Old house no heat upstairs. Services only the upstairs.

Old house no heat upstairs etc. As a last try, I opened the upstairs zone valve and left it opened. If I turn on the air conditioner up there, the rooms upstairs get cooled down. With the in floor heat in the basement (workshop, bathroom, laundry and a spair bedroom and main entrance to the house) we try and keep it around 18ish degrees. Rest of house in low 70's, comfortable, but that room at 66 vents have been changed but does nothing --all valves are open totally the cellar main has one vent at very end of main the cellar main runs with length of house then turns right across the width of house. They’re universally mediocre at best and no where near as good as even a cheap window unit. In our old house, which was smaller, but also 1. Between the floor is I'm no expert but in my 200+ year old house in Maine, there are floor vents in many strategic spaces. There’s one ceiling vent in the upstairs bedroom and another ceiling vent in the upstairs bathroom, both of which blow cool air. We currently use space heaters to heat the 3 bedrooms on the second floor. A professionally installed upgraded furnace will ensure that your home is getting sufficient heat and that you can have a comfortable living space throughout the year. The window AC conditions the air in a central room. No wall furnace, no baseboard heaters, nothing. Once it started to get cold, we noticed that it's signifigantly colder upstairs than the rest of the house. I think it was part of the original You're talking about basements as well. Story as old as time. We have a natural gas furnace, but no ducts, so it just spews hot air into the great room. There are 5 radiators upstairs - 3 are ice cold, 1 has about 2 fins warming up, Uneven heat in your home is typically caused by one or more of three factors: poor airflow in your heating system, inadequate insulation, or air in your home. If it's very sunny out the front of the house just BAKES from about 12-7 pm. Add to that the sometimes exorbitant cost of heating oil, electricity, or natural gas, I live in “the house that Jack built” – it’s colonial and the entire upstairs has no return vents for Heating and Cooling. I'm using one Energy Star window AC to heat and cool my house. And what about say a garage? A garage, we're going to have something a little different. You get used to whatever you have. I have a 2 story home and cannot get heat to the 2nd story anymore. Services only the upstairs. The above diagram is of Cheapest way to heat upstairs. Releasing the air restores efficiency. tacocat8675 • Heat rises. Second floor heat triggers AC. When this is the case, the airflow on the entire floor can be compromised. They help, but I'm looking to do better. I've checked the vents, they're all open downstairs. The first branch (1” Pex) off the main manifold supplies straight boiler water to the plenum HE in the basement of the old house. I don't really understand how these things are supposed to work, but there are grates in the floors upstairs that are supposed to allow the heat to rise and heat the bedrooms. The home has one 3-ton central a/c with the thermostat being downstairs. The way the system is designed, the two return air openings combine and provided a Boilers - Home Heating Steam and Hot Water Systems - no heat upstairs baseboards - Looking for advice on how to troubleshoot a heat issue. Top. I live in a 100 year old house with a steam boiler that was replaced in the last 5 years. My wife and I have 2 kids and a 3rd on the way. we are looking at buying a house that has a stone fireplace in the living room and a place in the basement to connect a woodstove, the house is 1456 sq ft on one floor and the basement is same sq. Old green riveted steel tank. There are two zones of heat: one for an extension to the house and the second zone heats the main part of the house which is two stories tall. I have a central heat and air heat pump basically no longer used. AC turns on. As far as I can tell there are no operational problems with the A/C, though I'm not an HVAC expert. Thermostat right under air I live in a 1920s masonry row house that has one vent going to each of the three upstairs bedrooms and four vents on the first floor. The idea is to have that air move through the whole house. Because the house is so old, I’m sure your ancestors or the previous owners figured that as long as you heat the wood stove on the first floor, the heat rises a With an old unremodeled house, you will not have good comfort upstairs. I can fix BMW with the most f’d up driveability problem but I can’t figure out a 100yr old steam radiator lol. It seems to me humidity will be a problem if there is no air flow upstairs with the heat and AC turned off. It was in the basement and the heat would rise via a 3 ' x 3' grate in the floor. The floor registers actually worked as cold air returns. Moving heat upstairs is less a concern than moving it horizontal back through the first floor because of the big open There is no other air return on that wall upstairs or downstairs. 5 AC unit is too small, and I should upgrade to a bigger unit. was wondering if placing a woodstove in the basement wood supply enough heat to the main living floor to heat without having to install Divide your home into at least two heating/cooling zones, the upstairs and downstairs (if you have a two-story home) so that you can cool and heat them at different temperatures. Energy efficiency: Heat pumps are generally more efficient, especially in milder climates. Turned electricity back, turned on heating in both zones. I realize a lot of that depends on how well the house is insulated but still, it’s expensive and I OPTION 2. Yeah, definitely. You’re assuming that the windows are only open for the same amount of time it would take to heat If you bought an older '50s house from a shitty DIY previous owner who had a lien against the home you could run into the issue where a second AC unit was installed upstairs to keep the upstairs cooler, and was ripped out with the I’ve noticed that the basement and main floor receive a lot of heat and air conditioning, but the upstairs does not get much air force out of the vents. Thoughts on removing this vent and installing a house fan to vent the upstairs to the attic? The lazy route - thinking about just popping open the attic door on hot days. During the winter, your furnace is probably the most important appliance in your home. If so, try turning the TRV's off on the upstairs radiators to see if it forces the downstairs rads to heat up. Lifespan: Furnaces typically last longer but require more maintenance. Unlike central air systems that distribute air through ducts, ductless systems consist of one or more indoor air-handling We remodeled our 150 year old farm house two years ago and put a second forced air furnace upstairs. They can be closed our opened depending on where you'd like the heat to go. In the winter it’s about 10-15° cooler upstairs with heat on downstairs. If I run the blower to try and redistribute air around the house I lose a ton of heat through the ducts into the attic. We assumed it was just blocked vents etc. unstartable Posts: 238 Joined: Thu Aug 10, 2017 5:19 pm. So the heat was much warmer when it was one. New homeowner here so this is my first winter in the house and first hot water system. MagnuM BC-AC Corn Burning Stove (SOLD OUT) contact 800-495-3196; Country Flame Harvester Corn Burning Agri-fuel Stove (SOLD OUT) (contact 800-495-3196 ) I have a 1938 house. I learned about them in Ireland when staying in an old place without central heat. About $15 grand to replace 2 doors 4 years ago). Daylight Savings Time To-Do’s #1030171. You could confirm that with a smoking candle wick. No heat on upper floors is almost always a pressure issue. I have a 1,300 sq ft 2-story home built in 1910 where the upstairs is only about 250 sq ft (one small bedroom and a bathroom upstairs). On a hot-water unit, let the air out. Moving woodstove heat upstairs. It had a gravity feed furnace, which was replaced in 2012 with a new oil burner. however, it takes a ton of wood for just a small amount of heat to go upstairs. The previous owners claim it has never been an issue and doesn’t get too cold up there. If you want to heat the upstairs, good li The opposite is in the summer time. Maybe 3. 5 story 1600 sq. It’s best to hire a professional to set up your heating and cooling zones, but you can try to duplicate the effect of this yourself by close a few (not all) of the There can be a problem if the upstairs has only a few windows and there is a lot of hallway space between windows. Replaced old doors (again, old house = odd size, stone house = crazy labor. Added insulated garage door (unfortunately old house = odd size). In the summer we close all downstairs vents and leave only the upstairs open. We use ceiling fans and closed events in rooms that we don’t need. The upstairs consists of 2 closets, a bathroom, and 2 bedrooms. No furnace. Best location of a first floor stove puts it 7-9' from door into middle addition, and we'd have a door fan to help move heat through to that space. With the fan on, it just blows air, no hot air. They work well for me. We added a 1. converted the upstairs kitchen to a bathroom, and made the old upstairs bath a laundry room. It works well for heating the downstairs because it’s all one room. But I don't want to do something stupid, so I'm asking here. 300+ feet of pipe in all, but it is sure working nice now. In summer, when the air conditioner is running, set the upstairs in fan mode. linolem floor hurt the feet. AC turns off. The main floor is cooling great but the cool air barely makes a dent upstairs. In our old house with only a single air handler we do the opposite of the advice you received above and close all upstairs vents in the winter as heating the downstairs will heat the upstairs. Get the latest This Old House news, trusted tips, tricks, and DIY Smarts My house is on two separate zones, upstairs and downstairs. It's 3 bedrooms upstairs each with 1 supply but doesn't look like it has any returns. We must do that, but I thought that an old filter could reduce efficiency but not stop the heat from working entirely on a floor. I'd like to run a duct pipe through a I’m totally with you. It was pretty scary looking, as you could see metal under the grate that would turn red when the heat was on. If you take a branch and split it, the section from the trunk to the split needs to be sized correct, and other design considerations to keep the air flow balanced, which is hard to do if the branch from the split is very short (low-resistance) to the kitchen and the other the 2nd floor is longer. Due to the nature of gravity, weather, wear and tear on building materials, and other environmental concerns, an older house can develop gaps around windows and doors that were originally tight, and cracks and crevices in floors and ceilings that can allow heat to escape and cold to enter. In houses without adequate insulation or ventilation, this effect is even more pronounced, turning the second floor into the warmest part of the Built in the 1930s. We're going to have a Yep, hotter upstairs is normal because heat rises. Ideally, you would pull cold air from downstairs through your furnace and push the warmed air back out in the downstairs. House has been blower door tested and is (for a old house) very tight and well insulated. My parents house is 1946. 5 year old and a new band member on the way in 2 weeks. Also, the pipe on the upside of the TACO valve remains slightly warm at best. My problem: The house is a 1 1/2 story with one room upstairs that's 160 sq. Since the hot air rises, it won't flow directly across to the return, or at least most of it. I don't see any leaks from the furnace or from any pipes aroundthe house. (Forgive me, I'm posting several questions today after a second look at a 1916 foursquare that I really, really would like to buy. The following is information on the house: All windows upstairs are new Anderson double pane, put in 2008 Furnace is 75,000 btu installed 1981 Lenox central A/C installed 1998 The upstairs is 2 bedrooms, small hallway, jack and jill bathroom There is 3 heat vents (1 in each room), 1 return (bathroom) For hot-water heat, consider radiant floor heat or a kick heater under the vanity cabinet—this is a small blower unit that converts the warmth from your hot-water-heating system into warmed air for the bathroom. There are three large return ducts on the first floor but none on the second. Heat and ac work in the first two levels but the third level where the bedrooms are I get no heat or central air. Already have ceiling fans. Keeping a window open upstairs can give hot air a place to go; I do this through the Spring and into the summer to delay using the AC but when it gets too hot this won't work as well. If there is absolutely no air at all coming out of the vents upstairs something might’ve happened to the ductwork that’s gonna be a nightmare depending on how it’s all been installed. Look like parquet and I see the patches that you're talking about. I have a 2600 ft house with a single stage furnace and 61 year old ducting (uninsulated and leaky). Downstairs kept heating, but upstairs still no heat and pipe remained cold after zone valve. A few and then add as needed. How to Get Heat Upstairs in an Old House? Old house with NO heat upstairs. So, when the previous owners converted everything over from the old radiators to baseboard heat, where the pipes came up previously, they left us with these nice holes. I've found that I can keep the house several degrees warmer by not running the blower and sealing off all the vents. We live in a very cold climate in the US and moved into a new house earlier this year. Why heat pumps are the best way to heat an old house; Basically, in this guide, you’ll learn how to finally get warm in your old house and end the winter thermostat wars. Reply reply My house is over 100 years old, stone exterior with new insulation throughout and it's primarily heated via radiators. The ducting is only r6, and it's a large ranch so there's probably close to 200 feet of ducts laid up. Can I add a window AC in a house with central AC (old rental house, poor insulation) A subreddit for honest questions and kind advice, homeowner empowerment, and the happenings and fun of heat pumps. Caulk the edges between the door and window frames My small house was built in 1950. This house feels warmer with the thermostat set to 65F than our old one did at 70F. You can feel a bit of it if you put your hands by the floor registers, but otherwise nada. I check the furnace and I hear it turn on but no heat upstairs in any of the rooms. We’re going to wait and see how it is this winter and potentially use a space heater if necessary, but want to Still lots of questions about this old 1931 house my son bought. There is no ductwork and no crawl space. Is this typical? I'm in NJ. Ok we've been living in this house for almost a year and have been living in a room down stairs because there is NO heat upstairs at all. with living spaces downstairs and up. ) Ready to stop watching TV in a parka? Let’s Here are eight simple tasks you can take on to keep your house warm and cozy all winter. You will need an opening in the floor front Sorry. When the system is HOT, the pressure will typically be about 5-8 PSI higher if the expansion tank is properly sized and maintained. With the heat on in the finished basement it’s currently 66 despite the amount of heat going into it An $8,000 to $10,000 price tag isn’t unusual for a high-velocity air-conditioning retrofit in an old house. gasdoc. This will also balance the temps through the house when you run the fan without heat on. this impending summer we can’t do the same thing. Heat rises, so if you don't have a return upstairs, guess where that heat stays? You need to get the return moved to upstairs. Temperatures are lowering and last night we decided to turn on the heat. for context, it’s an old hamilton home on the eastside. We have not replaced the air filter upstairs for some time. Life changing for an old cold house :) My favorite part of old house renovation is sourcing period correct I bought a 1800 square foot, two-storey house a couple years back. Lower floor is also good (baseboard heaters in two rooms). Thermostat location issues: If your thermostat is located on the ground floor, it may shut off your air conditioner system prematurely, leaving the second floor hotter than the first. 3. Definitely lay into the 70° minimum temp standard. So all the heat from your house will migrate upstairs. I'd like to have return air added to the second floor, but for at least one of the I just bought a 99 year old house that has gas baseboard heat but does not have any heat in the upstairs (3 bedrooms and a bathroom up there). There is no return upstairs. I just put on an addition with all infloor heat. We recently got a house last year and we knew there was no heat upstairs, we figured it was just clogged vents, something with the ductwork etc well we come to find out both bedrooms upstairs have 1 RETURN vent in each room, but no supply vents anywhere upstairs. When it calls for heat, the motor on the pump turns. Home has a Burnham boiler less than 10 years old that supplies heat and hot water to the house. Downstairs though, is like a freezer door left open. There are no vents leading to the second floor, but my first No, with any of these modern ones, you could have to have a third wire at least a power and and a modern system with a heating AC would need at least five wires and that's where the challenge comes because it isn't always that easy to run new wires of fish new wires down to the furnace wherever it is alright but there is a device that actually Why Do Old Houses Get So Hot? These conditions in an old house can cause it to become hot when the outdoor temperature rises: Lack or absence of insulation – old houses pre-1960s probably do not contain insulation in the walls, This past week, my mother came to town so we turned the upstairs one on auto to 70 deg to match downstairs. I have 8 radiators in the house, 4 on each floor. In another old farmhouse I'm familiar with, the owners had Poor air circulation: If a two-story house has no ceiling fans in the upstairs rooms, warm air can become trapped. and has no duct work going upstairs and gets cold in the winter. No doors so my DW hung 2 wool blankets over the front door. Overall, deciding whether or not steam heat will work for you If your furnace is old and outdated, it may be tough to get heat upstairs. This was an entry level house, not luxury by any means. We had this issue. This is because the heat attempts to balance out the environment’s Boiler troubleshoot: no heat upstairs. I hear air blowing upstairs, but it is cold air. I love it. So, these are the floors you wrote me about. Robert_25 Member Posts: 550. Sorry. My house doesn’t have heat or AC, so I adjust my activity and clothing accordingly. Larger ACs like 12k btu can draw a constant 10 amps and you might find old oxidized connections significantly heat up under these conditions and could present a fire risk. Heat in extension zone and first floor of main house and domestic hot water are fine, the issue is with a Recently moved into an old house (built 1884) and upstairs is significantly warmer/colder than the rest of the house. The lower level may have warm radiators but all the higher levels have cold radiators. The kitchen and living room will only read 67 and bathroom 68. The house is about 2300sqft. But it’s an amazing resource filled with technical knowledge, inspiration and quite frankly, old house eye-candy, for old house enthusiasts. In 72 when I built our first log house we got 6' of snow on Nov 6 and had to move in. The 6 radiators downstairs are heating up perfectly fine but upstairs has been cold. [toc] Why Upstairs is Hotter than Downstairs Hot Air Rises. This is a common problem that can be solved a few different ways. Plug the air leaks around the Live in a 100+ year old house in SW Ohio that used to have a gravity fed furnace, I think. The only vents upstairs in one in the hall way which is more like a hole with a vent put over it. Some rooms get super hot and cold in winter. We're roughly the same heights as you and your partner too. Pipes to the 2nd floor run through an exterior wall and it's been very cold the past few days (-20 over night). My upstairs heating zone is not activating. One of the first floor vents is on one of the three ducts leading upstairs. Heat rises, which is why the upstairs is hot. Then this summer we decided to put in an OWB, so I ran pipe from my basement furnance up to the second floor laundry room to hit the hot water heater and then into the attic to get over to my second furnace. So if I set my upstairs to 70, my kitchen sits around 78. True, it doesn’t get below freezing We have Google Nest, and the upstairs level is set to 67F, but it is only 51F. We obviously can't all keep sleeping in the same room but we rent and our contract isn't up for How to Get Heat Upstairs in an Old House? Old houses may not have a complete heating system that heats an entire home, so the upper floor and some rooms can suffer from extreme cold during winter. The second law of thermodynamics means that heat will be attracted to cold air. My landlord recently replaced the entire system. This magazine has been around for decades. I have closed half of the upstairs ones in an effort to force more air downstairs to those vents but, it's hopeless. Today we have no heat upstairs. My bedroom is directly above the cookstove in the kitchen downstairs. 1 / 9. No more problems with AC working properly upstairs. The enclosed fireplace works great to hear the whole house. Basement, first floor, second floor, every level. How To Choose the Right Insulation for Your Old House. The upstairs is the attic. The thermostat seems to be working. But in order to get some of that heat upstairs, what you might want to do is think about putting in some floor registers in the upstairs that maybe you can close off. If no flow, heat will rise and cool will sink. Air leak is sort of the house as it exists? No insulation. I bought a pretty high end unit and I live in a older house with central air. There’s no real heat source. Hi, I just bought a two family house, two story house with basement that has one very old American Standard boiler from the 1950s. This doesn't seem to be a huge deal in the winter but in the summer it gets very hot upstairs. With renovations including insulation and air sealing I can get it sub 70F if I want. . No forced hot water heat in upstairs zone; Author: Chuck Bradley (MA) I have forced hot water heat from Beckett burner and Peerless boiler for a two floor house with two zones, one for each floor. That's why I'm asking for advice. On the main floor, no problem (direct vent gas wall furnace). 2 bed, 1 bath downstairs. I changed the air filters this morning with no improvement. Instead, you use a heat source that’s located on the bottom floor. Ok, ok, this isn’t exactly a book. These systems worked well in the winter with the slow steady heat, but now with higher heat and AC systems relying on air movement and requiring air returns for proper airflow these setups work aren't ideal. In our new house, the gas furnace never gets very warm, at least not compared to what we were used to. I know it's an old house (late 1800s-early 1900s). Watch out for your wiring in an old house. The complaint was no heat upstairs. Goodman heat pump with two zones controlled by Braeburn 140202 Zone Control Panel. The upstairs hallways are closed off. it’s been a year since we bought & moved into our house. Basics of the system: We have a boiler which circulates hot water thru baseboard copper pipes to provide heat to the house. It worked like a charm. Upstairs is a 2+1 and a bathroom. Six months later, we made our deadline—with an extension to finish the siding. in a nut shell, Each story has its own thermostat that controls the furnace fan for that particular damper. Leaving ac on upstairs will flow downstairs and mix with downstairs air, and if the windows are open to hot air (sitting in 4" of snow as I write this so hard to shift brain to cooling), the cold will blow out the house. historic house museum with dependencies in New England. My upstairs is usually cold in the winter. I had one contractor in the house that said given how much air can be pushed, all vents should be open, because the system faces less resistance and This thread brought back some old memories. Selecting the appropriate insulation for your old house depends on various factors, including the area being insulated, your budget, and local climate conditions. In for years the radiator in one upstairs bedroom at best gets lukewarm, and even then only in a few finns. You could even close all the TRV's and open one radiator at a time to see if each one heats up. There was literally no insulation for about 4ft of the attic across the length of the house. The original heat was a wood fireplace and a wood stove, both still in place. klank55 • This is definitely most unusual as 2nd floors typically have no problem with heat as hot air rises. Is it possible that orifices are installed and delay the What I think your looking for is a gravity heat set up . 16. Let the stairwell handle brining the heat upstairs. Changed the whole feeling of the house in the summer and winter. Then you need to find out where your HVAC returns are located. Hello, Thanks for all the help, I have found other threads quite interesting! I have a 1. It’s already getting cold where I live (below 40°f in the morning) but I don İn the end, one smart old boy, plumber, ran a separate wider pipe feed, from boiler upstairs, to the down stairs rads. I was told this by my contractor who finished my basement in my old house, who I consider knowledgeable, but take it with a grain of salt) Primary target is the old brick part of the house, 2x400 sq ft floors. It was also heated with fuel oil. then used insulated flexible ducting in attic that ran to ceiling vents on the other bedrooms Cool air sinks, so we adjust the dampers in the spring to blow most of the AC upstairs. You can test this during an open house by asking the realtor to turn the heat up in the house and listening to the pipes during the tour. Brother two has ~2000 house. Since it's a 1. If the ducts were all pre-existing, for heat-only I just bought a townhome in Victoria, BC. Unless you're expecting any heat upstairs to be a "bonus" while the stove heats a room in your basement, you would likely benefit greatly in moving it to your main living level. The house upstairs would be lukewarm, The upstairs of our old house is sweltering despite central air. Topics related to heat pump HVAC, air conditioning, air and water heating and cooling. This book touches every dream and nightmare of an old house fixer-upper. General Heating Q & A. The upstairs intake vent is in a hallway about 15 feet in, away from the vaulted ceiling areas. Don't get rid of that. If you're cold, the heat is cranked, and your upstairs neighbors are hot, the insulation between the units isn't sufficient and needs to be remedied. the upstairs is a sauna during the summer. All sorted now. After the job the entire upstairs ceiling would be at what ever temp the mini splits are set to. What’s the most economical way to rectify this? Install a Floor Vent to Heat Upstairs. It's just cold. The system is a 1920's gravity flow (?) gas fired hot water with cast iron radiators in a 2 story house. Cold Air Return Problems. The heat rises into my office upstairs and we keep the bedroom cool with the door closed. It's so much easier to heat than our old house. Also no active heating upstairs, no. Furnace Repair – The Basics. Heat pump hardware is relatively cheap: $1,500 each for a few condenser boxes and blowers Hi everyone, my mom 's house is cold,. Opened upstairs zone valve. half of the upstairs has vaulted ceilings with no vents at all. footage and completely open. There is a single 11"x13" return vent at the base of the stairs on the first floor. like before forced air. Something to do loss of pressure, to many rads, on one system. 2beds, 2bath upstairs and 1 bed, 1 bath downstairs. If you have dual returns, you can block the one upstairs when heating and block the one downstairs when cooling. The other is open to a small room so no need for a blower. Each floor has it's own thermostat and return air grill/filter. The thermostat indicates that it is calling for heat ( Heat On ), but the boiler doesn't seem to fire up. Up stairs, we’ve got nothing. 4 bed, 2 bath upstairs, half bath downstairs. 1830 sq. 1st floor, no problems. Put three of those monsters in the basement and you won’t have to run the heat! /s No return upstairs is a huge problem. ft house, nothing fancy. how to keep warm in historic house. We are getting heat upstairs but downstairs nothing. 5 stories, about 1300 square feet, on a concrete slab. (Plus, you’ll get all the information you need about the best way to heat a home, no matter what year your house was built. First floor cools and second floor heats up again. Therefor, we use a space heater at night since it’s super cold up there. and does anyone know how expensive it is to run a heat vent upstairs? So the downstairs thermostat controls the upstairs heating and vice-versa. I'm wondering what the general opinion is of those heat-reducing window films (such as from 3M or You could emulate the old hot air gravity furnaces by floor grates above your stove and then cut in smaller floor grates around the perimeter walls. When I go to bed, I turn the downstairs zone down to 64, and go upstairs, where it will usually be at 72 or 73 just from all the heat downstairs rising (or maybe it's still blowing heat upstairs because the damper isn't great?) Check the pipes a bit further from the boiler, heat can travel pretty well from conduction alone. Yup. That said should I be closing some vents in the house to drive more air to the upstairs or does that actually work against me. If you’re installing a new upstairs bathroom—or need to replace the main drainpipe down to the basement in an existing We had a situation in our old house where the thermostat was in a hallway, and didn't do a good job of setting the temperature in our bedroom. The temperature is significantly different between the main floor and upper floor. I have 3 beds and a bath upstairs and 2 beds and a bath downstairs. however, The old house has two stories with forced air. If none heat up downstairs when upstairs are off, it sounds like you may be on two zones and it could be a fault with the zone valve In the video above, Ask This Old House plumbing and heating expert Richard Trethewey, walks you through a house with a steam heating system. Having individual branches per register is the normal way to do it. This problem is constant though. No heat upstairs from gas boiler/finned tube baseboard radiators . But this turreted Queen Anne caught the eye of a young couple with a gutsy plan to revive it. Brother has ~1940 house. Rather than generate heat itself like an electric water heater, a heat pump water heater transfers heat from the air around it—a process that consumes less energy. Dampers send cool air upstairs, second floor cools. We’ve broken down exactly why the upstairs gets so hot during the summer, and what can be done to alleviate the sweltering frustration. Changed over to LP in about 92. Sometimes a small fan can move heat around, when used with a space heater. we have a 2. I’m guessing you have a similar problem. 0. 5 story 1920 house in Minneapolis. The Best Whole-House Fans to Beat the Summer Heat in 2024 The Best Whole-House Preface this by saying I’m at my wits end with this. It heated the small 2 story house fairly well but a lot of heat was wasted by having it down there. Q&A. Yes. on our old farm house, we put a 60000 btu 90+ furnace in the corner of a small room. 5 ton heat pump with air handler in the attic. Bought a new house last month and it has 3 levels. It's a small house, around 1300 sq ft for main floor and upstairs. Hopefully you have at least 1 downstairs and 1 upstairs. This will suck up the cold air and displace it with warm air. All of the supply vents (first and second floor) are located towards the center of the house. Heaty cooly, no polluty! Sister subreddit to r/DIYHeatPumps. Once the door is open you can obviously feel the hot air rushing out of the upstairs into the attic space. Heating a Split-Level Home. Factors To Consider. A few plumbers have come by and suggested changing the furnace Heat pumps move existing heat from the outside to the indoors, even in cold weather. My assumption is that it was built as "affordably" as possible. Half bath in unfinished basement. Re: Upstairs Floor is Heat pump water heaters offer an innovative and energy-efficient way to provide hot water in homes. If you have a two-story home, chances are you have felt the frustration of not being able to get enough heat upstairs. The boiler is approx 5 years old and was I don’t know if there is a definitive answer but the upstairs get hot during the summer and uncomfortable. With the loan in hand we were able grew up in an upstairs with zero heat,,,no floor registers,,,no ducts any where,,AND that stair door better stay closed always. Sadly, that open stairwell is fighting against you. Installation costs: Heat pumps may have higher upfront costs but lower operating costs. We have forced air, gas heat and AC. My 1 story house with an attic was absolutely unable to maintain sub 80F air temperature with working central air, it would run 24/7 and only get dib 80 on a cooler night. We moved into the house and the first summer before we did the insulation job the upstairs ceilings would get to 136 degrees as read by a laser thermometer. we only have two bedrooms upstairs & both bedrooms have a return vent, but no supply vent? Can someone make this make sense for me. That is how the heat worked in homes over 100 years ago. When choosing insulation for your old house, keep these factors in mind: R-value requirements for your Avoid the portable AC units with hoses. ft. My only other experience is in a plumbing-flood susceptible, condo, susceptible condo, and in each of my three floods management quickly brought in ServPro with huge blowers and industrial dehumidifier. In the summer, it’s about 20° hotter upstairs even with windows open and fans on. What Is a Ductless AC System? Ductless AC systems operate differently from traditional AC units. At night when she leaves the windows open - she says that because heat rises and the upstairs windows are the only open ones, that there is negligible/no energy loss and it’s a natural way to heat/cool the house. If I keep the bedroom door closed during the day, I will notice at least a 10 Hi all, I live in a 3 story townhouse and our upstairs is so hot! I’m trying to correct this problem, but unsure what will provide the best bang for the buck The house was built in 1989. These were bare copper pipes). Our upstairs stays 3-5F warmer than downstairs even with all vents closed. Reply reply or, at least as likely, air leakage from the attic into the house. ( the previous homeowner removed the woodstove and closed up that chimney). 5 story, much of the upstairs ceiling is only separated from the roof deck by 4" (filled with cellulose by prior owner). Pull all your curtains and blinds at night, but open a few on the sunny side of ~100 year old house and no visible mold. Are there can lights in the ceiling upstairs? Another common culprit is a poorly sealed attic For a two-story house, the general rule of thumb is to set each thermostat two degrees Fahrenheit apart from each other. 7200 sq. You'd want your upstairs return blocked, and your downstairs return open. When i was a kid I thought it must be a gateway to hell and the devil lived inside the big rusty metal thing. Most rooms will read that minus a few. Oftentimes when a boiler stops working, the higher levels of the structure stop heating. During the day, the downstairs heat is on at 68 degrees. Dining room was first floor. The Close any doors you can to that room and put blankets in the doorways if needed to minimize heat loss. More specifically, causes include: Restricted airflow between the furnace and vents; Leaky or poorly installed ductwork; A This heat then radiates into the house, significantly warming the air upstairs, especially on the second floor. What gets me id I've never seen this on other jobs, although I'm usually just heating one or two floors, 3 floors is uncommon for my I just bought a 110 year old house 3 and a half months ago. My house is a "cookie cutter" house as many of the houses on our street and general area share the same basic architecture but many have been added to over the past 100-150 years. The house is on a full basement. I had a HVAC contractor say my 2. A large coal burner that was converted to oil. In my case, a the bedroom is over the kitchen, but a prior resident moved the vent from the bedroom to the adjacent hallway. Furnace did the same thing to us: sauna upstairs to keep it tolerable downstairs. It’s a magazine. Since this has happened, the downstairs will not heat. Boilers - Home Heating Steam and Hot Water Systems - No heat upstairs in Baseboard water system - We have one thermostat on the first floor and the heat works fine in the basement and on the first floor. The electric bill at my old house had a COMA in the monthly bill during winter. Someone told me they don't think the walls have any type of insulation. Since heat pumps and their line sets are so much smaller than gas furnaces and forced air ducts, you can really get some big wins in an old house if you’re creative about recapturing space. I keep my heat at 69. After The upstairs in our current house (1780s Colonial) has 6. I was reading on this site about orifices that used to be installed on upstairs radiators to balance the systems. An in-wall gas heater (no thermostat) was added about 20 years ago, which heats two rooms okay. I grew up in a house that was set up for this and my brother has an older farm house thats set up for it. central HVAC system downstairs, with thermostat/control upstairs in a sunset-facing room. To get the heat upstairs, all we have is a single gravity vent in the downstairs ceiling/upstairs floor. Any idea where to start? Need extra water storage? Learn how to install a reserve tank with Richard Trethewey's step-by-step guide. They relied on slow steady heat rising throughout the house "ducts". Shortly afterwards, my wife noticed that in the morning, we didn't have heat upstairs. With the heat on, upstairs is nice and toasty. Currently, your upstairs floor doesn’t heat at all. A coal furnace was the main source of heat for the house until the mid 50s when a fuel oil furnace was installed. That means your home is properly insulated, especially the roof, where heat usually escapes. 5 foot ceilings. It's a classic case of solar gain, where the sun's energy turns rooftops into radiators. We have one Hvac for the first floor and another for the second floor but still can feel how hot the upstairs get. Built in 1896 (by my grandparents) the only wood burning appliance was the cookstove. HVAC unit in basement. Insulation, air sealing, and roof venting will help reduce the amount of heat but can be a bit expensive. Yes my grandma’s house only had one grate in the dining room to heat the whole house. Insulated rim joists (old house used joist Foot warmer, soapstone brick in bed, portieres, Old house living. A couple of times over the winter I turned on the AHU fan to distribute around the house the heat the window AC flipped around backwards, generated. I recently started hearing lots of water rushing/pinging sounds from the radiators so after some Googling/Youtube I purged and refilled the system. In the summer months, while the downstairs can easily be maintained at a nice crisp 68 degrees, the upstairs will easily be 10-15 degrees warmer, maybe more, ive never really measured. The cold air from the A/C isn't too noticeable upstairs, especially in the master bedroom. Plug the Air Leaks. Add a Comment. Repeat. Second floor 2 of them don’t want to heat up completely unless I crank the heat up to hell level. Again, this is an old house, I'm sure the basement is very leaky. Old House Journal. I opened the pipe on a 1st floor run to swap a panel radiator in the kitchen for one of the slant fins. Then it would get upstairs by 10" x 20' adjustable in each of the bedroom upstairs. Background on the house- Historically the house has had no heat upstairs, however in the past there was a wood stove on the first floor that allowed hot air to minimally circulate upstairs. It can get pretty hot in the summer. My old farmhouse is a bunch newer than your old farm house (in IL - anything over 100 years old, is old). Friends who live in an old house in Maine have a small opening in the ceiling above the woodstove which catches enough heat to keep the upstairs toasty warm. Keep it as simple as possible, labor is 80% of the project cost. debating between a reply I guess anything is open for discussion, the heat loss loads have treated me very well over the years, so I have reasonable doubt that it's the calcs. The most basic answer. If it’s cooler outside, am I wasting AC energy to open upstairs windows? We own a 100+ year old home and last year, finally put in central AC. Also. GET YOUR RADIATORS TO HEAT UP ALL THE WAY: Trapped air can cause a hot-water or steam radiator to stay cold at the top. It's an old old house and it wasn't designed around modern heating. And there's less echo. Same with the basement in the 10-15 degree range. It's 1. It’s the 21st century! It shouldn’t be such a struggle for owners to heat their homes evenly enough to enjoy total comfort and efficiently enough to achieve low energy costs. The floor between my basement and the 1st floor has grates where the air or heat could go up. I woke up this morning and there's no hot water to the shower or the sink upstairs, but there is cold water on the 2nd floor and hot and cold on the first floor. For comparison, when I That sounds like hot water baseboard heat to me and if the pipes run upstairs inside of exterior walls then you have to worry about them possibly freezing. He replaced the bare copper pipe with the heaters (finned copper pipes). We made sure the furnace kicked on, etc. 5 stories, the upstairs was always warmer than the rest of the house. If the floor above is in fan mode, set each floor beneath it to the lower floor temperature by 2 degrees. $10,000 cost. We moved into a house about 6m ago & we knew there was no heat upstairs. It is a 1. No AC, so there was no concern for mass air movement. Old. Cool air sinks to first floor. For a typical 2 story home, the MINIMUM pressure when the system is COLD must be at LEAST 12-15 PSI. 5-4 days, including having the company dismantle and remove much of the old equipment including the removal of a whole house fan and replacement of dangerously rickety attic stairs/ladder. If you put some registers in the floor that basically connect the ceiling of the basement to the floor above, then heat will come up that way; in fact, in the old days, that’s I'm now living in a 2-story house, no basement on concrete slab. November 2022. Also the room will still be hot, just not as hot. It sounds like the hot water isn't making it to the second floor, you could have a huge air bubble blocking flow, you could have a bad circulator (it could be spinning away with an impeller that's worn down to nothing). So, when we originally walked through the house, it was fall and still not time for heat. Beautiful. However the second floor baseboards are ice cold and I was able to trace the issue all the way back to the furnace. It is a heat wave up there. ) We live in the northern South (north Arkansas)-- zone 6b/7, frost We have a charming old farmhouse (built in 1900 and remodeled in 1950 and again in 2016). Even in -45 the blankets enabled us House & System: Two level Condo at Grand Lake in Northeastern Oklahoma. My old house had that system when I moved in . So when it it’s not working and the mercury outside is dropping, you’ll need to be able to diagnose the problem and fix it ASAP Gas and Oil Home Heating Furnaces - No Heat Upstairs Zone - Hi. Living in an old farmhouse I can say that the vent in the floor works. The first floor works very well, no problems, but the baseboard units upstairs are not working. No heat upstairs, what are my options ? Last spring, our propane wall furnace broke down and now we have no heat besides the space heaters. Three bedrooms upstairs. There are radiators but we don’t run the oil. 1 bed, 1 bath upstairs. It started about 3 days ago, she turned on her heat but the baseboard radiator only get lukewarm, though out the whole house. The house had no heat or running water. The stairs are all walled in, I think if we made it more open concept the heat would drift upstairs better. not quite sure how we got by last summer but we somehow made it work. zazeg gzrr cemiy bfvvbj ekih yswvcoo ltbjqf pwic xpg ibp