I used to live in my loft in NYC and learned to hate those antique radiators. All the 4am banging pipe wakeup calls in the dead of winters. And oh the slow leaks, how I love the puddles on my wood floors. Or the steam making my loft space feel like a sauna. I used to hate the coming of winter in that place, only because of those radiators.

I have lived with hot water radiators (in 2 separate homes) over the last 20 years and have had no problems. I like my radiators!! ...Although I do want them sandblasted to get rid of the many old paint layers.

This looks like a great idea. I heat my small space with two plug-in oil filled radiators. The quality of the heat is wonderful, but they are not nearly as pretty as the old cast iron ones. It is too bad that this is so expensive though (475$ compared to under 100$ for the oil filled modern radiators). They need to outsource the refurbishing to China...I wonder if we would still be reducing carbon emissions by buying these if they took a trip to China and back?

"They need to outsource the refurbishing to China."

The LAST thing anyone here needs is more outsourcing to China or elsewhere in pursuit of cheaper goods and higher profits.

When your job gets outsourced overseas and you become one of the 10 % of unemployed Americans, you'll understand.

@tallen5 --

Sounds like your radiators desperately needed maintenance - Here's some hints from an earlier AT post:

http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/chicago/heat-cold/what-to-do-about-hammering-radiators-068925

I was under the impression that radiators were an efficient, if noisy and often undermaintained, source of heat. Isn't this why radiant floor heating is used in so many "green" designs?

Love, love, love my old fashioned radiators -- and so does my respiratory system.

@bepsf: Not to mention the lax environmental regulations in China, and the carbon impact of loading heavy, cast-iron radiators onto a (diesel burning) cargo ship, both ways.

@Nancy_Claire: It's about jobs, but it's about the planet, too.

I actually like my antique radiators. They have the rare clanging noise, but usually it's a soft hissing sound that actually helps me fall asleep! Nothing blocks out street noise like a gentle hiss. It's free white noise!

Unless it's from a cat or a cobra.

i wish wish wish i still had radiators in my house. for shame that so many people removed them for forced air long ago. The forced air actually makes more noise than properly maintained radiators ever did in previous places. I tried to buy with radiators, but they are so hard to find... sigh.

Why would you want to add to your electric bill, especially given that in many buildings radiant heat is effectively free? A correctly operated and maintained radiator system should last almost forever, operate completely silently (except for a slight hiss at startup), and never leak. If it's doing any of those things it needs maintenance which often costs less than a couple of hundred bucks per radiator. The trick is you can never turn them off when the system is running, if you do so, you trap water in the radiator which leads to problems.

I love all of the sounds of my radiators. But I love most sounds that my old apartment makes.

Patrick--

You're on a roll today...
...Can't help but visualize Monsieur Poirot w/ the huge cobra in his stateroom.

These are great- thanks for finding these! I can imagine they would be great in renovating an old house. You could have the look of the radiators, but updated!

We have steam heat. They frustrated me at first but we read some books (So You Have Steam Heat" was a good one) and did research. Now that we understand how the system works, we love old radiators.

The steam heat is moisturizing and with proper maintenance, they're very quiet. If your radiators are clanging, popping, gurgling or hissing, something isn't right.

@bespf

Sherlock Holmes?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventure_of_the_Speckled_Band

If you don't like the look of radiators, you can cover it with a nice wooden cabinet like the ones from www.cbradiatorcovers.com