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How hot do steam baseboard radiators get?

Asked by ETpro (34605points) September 13th, 2010

Our new place has steam heat with baseboard radiators. The radiators are a single pipe with swaged aluminum fins on it, and that whole assembly sits inside a protective sheet-metal cover.

Naturally, we want to keep furniture away from blocking the radiator covers just to ensure that they can efficiently heat the rooms. But my wife is worried that the wiring from my computer desk and Cable TV feeds drape over and under some of the covers. How hot might these covers get in the winter? Certainly they will not be hot enough to do damage to wood or they would char their way through the baseboards. Will they potentially damage the insulation on things like a network cable? How far should I go to keep everything out of contact or proximity with them?

This is my first time using steam baseboard heaters, so I am not quite sure what to expect. But I can’t imagine they would get hot enough to burn the skin on contact. Maybe hot enough to make you remove your hand, just as old cast-iron forced hot water radiators did. But those old radiators wouldn’t melt through an electrical cord. How concerned should we be?

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