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by rainbowzootsuit 801 days ago
This is going to be a complex problem because of the shape of the radiator and you'll need to calculate radiative and convective components of heat transfer i.e. you'll need finite element analysis to do this. If you simplify it to a simple shape like a rod or slab you can get somewhere in a calculation, but this is only going to give an instantaneous measure because of heat transfer to the rest of the universe.

Alternately, to get a realistic measure, you'll need to set your boundary conditions about what the heat flow out of the room will be, which is a bit simpler to setup with U-values, area, delta-T, and heat capacity of materials. You'll also need to do this to every other room in the building simultaneously. This is a Manual J, or heat balance method or the radiant time series method load calculation that will balance out with the amount of heat leaving your radiator without knowing its specific shape.

1 comments

Right. Or, I can turn a screw down on the aquastat on a cold day and see what happens, which is what I did (a handful of different times).