Radi­a­tors that used to seem unat­trac­tive are now becom­ing pop­u­lar and we match them to inte­ri­or design. It is always worth tak­ing the help of a wiz­ard who will tell you which devices to choose so that they not only look beau­ti­ful, but are also reli­able in oper­a­tion.

For a num­ber of dif­fer­ent rea­sons, steel radi­a­tors are becom­ing increas­ing­ly pop­u­lar with both builders and those who are ren­o­vat­ing their homes and plan­ning to change heat­ing ele­ments. We will try to out­line the main pros and cons of steel radi­a­tors in gen­er­al terms.

Types of radiators

Tubular radiators

Tubu­lar steel radi­a­tors, often called heat­ing reg­is­ters, are made from steel pipes. Hot coolant flows through the pipes. As in the case of sec­tion­al steel radi­a­tors, weld­ed joints make the struc­ture more air­tight.

How­ev­er, due to rel­a­tive­ly thin walls, such devices are sen­si­tive to water ham­mer, although they can with­stand high oper­at­ing pres­sures up to 15 atmos­pheres. The sim­plic­i­ty of the design allows design­ers to cre­ate the most incred­i­ble shapes of such radi­a­tors, which is why inte­ri­or design­ers are very fond of such radi­a­tors. But, remem­ber that the price of tubu­lar radi­a­tors is very high.

Tubu­lar — for bath­rooms, as well as hall­ways and rooms. Most often made of steel or cop­per, some­times alu­minum. These are aes­thet­ic coils or “lad­ders”, con­sist­ing of two col­lec­tors — dis­tri­b­u­tion and col­lect­ing, con­nect­ed by many pipes. The cross sec­tion of pipes can be round, oval, tri­an­gu­lar or square.

Tubu­lar radi­a­tors often equipped with tow­el hold­ers, shelves and even mir­rors. They have a dif­fer­ent shape: a hor­i­zon­tal or ver­ti­cal lad­der, bent or sim­i­lar to cast-iron “finned” radi­a­tors. They are light, low water and work well in auto­mat­ed pump­ing instal­la­tions.

Note: before turn­ing on the heater, close the shut-off valve that sup­plies water to the radi­a­tor so that the heater does not heat the water in the entire sys­tem.

Sectional steel radiators

Sec­tion­al steel radi­a­tors dif­fer lit­tle in their appear­ance from their “col­leagues” in the cast iron work­shop. How­ev­er, they have a num­ber of dif­fer­ences that dis­tin­guish them favor­ably for the bet­ter. The con­nec­tions of such radi­a­tors are weld­ed, and this pro­vides high­er strength.

Such radi­a­tors with­stand high (up to 16 atmos­pheres) work­ing pres­sure. The ser­vice life of such devices is 50 years. How­ev­er, it would be use­ful to say that the cost of sec­tion­al steel radi­a­tors is high, which makes them not the most pop­u­lar prod­uct on the mar­ket for heat­ing devices.

Panel steel radiators

A steel pan­el radi­a­tor is usu­al­ly a rec­tan­gu­lar struc­ture. The design is based on two steel sheets con­nect­ed by weld­ing or stamp­ing, on their out­er sur­face there are stamped ver­ti­cal grooves that form chan­nels inside the pan­el through which water cir­cu­lates.

In addi­tion, these recess­es increase the area of ​​the prod­uct, which increas­es the ther­mal effi­cien­cy. As a rule, one, two or three such pan­els are made, con­vec­tion fins are attached to the inner side of such pan­els, made of U‑shaped pro­files, which are installed ver­ti­cal­ly.

The design of a pan­el steel appli­ance equipped with such pro­files allows heat­ing the air not only due to radi­a­tion, but also due to con­vec­tion. The design of this type of heat­ing device makes it pos­si­ble to achieve heat trans­fer com­pa­ra­ble to cast-iron radi­a­tors and much high­er than that of alu­minum radi­a­tors.

Anoth­er impor­tant qual­i­ty of a steel pan­el prod­uct is that sev­en times less vol­ume of coolant is required for heat­ing than for its cast-iron coun­ter­part, while the tem­per­a­ture of the coolant can be as much as twen­ty degrees low­er.

Thus, there is a sig­nif­i­cant sav­ing of ther­mal ener­gy, and hence fuel and, con­se­quent­ly, the cost of space heat­ing. Pan­el steel radi­a­tors are light­weight and com­pact. A wide range of pan­el radi­a­tors of dif­fer­ent sizes makes it easy to choose the right heat out­put.

The effi­cien­cy of such radi­a­tors reach­es 75%. Anoth­er advan­tage of these prod­ucts is their very low cost. The work­ing pres­sure for which these devices are designed (up to 13 atmos­pheres), and oth­er design fea­tures also allow them to be used in sys­tems with cen­tral heat­ing. How­ev­er, such devices are sen­si­tive to cor­ro­sion, which requires high-qual­i­ty water treat­ment.

How to choose power?

The selec­tion of the pow­er and size of the radi­a­tor is best left to a spe­cial­ist who takes into account fac­tors such as:
- qual­i­ty of wall insu­la­tion;
- the need for heat in the room (the need for a cor­ner room exposed to cold winds is dif­fer­ent from the need for heat in the hall or bath­room, where the tem­per­a­ture should be 25 degrees, and yet anoth­er in the bed­room, where 18 degrees is enough);
- the area of ​​​​win­dows and doors in the room;
is the tem­per­a­ture of the water cir­cu­lat­ing in the sys­tem.

It is assumed that in a house with good ther­mal insu­la­tion, the heat demand in the rooms is 80–100 W/m2, and in the bath­rooms 120 W/m2.

For a room of 20 m 2, a heater with a pow­er of about 1800 watts is required. How­ev­er, when choos­ing a heater, you should check the para­me­ters at which it reach­es the set pow­er (these are: sup­ply water tem­per­a­ture, return water tem­per­a­ture and room tem­per­a­ture). In instal­la­tions with heat­ed high tem­per­a­ture boil­ers, the radi­a­tors oper­ate at 90°C/70°C/20°C, and in low tem­per­a­ture heat­ed or con­dens­ing boil­er instal­la­tions — 75°C/60°C, respec­tive­ly ‚/20°C or 55°C/45°C/20°C.

There­fore, the heaters for these “cool­ing” units must be larg­er than those used with con­ven­tion­al boil­ers (90°C/ 70°C/ 20°C):

— 1.25 times when oper­at­ing at 75 o C / 65 o C / 20 o C;
- 2.5 times when oper­at­ing at 55 o C / 45 o C / 20 o C.
Man­u­fac­tur­ers have heater pow­er con­ver­sion tables depend­ing on oper­at­ing para­me­ters.