Radiator covers

[LouiseTrees]

Trying to get the house safer for DD. Can anyone suggest any good radiator covers or how they coped without any if not able to block with furniture or turn off?

Well it never crossed my mind to alter or block the radiators and there were never any problems with my child and radiators

What's wrong with your DD?

She has some mental fascination with going up to the radiators and touching them, sticking her face right against them and stupid stuff like that. She’s a crushing baby but she can’t really do that in the winter when they are on and she’s too fast to keep moving away from them.

Well, she'll burn herself once and then learn but to touch them, won't she?

Maybe. I would rather she didn’t get burnt though but I suppose you can’t wrap them up in cotton wool.

Would she actually get a proper burn from two seconds' contact though?

As long as she's not jammed against the radiator unable to move, won't she just get uncomfortably hot and move her hand off it?

You can may well be able to turn your boiler down so your radiators are cooler. It will take longer to heat the house from scratch, but on the plus side, a condensing boiler works more efficiently if the return temperature is lower than 55 degrees; the temperature of water leaving the boiler would be a bit higher than that, of course.

This link is about hot water poured or in the bath, but you can see the times different temperatures take to scald.

www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/conditionsandtreatments/burns-and-scalds-children
The average delivery temperature of domestic hot water is 70°C. A much safer temperature for domestic hot water is 50°C. This is because water at a lower temperature takes longer to cause injury. For example:

At 60°C, it takes one second for hot water to cause third-degree burns.
At 55°C, it takes 10 seconds for hot water to cause third-degree burns.
At 50°C, it takes five minutes for hot water to cause third-degree burns.

Thanks Perking for an actual suggestion and some facts rather than just telling me I’m being stupid. I’ll read and probably adjust temperature.

Seemed a sensible question to me!

At least, to ask for other parents' experiences. On a parenting forum! Whatever next?

You can get radiator covers on eBay.
We got one made for DD's bedroom as there wasn't a big enough gap between radiator & windowsill for a normal one, so this almost extends the windowsill. Our radiators can get crazy hot, very quickly.

Luckily the ones downstairs are tucked behind doors or furniture anyway so less of a temptation.

And yes, babies can get awful burns from grabbing hot metal! My niece had terrible blisters come up on her hand from grabbing the pipe that feeds water into the radiator

My DS also got an awful burn from gabbing a radiator pipe, so no, not a stupid question. There are some things can be brushed off as "oh well, they won't do that again". Burns aren't one of them.

Just turn the radiators down a tad. Radiator covers block a lot of heat