Please help me develop my radiator strategy

[radiatordrama]

My husband and I have bought a Victorian house that has had all the original features removed.

In the living room and bedroom above it, there are some enormous square bay windows, about 2m wide and also quite deep. They historically had radiators in them.

We are trying to decide what to do about radiators, as it may make sense to put furniture in the bay windows. Is it crazy overkill to put radiators in the bays and also add some vertical wall radiators?

My working plan is to use black Milano Windsor downstairs (with white walls) and white upstairs.

Diagram and living room photos for visual assistance. The chimney breast will be plastered over and all the flooring and furnishings will be different.

One more

If you are lucky the original coving might be behind the false ceiling?

Have you looked at a btu calculator for the space? Have you turned the current heating on to see if it is enough for the space?

How much renovation work are you planning to do? Might be worth considering insulating the external walls?

I would echo what @Geneticsbunny says - how warm does it get with the existing rads? That would be a starting point for whether you need new/additional rads.

Thanks for these thoughts!

We are definitely ditching these radiators. A tall radiator which fills the space under the bay window would provide more than enough BTUs. This is more a question I guess about how much a problem it is potentially to block a radiator with furniture!

That ceiling unfortunately is Artex (i.e. asbestos), and I don't think it's dropped! The floor was raised to make way for an integrated garage. It's a bit weird.

As hot air rises it mostly fills a room for the top down. If no action is taken to intervene it tends to drop down the inside of a window cooling as it does. It will then cross the floor to the nearest source of heat where it will rise agin to the ceiling. Despite being called radiators they do not radiate much, they convect. This means that the air rises from them mostly due to being heated by the fins at the back. When placed beneath a window a radiator will counter act the down draft from air that cools as it drops down the window. If you site radiators beneath windows you tend to reduce drafts in a room. Place them elsewhere and the drafts get worse.

I guess it depends where you want to put your furniture but as the pp has explained, it is fine to put things in front of radiators as long as there is a bit of a gap for the air to circulate. I would stick with the one in the bay window and not add any.
You can test the ceiling for artex by taking a small sample and sending to a company online. If you Google online asbestos testing you will find someone. It is very easy to do and only about £20.

Put in floor standing column radiators, the lower, wider type that don't need to be fixed back to the wall. Position them slightly forward from the wall so you can draw floor length curtains behind them.

And yes to another radiator somewhere in the room. Better to have too many than not enough.

But you don't want the heat just going up to the bay roof....

We have a big bay. It's had at least 2 previous rads in it in the past, looking at holes in the walls/carpet/floorboards (this is a doer-upper) but when we came here it had been changed to a very large rad on the wall instead (which admittedly is a nuisance for furniture).
I think we'd struggle to get the BTU (esp a high enough one in the future if we need a heat pump) under the window as the sill is low and the room has a high ceiling. But the main reason for not going that way is what about curtains? If you have them across the bay, or round along the bay, the rads are the wrong side of them. I don't fancy having short ones and tucking them behind the rads, I want full length as it's an old house. I did think about free standing ones, but I want light chairs in the bay as the view is nice, and free standing ones would have to be so chunky to get the BTU that they would get in the way. So the rad is staying on the wall.

This is all really helpful!

Our working plan is plantation shutters. Due to being a square bay, curtains would obstruct much of the window when opened. We are also on a busy road and want extra privacy.

Insulate floor, decent windows and two radiators is the best strategy in my mind. That eliminates a pool of cold air at floor level and heats the room more evenly
Also whatever the btu calculators say make sure you double it (or change the flow temperature to 45 degrees) to make sure your system is future proof for a heat pump. This will also improve the efficiency of a condensing boiler in the mean time.
Assuming your house is solid walls without insulation, new windows will be more energy efficient per square metre then your walls, so the old wisdom about radiator placement doesn't quite work.

I think a tall radiator where you have indicated would look weird.

If you keep the fireplace/gas fire, so heat with the radiator in the bay window and supplement with the fireplace if necessary.

If you are going to put a sofa in front of it probably no point going for something fancy.

I do think the column radiators look good.

@johnd2 we have agonised over future proofing and largely determined that an air pump may not be feasible for our home in any case! It's a solid brick semi.

That said, we have added underfloor insulation and we have double glazing, plus we have added some insulation to some exterior walls. We will also be doing the loft which means top quality insulation upstairs.

Were going to put in double-bend rails and have the curtains across the side walls in daytime, leaving the window clear, as we feel just the way you do about the light. But our bay is angled so that's more possible.

Combining radiators in the bay windows with vertical wall radiators can provide a dual heating system. This allows for better control of temperature and ensures that you can adjust heating based on specific needs or zones in the house.