OK, these are pretty uncommon today, but my house has forced hot water with cast iron baseboards. If you’ve never seen them, the are:
They work just like the more common steel & fin tube you see, but there are no fins. They just heat up. Personally, I’m of mixed feelings on them. They take forever to heat up from cold, but once warm they stay warm forever too. I suspect they worked better in 1930 when you set the temp and left it, not turning it down when you left the house.
Anyway, they are supposed to be secured to the studs using a clamp with a screw, which you can just see in that picture. Not my house, by the way.
In my house, they are not. Someone carefully cut a series of wooden blocks (legs)and the baseboards are resting on these blocks. I mean, it’s worked since the house was built in 1930, but still.
I’ve been redoing a few floors (still have the original actual linoleum under the carpet) and as I’ve done so I’ve replaced these blocks with cuts of the same wood I’m putting down. Looks nice, actually.
The oldest of these is six years ago, and everything has been working fine. But I just have this dread that I should be putting the clips in. However, these cast iron sections are press-fit together, and what I worry about is straining one of those joints and causing a leak. These need special tools, and even finding plumbers who have worked on them is getting harder, since almost nobody uses them anymore.
What say you? Should I just stick with what’s worked for 90 years, or should I put the clips in?
