Tony wrote:
The Daring Dufas wrote:
Tony wrote:
The Daring Dufas wrote:
Tony wrote:
The Daring Dufas wrote:
willshak wrote:
The Daring Dufas wrote the following:
Sam Takoy wrote:
Hi,

Why is cast iron a good material for radiators? Why not another
metal? Would certainly make them a little lighter and easier to
deal with.

Thanks in advance,

Sam

I would imagine one benefit of a heavy cast iron radiator would
be the mass of metal will hold heat and release it over a long
period of time. I also think that a copper or aluminum radiator
of similar thickness would be prohibitively expensive.

TDD
The disadvantages are that they are big and ugly and get very hot
(don't allow toddlers around them). They have enclosures
especially built for them which also helps with the ugly part.
Another advantage is you don't need a humidifier, just put a pan
of water on top of them.
I was brought up in homes with steam radiators in NYC.


When I was a kid and an inmate at the Catholic Parochial Gulag back
in the middle of the last century, the building had radiators with
hissing contraptions on the top side that reminded me of the valve
on a pressure cooker. If I remember right, there was steam coming
out of the thing that could very well have contributed to keeping
the humidity up in the building.

TDD

It's called "steam heat".

I think the nuns were trying to cook us.

TDD

That I don't doubt. On second thought, I don't think they would cook
you all the way, because then they couldn't torture you anymore.

Were you a fellow sufferer of the slings and arrows of the crazy women?


Yes, I've been Nunned (crying like a baby). Funny, just the other day
my sister was telling about the time she asked her teacher/nun if she
could be an alter girl. The nun told her that she has way too many sins
to stand up there, that she would desecrate the holiness of the church.
And that's putting it mildly, in her words it sounded a hundred times
worse.

My first grade teacher was Sister Godzilla, an American nun. In the
second grade the whole teaching staff was replaced with Irish nuns
who believe in capital punishment for small children for things like
talking in the restroom. There was Sister Torture, Sister Autopsy,
Sister Defenestration, Sister Vivisection, Mother Mothra and Father
Bigfoot. Because I had nuns as teachers when I was a small boy, I
have absolutely no fear of terrorists. I do have an inexplicable
fear of albino Penguins.

TDD