Heating Help

Drop it into a cavity in the floor, if your floor joists are going the right way. There are units available to do just that. Don't put in electric heat, it will cost you a lot more. DaveH9

Hiding pipes in wall. Is this a good plan??

I'd like to remove the baseboard heat convectors in one very small bedroom to recover some floor space. I will be using an electric panel heater from Econo-Heat instead. To keep the loop intact I would run a pipe through the studs of an exterior, load-bearing wall, and insulate the pipe between each stud. The piping is 3/4". Because this is baseboard heat we're talking about , I suppose the easiest thing to do is to bore my holes near the bottom of the studs. Does anyone see any problems in my plan? am I running into a big problem I don't see? Thanks!

Er ...No.

bad idea. here are some reasons ,nails,vaporbarrier,no freez protection. heres another idea. get some 1/2" hepex,or rehau cut away the plywood on the floor. nail a heavy aluminium plate to floor joist pop the pex into the slot with a rubber hammer tack some thiner plywood over both sides of the plate. now you have a bit of hydronic radiant in competition for the dollar you are spending on the electric heat.if it is the rim joist then burn a ten foot piece of convector on the copper under the floor...Voila instant perimeter floor warming *~/:)

The problem as I have seen many times is the pipe in the exterior wall can and possibly will freeze under certain conditions no matter how much you insulate it (Example is if the boiler or pump fail on a very cold and windy night, good-by pipe).

whatever you do make sure you put some anti freeze in the heating system. i have removed many "boxes" to get at frozen and or split heating pipes that are inside but not exposed to the heat inside the room

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Run it along the base and box it in.

your suggestion

but the whole idea was to regain some square footage. Am i missing something?

Flush

Could you run it nearly flush with the drywall/plaster< against the studs< along the bottom of the wall and then use a moulding to hide it?

may have found a solution

So the consensus here seems to be that it's a bad idea, which confirms the feeling I was having. Plus, I wasn't really comfortable about boring through 6 or 7 load-bearing studs, especially down so low. What I may do is temporarily remove some hardwood floor strips and run the pipe under the floor. It will run parallel to the joists, which is nice. Then I'll resurface inside a closet where I'll connect a hydronic kickspace type heater. I think the fan-blown heat will be effective in filling the room anyway. So now I'm off to learn about 3/4-to-1/2 monoflo tees!

How about

How about just connecting the loop back together in the cellar? Just curious...:)

Reason that won't work is there's a bathroom and a larger bedroom further down the loop..MY bedroom! :)