"5 more minutes and we can swap"

Its intended purpose is to get a little warm. There's a massive difference between a little warm and actual combustion. And we're discussing this because people that deny science in favor of "having a feeling" are fucking everywhere now, and they're doing a lot of harm. You being afraid of things you don't understand isn't much different than people fearing vaccines or GMO's without checking the readily available scientific consensus on how things actually work. Do you know how many laws and building codes there are to prevent your house from burning down? Do you realize how much testing happens? A radiator system will never, even if it's malfunctioning, carry enough heat through those pipes to start a fire. Electrical fires happen all the time, but you won't see a house fire start because the already guarded off radiator that's designed to get to a cozy 70 degrees just randomly started making 6 times as much heat.

Long before it got to that point the solder on the copper pipes would fail, the steam pressure would force them apart at the joint, the steam would leak, and there would be nothing left to pull heat over to your 3 feet of couch touching the outside of the sheath that's an inch of air away from the tips of the 2 inches of metal fins separating that air from the copper which holds in that hot water which can't get even half way hot enough to start a fire. There's already an outer sheath on the radiator keeping anything from touching the actual heating elements of it, that's what the outside shroud is. You don't need to worry about touching the outside of a shroud whose sole purpose is making a safe barrier.

/r/AnimalsBeingJerks Thread Parent Link - i.imgur.com