Outside 90 Degree Corners

Baseboard heater covers have to mimic the layout of the baseboard heaters themselves at every turn. There are two standard turning angles in residential construction in North America; 90 degrees and 135 degrees (also known as a bay window corner). This post will focus on the outside 90 degree angle.

A rare species of baseboard heater cover, the rarely photographed outside 90 degree corner, is often a sign of poor planning when the finned tube element was laid out. While inside 90 degree corners are extremely common, the 3" protrusion created at an outside corner is just begging to be kicked, tripped over and generally in the way of foot traffic. For this reason, having two hydronic baseboard heaters meet at an outside 90 degree relationship is a bad idea.

But that doesn't mean there's not a significant number of them out there. As always, Baseboarders has this accessory covered, but with a catch - the outside 90 degree corner is only offered in Baseboarders Premium. What do you do if you prefer Basic or Elliptus product lines?

The work around is shown in the photo. Notice the copper pipe that takes an outside 90 degree turn shown in the yellow box. Ideally we have this fully covered using the Premium OC001 and OC003 (Premium TALL), but for Elliptus and Basic we need to position a pair of open endcaps as shown. To complicate matters, Basic is not offered with an open style endcap. In this case hand shears can be used to cut a void in the side of the endcap. Once the two endcaps are placed at the end of each run, the copper elbow will still be exposed. The simplest way to finish this bit would be to paint the copper in the same semi-gloss white to match the covers. Of course your own creativity could result in any number of other brilliant solutions to cover up the pipe.