No Space available!!! Could I install hydronic baseboard vertically?

[curious1]

Maybe because of the high prices - that is why they did not close down the Indian Point Nuclear Energy center which is only 40 miles away from the populated New York City area (and produces about 25% of it's electric). If something goes wrong in that power plant- 17 million people are in danger with no possible evacuation plan.

P.S. In the end will probably go with a cast iron radiator - the others are too expensive/may not be so reliable.

 

[curious1]

I get screwed on the Gas like that here.

I pay $25 a month just to have Gas, Even if I use none. Gas is still a little cheaper for heating. But electric is near %100 efficient.

I guess at 30 cents for electricity they guarantee power to never go out ?

A coned (utility) worker once told me that during the summer heat waves - the city runs off 96% of its capacity. That is why they force businesses to close down escalators and they shut down/lower certain large central AC systems (they have special thermostats that could be controlled by the utility company).

 

[Sponsor]

 

[Dana]

They don't "hey force businesses to close down escalators and they shut down/lower certain large central AC systems", they PAY them for that capability (aka "Demand Response".) Demand response programs in NY are optional, not mandatory.

Under the currently ongoing regulatory revisions it may become possible for residential customers to get paid to turn stuff down or off during peak events too. That's becoming pretty easy to implement with Wi-Fi connected thermostats, smart meters, and grid-aware electric hot water heaters, etc.

The Brooklyn/Queens substation upgrade plans are being revised in accordance to the revised regulatory environment, saving the ratepayers more than a billion USD by subsidizing distributed generation & storage resources (on both sides of the meter), to relieve grid congestion rather than just building it out with huge capacity that would only be needed 5% of the time (like when a big nuke has to go off line for refueling.) Building-scale micro-grids that are grid-attached but island-able is a growth industry in NY, mostly with gas-fire heat/power cogenerators, but soon to include storage (mostly flow-batteries, until lithium ion is allowed.).

You can do a lot worse than going with a small cast iron radiator. The panel radiators are pretty reliable, but a used SunRad or Radiant is usually cheaper, and are really quite nice heat even at low temp. I installed a couple craiglist SunRads bedrooms at my own home when I micro-zoned it a few years ago and have no regrets. One is tucked into an attic-room kneewall flush with the wall, the other is an inch away from the wall directly below a north window. It sticks out into the room an inch or three more than a panel radiator would have, but suits the 1920s vintage of the house a bit better.

If you need more heat than an 8-10 section SunRad can deliver you can go taller with a tube or column radiator. To estimate how much heat you can get out of them use this resource. To compare EDR (Equivalent Direct Radiation) to fin-tube baseboard, a foot of typical baseboard is equivalent to about 3-3.5' EDR.