House in Progress Diary

Son of Mailbag

It's been awhile since we've reached into our mailbag and shared some of the many letters and notes we get. We apologize for not always being able to get back to everyone in a timely manner, but...you know. House stuff. We keep the identities of folks who write to us anonymous.

Dear House in Progess:

My partner D and I live in an Albany, NY in a house built in 1869...

I read this page and the related pages. The problem is we have electric baseboard heat that was installed in 1986. One radiator (of course it has to be the one in the bedroom) makes all sort of knocking noises. Not that you're now the expert of all radiators just because a page in your blog happens to get a high google ranking, but I thought I'd email just in case -- any suggestions as to what might cause this with electric heat and how to fix it? Thanks!

M--

Hi M--

Thanks for stopping by the blog! Wow, Albany's neighborhoods are beautiful AND affordable.

I'm so intrigued about knocking electric baseboard heat! The knocking in steam heat occurs when cold air or cold condensate meets warm steam in the pipes. I'm trying to think of a "cold meets warm" scenario with electric baseboards and I'm coming up empty! We have one baseboard heater that knocks, but it is a steam model and the pipe for it passes through an unheated crawl space.

If the baseboard is electric, the only thing I can think of is a drain or water supply pipe close by the source of heat? Maybe the heater is heating up something else within the wall or floor, creating steam in a pipe and creating a knock? (Warning: I am by NO MEANS an expert on any type of heat--just a DIY'er like yourselves)

I did find a basic link about how this type of heat works:

Elec Baseboard Heat and Detail of Electric Baseboard Heat

Try to isolate where exactly the knock is happening.

Here is someone who had a noticeable "hum" in their heater and they also talk about the possibility for vibration: Baseboard Hum

If you investigate that and come up empty, you might want to hop onto the Breaktime Forum at Fine Homebuilding and pose the question to them. There might be some HVAC folks who could provide you with some more insight.

Whatever happens, though, write back and let us know what happened!

Take care--

jm

(NOTE: Fine Homebuilding's Breaktime Guys did a fine job of answering this question here...)

Dear House in Progress:

I’m the webmaster for a company that makes (a house-related product). Let us know if any of our products might be helpful in your home. Perhaps if you were to install and review the product on your site we could sell it to you at a discount/give you one. Or we could trade links between sites. Something to think about.

Sincerely,

(A House Product Vendor)

Dear (House Product Vendor)--

Thanks so much for your inquiry.

Except for a random Google feed (where we don't control the ads), we don't accept paid advertising from vendors directly or free products. We want our reviews of anything to reflect our own experiences and we can't guarantee it will work for someone else in the same way. We also feel uncomfortable with the obligations that relationships with specific advertisers would set up. We don't want advertising to drive our content. Our house and our lives drive our content.

We do not have a reciprocal linking program for this same reason. We link to sites that were useful to us in our work and to sites we read on a regular basis. But thank you for your interest and for sending us your site. It's a great site to be aware of!

All of the best...

jm

...and this one came in today. I was really in need of a laugh and this reader delivered! (M...I hope you are okay with my posting this. It was so great.)

Dear House in Progress:

Avid reader of your blog here (although I don't post many comments). I'm always very impressed with your thorough research, and your honesty. (Depression & bi-polar run in my family, and I suffer from the former myself so I'm always grateful when others are upfront about such things, as it helps remove the stigma of "that mind thing", as my father has put so colloquially!)

Anyhoo, I had the strangest dream about you two last night.

I dreamt that Jeannie was on the porch of MY house, lying on the floor and picking at some wood rot. Suddenly, a group of Al Qaeda members, brandishing rifles and curiously speaking English, burst into the house. Jeannie, who had turned into me, quickly pulled over the 10 yards of horrendously expensive fabric ($500 a yard) that was conveniently folded up on a sofa in the porch. The invaders were so dazzled by the beauty of the fabric, that they simply took off with it without killing me (although by this time, I had turned into Aaron). In celebration, Jeanne, Aaron, and Aaron's dad went out for coffee.

And the thing is, my porch does not have wood rot. And I don't have $5000 worth of fabric lying around.

Thanks for all the laughs -

ML
St Paul, Minnesota

You're welcome! Thank YOU!

Posted by jeanne on January 28, 2005 at 5:28 PM (1)