The hot air rising out of the top of the radiator creates a small vacuum behind it, which "pulls" the cool air into the bottom of the radiator. Since hot air is less dense than cool air, it rises (think hot air balloon). The air is heated across the heating elements before being exhausted at the top. Baseboard heaters are designed such that cool air enters them at the bottom. Instead, I decided to take advantage of natural convection by constructing a "chimney" on top of the baseboard. However, such a system could easily overheat if the fans were to fail. My initial thought was to build a shroud with small fans to pull hot air away from the baseboard. However, since it wasn't practical to move all of these electronics to another location, I realized that I would need to build a heat management system for the baseboard. At this point I finally realized what I had done in placing the TV and printer stand directly in front of the baseboard. Sometime this Spring I pulled the printer forward and realized that a small plastic cover at the bottom rear of the printer was alarmingly melted. Since the baseboard hot air exhaust is directly behind the slot, the high temperature here was to be expected. Last winter there was nothing in this slot, which was a good thing as I often noticed that the air temperature in the slot was very high. The printer stand was created with a slot in it below the printer. The back of the printer was only around an inch above the baseboard. I build this stand so that the back of the printer would actually overhand the baseboard. To the right of the TV stand I build a lower stand to support our large laser printer. I didn't think much of this when we moved in, and ended up placing the solid TV stand directly up against the baseboard. In our apartment the only place for our TV (and all associated electronics) is directly in front of one of the electric baseboard heaters in our living room.
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