Pulaski

Your baseboard heat is presumably electric, which does have a reputation for being expensive, whereas WEblue's is a water-radiator baseboard system, presumably oil-fired?

tuxedocat

Ohhh that explains it.

Bob

What's the source?

When it was oil, it was well expensive. Last place was electric and it was better but still expensive. Current place is gas and it costs peanuts in comparison.

All baseboard, all similar size footage.

mrken30

Your landlord should be giving your warning on either your lease or an addendum if its rented.

This is what the manufacturers state

this is for electric baseboard heat/ Water filled radiators are different.

Baseboard heaters work best when placed under a window and at least 12 inches away from furniture or other objects. Keep at least a 12-inch minimum distance from objects hanging above (i.e., drapes).
Do not install below electrical outlets.
The heater may be placed directly on the floor and mounted to the wall.

Pulaski

Well considering that they are, IME, installed along all exterior walls, complying with those restrictions is going to be difficult if not impossible.

WEBlue

Yes, it's water pipes running inside the baseboards. And natural gas is the fuel (thank goodness).

Exactly!! Not bad at all....

We wanted gas-fired heating from the beginning, and rejected several nice houses because they had oil heating. I have a friend in Pennsylvania who warned us off oil heating.

WEBlue

You know, we saw several old houses with pellet stoves when we were househunting. One was a beautiful 1890s-era former farmhouse. It was tiny, with very small rooms & low ceilings, but wonderful old details like stained glass & ornate moldings. It had the pellet stove in the cellar & the venting as you describe. We were tempted (--we love old houses & the price was good) but a bit surprised by the pellet stove, to be honest, and in the end decided the whole set-up just wasn't right for us.

Bob

We pay something like $250 for the six months over winter and about $200 over the rest of the year.

We were paying about $350-500 a month during winter on oil and about $200 a month on electric.

One house that we looked to rent, average winter oil use was about $900 a month, because it had a open, un-insulated pantry room attached to the kitchen. Daft really as it had gas piped in for the washer and dryer and they had put in a new furnace but opted to keep with oil rather than swap it for gas. Oil, has come down a bit in price since then, mind but it's still a hefty amount.

tuxedocat

Electric baseboard heat.

WEBlue

So this warning applies to your baseboards, not mine....

My only experience of electric baseboards was the place we rented in Houston looong ago. It was a typical faceless corporate apartment, very modern, & sparsely furnished so no problem with furniture crowding the baseboards....

Ours don't seem to get superhot, yet they do the job pretty well. The heat (hot water) in them waxes & wanes. I must say the temperature in that guest bedroom has definitely improved since I moved the beds to the non-baseboard walls....

We rented a house a few years ago here whose hot-water radiators got screaming hot, & the pipes in the walls made all kinds of crazy noises as the water ran through them. That was a converted late-1800s house--beautiful place but the heat was too erratic..

Pulaski

Baseboard heaters that are heated by hot water, and radiators, can make all sorts of creaks and squeaks as the pipes expand when the cold water is replaced with hot water and the pipes grate and scrape on the mounting brackets.

WEBlue

Yes, the interesting thing is hot-water heating of whatever kind is audible--at least in my experience--never silent.

My son lived in an apartment in NYC (also an old building) where the hot water made ear-splitting sounds in the pipes, just like someone was banging a sledge-hammer with all their might against the pipes for a good 5 minutes at a time. That's when he started sleeping with earplugs (--not that they helped more than a little) .....

Our previous rental house's pipes that I mentioned above would shriek for a few seconds, which woke us a few times in the night in the beginning, but eventually we wouldn't even wake.... No, the bigger problem with that old house was the radiators would give out erratic heat, so the rooms would get superhot then cool a lot before getting superhot again. Maybe it was a problem with the thermostat, that very uneven heat. Also, the upstairs & downstairs radiators were all on the same system, so the upstairs would get too hot on sunny days, while the downstairs would be a little too cool. We like old houses, but that seemed too archaic.

I think our present house, built in the 1950s, has decent heating. And once I finish rearranging the furniture, it'll work even better. At least it's quiet--just a tiny 'ticking' noise as the baseboards heat up, my hubby can't even hear if it's on or not, no shrieking pipes.

Rete

I had that in my all my apartments in NY as well. What helped solve the problem was bleeding the radiators. Believe me bleeding them is not fun nor is it a clean solution. Lots of cleaning up to do following it but it does work.

scrubbedexpat091

Interesting on the electrical outlet bit.

Doesnt seem builders care.

Every place I have lived with baseboards had an outlet above them.

WEBlue

Another weird thing about the baseboard heat.... baseboards extend right into --and through--the clothes closets.

Is this normal? Seems a waste of heat if we keep the closet doors closed, which we usually do. They ARE louvered doors, though, so maybe the heat can circulate adequately. Actually I like it, because there are no problems with mould or mildew like in every closet I've ever had back in the UK. But it seems strange....