend back towards the box; it then passes under the portion back to the opposite end, and then back to the junction box so that there are four lengths of heating element incontact with the portion As shown in FIGURE 15, the outer copper tube of the heating elements is held in intimate contact with 6 the outer surface of the portion by soldering or brazing, thus forming in effect a solid metal wall between the interior of the heating element and the interior of the portion of the conduit It comprises a back panel which is secured to the wall of a room adjacent the floor and has a lower curved portion which abuts the floor and an upper inwardly curved portion which deflects currents of air rising from the conduit 14 and heating element Extending from the back panel are hanger brackets which supports a front panel A lower bracket also extends from the panel and engages the bottom of the front panel As shown in FIGURE 12, the upper edge of the front panel is curved to hook over a projection a on the bracket , and the lower edge of the front panel is also curved inwardly to snap under the bracket A plate extends upwardly from the bracket and supports one end of a damper which is staked in the open position shown in FIGURE 12 to deflect air rising between the panels and outwardly into the room.
Split brackets spot-welded to the back panel at each end of the heating unit support the conduit As shown in FIGURES 10, 11 and 13, a radiation shield extends beneath the enlarged portion of the conduit 14 and the heating element The ends of the shield rest on the lower hanger brackets , and the shield has a vertically extending leg which is spotwelded to the back panel.
This shield protects the floor from heat radiated by the conduit and the heating element , and it also prevents human contact from below with the outer copper tube of the electric heating unit.
The junction box designated generally by the reference number comprises side walls having flanges which are spot-welded to the back panel The sides have openings through which the conduit 14 extends. A plate extends between the sides beneath the conduit 14 and the box is closed by a cover which is held in place by a sheet metal screw threaded into a base The plate serves to divide the junction box into two compartments, the upper compartment being an actual junction box and the lower compartment forming an outlet box wherein electrical connections can be made to a source of electrical current.
Within the junction box, a copper plate is machined to fit the conduit 14 and is brazed or silver soldered to the conduit as shown in FIGURE The plate supports a thermostatic safety switch. A wire 14d leads from a terminal of the heating element to a terminal of the safety switch A wire extends from a second terminal of the switch through a strain reliever bushing into the lower compartment of the junction box which acts as an outlet box.
A third wire leads directly from the other terminal of the heating element through a bushing into the outlet box. It comprises a tubular extrusion having a hollow tubular portion. FIGURE 17 is an end view of a conventional finned heat-distributing member 22 and its enclosure which may be used in my heating system. The member comprises a series of rectangular shaped fins which see FIGURE 2 are spaced along the conduit 14 and soldered to the conduits so that heat from Water in the conduit will be conducted effectively to the fins.
The fins in turn transfer the heat flowing upwardly past them within an enclosure for the fins. The enclosure for the heat distributing member is substantially the same as that provided for the heating unit and, therefore, the same reference numbers used in describing FIGURE 12 are also used in FIGURE 17 where applicable.
The enclosure for the heat-distributing member differs in two respects from the enclosure for the heating unit. First, the lower support bracket carries a slide cradle which extends across the bottom and part way up the sides of the end fins of the heat-distributing member, and has feet which rest on the bracket The cradle also has a plate. The second difference between the enclosures is that the damper is adjustable by rotating it about a pin carried by the plate. As was described with reference to FIGURE 1, all of the heating members 20 and the heat distributing units 22 are in a single closed circuit, and each heating unit is controlled by a thermostat positioned in the zone in which the heating unit is positioned.
The result is that all of the thermostats jointly control the temperature of the water in the circuit and thereby the temperaure of all of the zones heated by the circuit. If, because of local conditions in one zone, the temperature of the zone drops below that of the other zones, the thermostat in that zone will energize a heating unit positioned in that zone and this, of course, will add heat to the other zones through fluid in the common conduit 14 and possibly cause the thermos-tats in the other zones to cut off the supply of current to heating units in those other zones.
If the temperatures in these zones drop below a predetermined point, the thermostats will cut in again. Geothermal: Versatile comfort systems. Geothermal heating: forced air or hot water system?
Air conditioning or not? Air conditioner maintenance. Frequent questions about air conditioning. Indoor units: which one to choose? A brief history of heating systems. The story of air conditioning. Choosing an air conditioning system. The air conditioner: an ally in times of extreme heat.
Air conditioning : for comfortable summers. Heat pump: a heating and air conditioning system. See only the content relating to Unknown, UN. At about the same time, firetube hot air furnaces were invented in France. The cool air entered at one face, was heated in the pipes exposed directly to the fire, and exited at the other face.
Technically, the cockle and calorifere furnaces were important advances, but their constructors knew very little more about the true principles of hot air heating than did their ancient predecessors. A more scientific approach emerged when Professor Dr. Paul Meissner of the Vienna Polytechnical Institute, Vienna, Austria, published a book on heating with hot air in , wherein he explained the laws of warm-air heating.
He was the first to recognize that provisions must be made to draw off cool air as warm air is admitted to a room; that this cool air could be returned to the furnace for reheating; and he even proposed the use of mixing dampers.
Meissner was vociferously attacked by stove makers of the time. Both the opposition parties, though they hate each other, will combine to cry down the invention and crush the inventor. Meissner believed that not only would they beat a path to your door if you invented a better mousetrap, they would also knock your door in and proceed to beat you up! Despite the contemporary opposition, Professor Meissner was right, and his principles underlie all modern warm-air heating systems.
Other hot-air systems were introduced in the United States before for use in larger institutional buildings.
The first U. The system used a gravity hot-air system with a basement furnace and ductwork to the rooms. A central heating furnace, of the gravity type later commonly seen, was said to have been invented in in Worcester, MA. Early furnaces were locally produced for the specific job — there was no furnace industry per se. The company survived until There were several manufacturers by the time of the Civil War, but the golden age for warm-air furnaces was after that war.
From to , many dozens of firms entered the furnace business. Furnaces were considered to be safe and easy to operate, ensuring their early popularity over steam heating systems, which required skilled operation lest they would explode! There was no standard for rating, and identical furnaces sported different ratings by different manufacturers. Outlandish claims were made, and by many manufacturers had gone out of business or merged due to a raging price war.
Hot water heating was making inroads into what had been a seemingly secure market. Test and research programs were conducted at the University of Illinois. The association later produced a series of manuals for proper sizing and installation of warm-air heating systems. One installation was reported in a house in the late s where a fan was combined with a homemade gas furnace in Mannington, WV. It seems that a school board member wanted to duplicate the large fan system at his school, so he downsized the idea for his home.
General Electric advertised such a booster fan designed specifically for furnace application in A paper was presented to the American Society of Ventilating Engineers in discussing the use of blowers with furnaces. Emerson Electric marketed a disc fan blower to be added to the return side of the furnace in Blowers or disc fans were periodically applied to residential furnaces into the 20s, after which manufacturers began to take a hard look at equipping furnaces with fans as a package.
However, package blower-furnace units were not widely available until the s. At first steam heating progressed only in England, being used to heat mills and factories. Buchanan expanded his manual to a full handbook on steam heating in His Treatise on the Economy of Fuel and the Management of Heat was the first heating engineering book. Europeans seem to have been reluctant to use steam heating, in some cases for political reasons. There was no such resistance to steam in the U.
A number of steam heating systems were installed after , one of the earliest at a factory in Middletown, CT, in This system used exhaust steam from a high-pressure steam engine; thus the heating was essentially free. Joseph Nason and James Walworth installed steam systems after using small-diameter wrought iron pipe. Nason and Walworth installed numerous steam heating systems in large buildings during the next decades, including the White House and the Capitol Building in Washington, DC.
One of the earliest pioneers in residential steam heating systems was Stephen Gold, a Connecticut stove maker who began experimenting with steam in the late s. The steam systems of the time were considered too complicated and unsafe for household use. Gold strove to overcome these issues, and was granted a U. Large steam systems used coils or rows of pipe to heat rooms, while Gold used the first radiator, a device consisting of two dimpled iron sheets that were riveted together at the dimples.
The edges were rolled over with a piece of cord as a gasket. The system operated at very low pressure using one pipe to distribute the steam. The system was manufactured by the Connecticut Steam Heating Company after Steam heating, like warm air, blossomed after the Civil War. A number of manufacturers began making boilers and radiators of various designs. Like stoves of the era, many could be considered works of art. The steam heating systems of the 19th century operated at low pressure, using one or two pipes and a boiler or steam engine exhaust for a steam source.
As buildings in the U. These problems were overcome in the s with the development of the vacuum-return steam heating system, perfected by Warren Webster using the patents of DeBeaumont and Williames. The Webster system maintained a vacuum in the condensate return line, thus drawing steam throughout the system no matter the size. Vacuum-return systems soon became the system of choice for larger buildings.
Many different patented designs of steam heating systems were in use by World War I. However, steam heating never really became popular for home heating due to perceptions about complexity, noise, and fear of explosions. In the late s, M. Bonne-main in France constructed an actual hot water heating system using a boiler. The French idea was refined and introduced into England by the Marquis de Chabannes in Charles Hood of London wrote the first engineering handbook for hot water heating in , which was subsequently published in revised editions for 50 years.
Some attempts were made to accelerate the circulation with crude pumps, but the idea of using a circulator did not see real use until the beginning of the 20th century. Early hot water systems used very large pipes because it was thought this was necessary to ensure adequate circulation and heat retention.
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