David wants some help: I love everything about my apartment - except the steam heat radiators. This can't be safe, and we have a baby who is just about to start crawling. What can we do with these radiators to make them safer?
David, we have a few ideas, and hopefully our readers will chime in with their own solutions.
First up, that peeling paint has got to go! You might want to check it for lead paint though, before you do anything drastic to it, and of course, if that comes up positive, call a professional.
But lets say there is no lead paint on it. Here is what we would do.
• If your radiators have any kind of detailing on them, polychrome them!
• Cheaper and easier: Rustoleum it!
• On AT:NY, another DIY paint job.
• Expensive and time consuming: send them out to be professionally refinished. Google your city name, and 'radiator refinishing' to find a list of companies that will do this.
• Another AT link: Cover it.
What would you do, Nursery Readers? David cannot be the first parent to confront a steam radiator in rough shape.
(Note: Include a pic of your problem and your question gets posted first. Email questions and pics with QUESTIONS in subject line to: nursery(at)apartmenttherapy(dot)com)
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Floor heating could be one option. Here is one link about heating: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/11/how_to_green_yo_9.php
I hope you enjoy!
view °° Go Green ! °° 's profile
I don't know about your apartment, but mine is incredibly hot in the winter, even with all the radiators turned off. So we decided to remove all our radiators in preparation for our little guy. It takes a couple of minutes using a pipe wrench, and if you want you can cover the valve with a cap that's sold at Home Depot for around $2. Our super is storing the radiators in our building's basement (along with those of many of our neighbors).
view sue's profile
my husband and i have these metal radiators that are lower and dont look like that. we are really worried about the baby burning himself, we also wondered if that was the responsibility of the landlord to take care of that, covering them? we also have an issue with our water in the past several months where it switches from ice cold to scalding hot and then back again. there are only three apartments in our building and the water was fine before.
it seems like if a landlord has to replace lead paint they should also provide other safety measures. any ideas?
view sarajensen's profile
Is it just me, or did kristin miss the part where he asked how to make them safer?
I don't have any tips, we rarely use our low wall heaters, because we have furniture against them we'd have to move.
view Ariel's profile
Don't worry! It isn't evident in the photo, but the steam mechanism on the radiator is locked on one side and inaccessible on the other, so the safety issue (according to David) is entirely the peeling paint problem.
view kristin's profile
You could cover them. There are alot of places on-line to get something like this: http://www.beautifulradiators.com/radiator-covers.htm
Or, they are simple enough to construct. We built covers for ours using wood (duh...) and some decorative metal grates I found at Michael's.
view Kate M's profile