Radiator Snafu

You would think, that our radiator saga, written about at nauseum, would be done-or on hiatus. We thought so.

A few months ago, we bought a few new to us radiators. One was for our kitchen (Glenn wants to build a bench over a radiator and exchange out the current radiator) The other two were identical-one for our rental and one for our unit to replace a wrongly installed baseboard.

[When we had heat added to one of our rooms, the professional we hired put in baseboards. The result? The heat never worked. (you can't mix baseboard with cast iron radiators-or at the least you need a whole lot more linear space of baseboard to equal the heat put off by a cast iron radiator. If someone ever recommends mixing the two-bring in someone else, do some research on heat loss calculations-don't assume that since it is a "professional" he knows what he's doing. We found contractors on average hate working on cast iron radiators which makes it hard to get anyone in. (which is why Glenn is our favorite radiator guy).]

I digress. Anyway, a few months ago, we got the radiators, took them to be sandblasted, brought them home, primed and painted them, and installed the one in the rental. A little more piping needed to happen in the basement before the radiator could be filled up. Life happened, and it didn't happen. (the past few months have been very busy with non house commitments).

Yesterday, Glenn finished the piping in the basement and started to fill up the tenant's radiator. (I'm outside, in front, working with concrete on our front fence.) He comes out of the house saying he needs my help immediately. (which, I can't do-concrete can't wait). Apparently, sandblasting must have forced a leak in the radiator as it was leaking-not the valves, pipes, or anything easily fixed, but the actual radiator. Luckily, we had a spare radiator (the one we wanted for the same room in our unit) We then had to spend the greater part of the rest of the afternoon exchanging radiators. There was a risk that sandblasting professionally would spring a leak-but we had been optimistic.

Now we are deciding whether we need to run out and buy a "new" replacement one or wait until the spring. We loved the radiators we had chosen. The had all the scroll work on them and were the perfect size. It's too late for any new radiators to be installed in our unit, as our list of "must do" projects before cold is much longer than seemingly humanely possible. We had already pushed off radiators for us until next year.