Homemade radiator: current manufacturing methods and methods

Despite the fact that the price of a modern heating battery is not so great, you can do without buying such devices, because you can cope with their assembly yourself.

In this article we will talk about how and with the use of what materials homemade batteries can be made, which in terms of energy efficiency will practically not be inferior to factory analogues.

Assessment of their capabilities

It is clear that not every person will be able to assemble a home-made oil radiator, such a construction is difficult, but to make a device through which water will circulate as a coolant is not so difficult.

By the principle of action, homemade heating devices also do not differ from the factory analogues, however, it is not recommended to install these products in centralized systems with high pressure.

Register of heating - the basis of self-made designs

Homemade heating radiators from pipes - this is the most common type of heating devices made by hand. And this is not surprising, since it is an order of magnitude easier to solder a hermetic system out of a pipe by an order of magnitude than to manufacture a heating device using factory technology.

Products assembled on the basis of a single pipe or a combination of pipes are called a register. The register is a hermetic system through which one or another coolant circulates. The energy efficiency of the register is determined by the diameter and configuration of the pipes, as well as the material from which they are made.

The practice of assembling radiators with your own hands shows that the most appropriate solution is the use of smooth-walled steel pipes with an internal cross-section diameter of 32 - 200 mm. In order to achieve maximum heat exchange surface area while maintaining compact dimensions, the device is shaped like a coil or the register is made sectional.

The choice of steel pipes for installation work is not accidental, as they are easy to cook with household welding machines.

Tip: In order to make a register, it is not necessary to go to the metal base to purchase new pipes. After all, to perform the planned work, you can use old pipes that have no visible defects caused by mechanical deformations or corrosion.

Configuration of homemade devices

Home-made heating radiators made of copper or steel can be made in two design options:

• Sectional registers consisting of straight pipes of large diameter with hermetic plugs at the ends connected by tubes with a smaller cross-sectional diameter.
• Serpentine registers with an S-shape or a more complex configuration.

Important: For optimal heat transfer, the coil register configuration should have a distance between adjacent pipes 5 cm larger than their diameter.

Let us consider in more detail the structural features of the listed configurations:

• Sectional register consists of several pipes arranged horizontally.

For circulation of the coolant, the horizontal elements of the register are interconnected by pipes of a smaller diameter. As a result, the coolant begins to move along the upper pipe, reaching the connecting pipe, through which it flows into the downstream section, and so on.

In the factory version, such constructions are made for heating entrances and other ancillary facilities, where aesthetics of the appearance of the device are not so important.

Inlet and outlet connections are made threaded. In some cases, to speed up installation work, the pipes are simply welded tightly.

The location of the transition pipes is chosen as close as possible to the end of the section. This is done for better circulation of the coolant and to ensure greater strength of the composite structure.

Optimal materials for self-assembly sectional registers are galvanized steel pipes with an inner diameter of 76-160 mm. The design should be boiled so that the tightness of the seams is maintained at an operating pressure of up to 13 atm.

Important: The optimal configuration of the register is the construction in which there are no more than 3 horizontal sections. Excessive accumulation of sections will lead to a decrease in the efficiency of circulation of heated air inside the room.

• Coil registers are structurally similar to the selection analogue. The main difference lies in the fact that the function of the jumper here is performed by the bending of the main pipe.

A significant drawback of coil structures is the difficulty of self-assembly, since it is difficult to bend large diameter pipes and therefore it is necessary to boil two knees at each bend.

As a result, the welded structure is complicated by the large number of seams, which may adversely affect the durability and tightness of the register.

Nevertheless, the S-shaped configuration of the registers is an order of magnitude more efficient than the horizontal sections, since both the horizontal and vertical parts of the radiator participate in heating the air in the room. Moreover, due to the constant diameter in coil radiators, the hydraulic resistance is much lower than in sectional counterparts.

Selection of materials

The duration of the service life, heat transfer, and finally, the price of an improvised radiator depends largely on the correctness of the selection of production materials.

The choice of production materials is carried out in accordance with such criteria as ease of machining, simplicity and quality of welding, resistance to corrosion processors and price. In addition, if the radiator is going to be used in the bathroom as a towel dryer, the pipe should look good.

The conclusion can be made the following:

• When assembling heating devices for operation and in porches, garages and other utility rooms, it is advisable to use smooth-walled pipes of ordinary structural steel grade St-3. The wall thickness should be 2 mm, both for the strength of the whole structure and for the best quality of the weld.
• To assemble a heated towel rail, it is advisable to purchase more expensive stainless steel pipes AISI 304 (passport designation 08Х17М10). As a result, a ready-made coil, on condition of a high-quality assembly, will look great due to the shiny surface and at the same time will last an order of magnitude longer than the analogue assembled from black metal due to greater corrosion resistance.

The assembly instructions for the radiator also depend on the type of materials used. For example, pipes made of conventional structural steel are cooked with conventional electrodes. For assembly of stainless steel structures, it is better to use argon welding, since the use of conventional electrodes will not allow to obtain a neat and externally attractive seam.

Conclusion

So, we found out what kinds of homemade radiators you can assemble yourself. In addition, we learned with the use of what materials should be assembled. Things are simple, it remains to purchase the necessary materials and assemble the heater with your own hands.

Do you have any questions requiring additional explanations? In this case, we recommend to watch the video in this article.