hydronic baseboards

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maplewoodshelby

Member
Hearth Supporter
Mar 10, 2009
114
WV
The house i recently bought has hydronic baseboards for primary heating. They are pretty much your basic square shaped baseboards that run the length of the wall at the floor. A few of these froze over the winter as the house was vacant. I was simply going to cut out the busted sections and solder in new pipe however I was told that the pipe in these baseboards is too thin for repair. It is thin in order to transmit heat better.
Has anyone got any experience with soldering these or will I just have to by whole new units?
 
I have cut and soldered the base board tubes. I do not see that they are any different than any other copper tube in the heat system.
 
It is very thin tube, but can certainly be soldered. The problem is just that the tubing is oiled to enable the aluminum fins to slide on. The solution is just to wipe the ends to be soldered with a clean rag, clean with sand cloth, flux, assemble, sweat, wipe.
 
For what the fin portions cost, you may be better off just purchasing new "Guts" for the baseboard units. That way you know they won't develop a leak.
 
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