Baseboard heaters, or those which are installed on the ground and made to look as part of a room’s baseboard, come in two main varieties, electric and hydronic.
Electric baseboard heaters use a coil or element to heat the air that is then circulated around the room.
Hydronic baseboard heaters are a totally different story.
Where Are These Heaters Placed?
The most common type of hydronic baseboard heaters are permanent, meaning that they are installed in the house and are afterwards immovable. All hydronic heaters use water or some other liquid to heat the air.
How Exactly Does A Hydronic Baseboard Heater Work?
In the case of permanently installed hydronic baseboard heaters, the liquid, most commonly water, is heated in a boiler which can be either gas fired or electric. Once the liquid is sufficiently heated, it is pumped to baseboard units around the house.
In the baseboard units, cool air is drawn towards the bottom part of the heater and made to pass through pipes containing the heated liquid. Heat is exchanged and the warm air rises out of the unit to raise the temperature of the room.
On the other hand, the water cooled by the process is pumped back to the boiler to be reheated.
A Portable Option Instead Of A Permanent Installation
There are also electric hydronic baseboard heaters that are portable. These units pretty much work the same way as installed hydronic systems but contain all the workings inside one portable heating unit.
These still use a liquid that is heated electrically and also operate through the convection of air. Being portable, however, they can be moved from room to room and plugged into any regular socket to work.
Hydronic heaters operate silently and are very efficient. They also require minimal maintenance as these systems are close and do not need to be filled with liquid periodically.
Also, because of how they heat and move the air around, they neither cause it to get too dry nor do they spread dust.
A Few Drawbacks To This Particular Option
However hydronic baseboard heaters also come with a few disadvantages which have to be considered by potential users.
Since these units are placed on the ground, they tend to take up space, with installed systems requiring even more room for the necessary boiler.
These heaters also take some time to get up and running, heating a room comparatively slower than forced air systems or purely electric heaters which use fans to move the heated air around.
Also, hydronic systems cannot be directly linked to the central air conditioning unlike forced air systems.