Harry wrote:
The problem with the heat isn't the size of the furnace but forced hot air and one heating zone. Our house is very well insulated and receives a ton of sunlight. For instance, when I left the house at 6am yesterday, I turned the thermostat down from 70 to 63. When I came home at 4:30, it was only down to 65 despite the weather being in the 30's all day. When I turned the thermostat up to 70, it only took 30-45 minutes to heat the upstairs before it turned off, which did little for the basement. I supposed I could add some more vents down there but unless I turn the thermostat up to 80+, I don't suspect it would make much of a difference.
The problem is air circulation, If you did not put a return air duct in the room, the inlet can only let air to replace the air that leaves, and depending on doors etc, there may be little room for air to escape and therefore compared to the rest of the house, that I will assume was done by a professional and is balanced, very little of that hot air is getting in the room, hence why running the furnace for 30 min heated the entire rest of the house (xxx sq ft) but didn't make a dent in the small basement space. Most houses (especially ones built say before 2000ish - again depending on building style and builder knowledge) do not have enough return air ducts. I would expect if you put in a return air duct to that room you would notice a big improvement.
I think someone mentioned running your fan during the day, yeah if your furnace is not running much in a day (sounds like you may only have it running for a couple hours a day) you might want to have the fan run more. I personally don't buy into the whole daily temperature changes, for many reasons; first as you experience if you set a huge drop during the day, the furnace wont move and air wont circulate, then if you have a huge jump up the furnace is going to have to run continuously for a long time, makes it hard to size the furnace and get good air flow. Then you have the fact that your temp is making big swings and so may your humidity, and wood objects don't like that so your adding a lot of daily stress to anything in your house that is wood. Finally I am not sure in a well sealed house how much your actually saving, since your heat loss is not much (Heat loss is a factor of delta temp so the closer the outdoor and indoor temps the slower the house leaves that's the idea) but if there isnt much loss the delta savings is small, just instead of injecting a small amount of energy several times a day and getting the balance of circulating that air you just burn a bunch of energy at the end to bring everything back up to temp. Then you have cold furniture and warm air (since it will take long for objects to heat up). I also wonder if you think your getting tons of solar heating during the day, are those rooms much warmer than the rooms that don't get much sun all day long (again if your furnace isnt move the air there wont be much mixing)
Anyhow, enjoy the new room sounds like a great hang out.
Just Triing
Triathlete since 9:56:39 AM EST Aug 20, 2006.
Be kind English is my 2nd language. My primary language is Dave it's a unique evolution of English.