Do American houses have radiators?

[isabellerossignol]

And if not, what do they have instead?

Have been passing some time watching YouTube videos of decorating ideas, and they are mostly American, and I never see anyone having to paint round a radiator.

Obviously, I'm not sure if this means that they just don't show it because, lets face it, it wouldn't make a great video, or if they don't actually have them...

Some do, some don't. The ones that don't have internal ducting that blows hot air into the room through vents in the floor. And possibly other types of heating systems

The ones I’ve been to have vents in the floor.

Older houses do - like mine. Otherwise forced air is very common.

Our family home in N.C.(built midb-60s) have the vents in the floor jobbie and also a wood burning fireplace. And yes, they've got a lot of wood

That's interesting. I wonder how different countries evolve to have different systems as the norm. Cost of running them maybe?

I've seen a few posts on Mumsnet over the years, and have talked to people in real life, from people saying that British houses seem cold compared with their home country, even if they come from somewhere with a colder climate than here.

We lived in the US for three years (in a new build) and had forced air. I think part of the reason for forced air being more popular is that you can run both hot air (from a furnace) and cold air (from an air con unit) through the same system. That was the setup in ours and all our friends houses.

We did have large cast-iron flat-top radiators in our old house here in USA (pre-1950). I loved them - so did the cats! - but now that we don't have them I don't miss the paint issues, nor the issues with where to place furniture.

But yes forced air or even baseboard heaters (in older homes) is much more common.

Yes, depends on the age of the building and location. My flats in SAN Francisco and New York all had radiators (old ish buildings, shared heating system throughout). New build houses growing up had forced air (detached suburban houses), which seems odd now.

“Forced Air” is called Central Heating where I’m from and yes all dependent on the age of the building.
And cost at the time. Some are electric, some are natural gas. My son has some electric wall units and a big wood furnace in the basement with ducting throughout the house. Some pricy places even have geothermal.

Forced air in our house when we lived in the US. We lived in TX however so it wasn’t that often that we had the hot air coming through - the AC was on much more.

Mine has baseboard heaters that use hot water to heat. Some of the older houses in my town have radiators but not modern looking ones, generally.

Not so much forced air where I am (Maine) as we don't generally need air conditioning in summer.

I have forced hot water. Its like radiators 6 inches high that run the length of your walls. like heated skirting boards

My cats used to love the forced air vents, one would sit right over it, I’d wonder how hot she’d have to get to be too hot. I hate radiators as they’re awful if you’re near them, so drying.

We had forced air central heat like others, the vents were in the ceiling for us and were run on propane gas The air conditioning came through the same vents and ran on electric.

I'm in Alberta and we have forced air heating too. Houses here are really warm and well insulated, much more so than in the UK as a rule, but they need to be, it often drops below -30 in January and February.

I was so confused my first year living in the UK when the maintenance man came to fix the radiator and asked where it was. I vaguely gestured at the wall thingy and asked if that was a radiator. We were equally baffled with one another. All my hair had come through vents. Seems to heat the house better (vent) and less damp. I've never been so cold and damp as when I lived in Wales.

I think ppl need to realise there is more than just the heating system that differ between UK and US houses
First off...uk houses are generally A LOT older
Secondly they are built with brick not wood
And yes they will be more susceptible to dampness because of those reasons and the fact that it is wetter here most of the year!

We are in the UK and recently moved into DH's granny's house (inherited), which had to be renovated top to bottom as she'd done nothing to it since the 70s. It had no radiators, just rectangular vents in the walls and a huge contraption that looked like a dalek in the kitchen cupboard.

I'd never seen anything like that in the UK before, so it's interesting that it's standard in other countries.