It doesn't get the rooms toasty which is how I like to feel. I tried a portable heater but it tripped a circuit so it's lots of blankets. My guess is it was built that way. Before the price of gas escalated I was comfortable setting the thermostat higher than 69. I have tried electric blankets but that didn't do anything for the rest of the rooms and they eventually konked out. Dressing warmer meant more loads to wash. I want to do something about this. Yes I fiddled with the duct levers as well. It's just not enough heat flowing to keep the rooms at a comfortable temperature for me. Maybe this is a disappointing rant.
@Von Jones = your rant is fine. Unfortunately, have no idea how to improve the situation.. side from cutting a whole in one room and hoping the heat comes thru. Then again someone on here may very well have a good idea fro you.
That doesn't sound so great, Von. I know nothing about this but I'm wondering if a ceiling fan in one room could help to move the heat into the room where you sleep? Surely someone here will know more about heating rooms than I do.
Are the bedrooms upstairs? It may not be hard to run another dedicated electric line to the first floor of a house. Then the breaker wouldn't trip. More tricky upstairs.
@Von Jones Do you have an attic opening? That would be either fold-down stairs or a 2'x2' access hole in the ceiling. I went a long way to fixing my "Can't keep the house warm" issue by making an insulating box for that opening. Now there are no more cold spots and I use way less fuel. These are an open box (like a shoe box without the lid) made of insulating Styrofoam that you place upside down over the opening to stop the house heat from rising and the chilly attic air from dropping into the living space. (They make "quilted" insulating covers, but the boxes are very effective and way less cost.) Current estimate is $30 for materials. The foam makes it very light. You take your measurements, build the box on your porch or in the yard (foam + foil tape), carry it up the stairs, and drop it in to place. When you want to go into the attic, you lift it out of the way as in the above pic. It needs to be deep enough for the folded stairs to fit. Link to website The only thing I would do differently is to get 4" lengths of 1" x 1" wood and glue them on the joints where the foam panels meet, just to add a little structure/strength.
The attic never occurred to me. I've only looked through the access door out of curiosity and you have to have a ladder to get up there and be small/little/slim like me. It's really weird. I believe there was some renovation done. The closet door is always open too. Closing it could be the solution. Thanks John B.
Those small access holes seem to be standard for older houses. The house I grew up in had a small attic access hole. The one I lived in as an adult also had a small attic access hole. In both instances we installed folding stairs. I assume that access hole is in the ceiling of the closet? And this closet is in the cold room??? I would not trust just shutting the closet door to fix the issue of the cold air falling into the living space...it will come out around the door and through the door. There are easy ways to insulate that attic access hatch. You can search them on the web. One way is to buy the foam panel, cut a piece to snugly fit the opening, and glue it to the back of the panel you lift out. For cold regions like yours, some places say to cut several sheets of the foam and glue them all to the panel to increase the R value. You put weatherstripping on the perimeter of the trim that the panel sits on so that the panel rests on the weatherstripping when you lay it in place. Cold attic air will also leak around the trim pieces that are mounted to the ceiling for the panel to rest on, so it's a good idea to seal around the inside of the trim with caulk. (Caulk before you weatherstrip.) This should give you some ideas: Hint: Since your opening is small, you won't need large pieces of the 4'x8' sheets. The folks at Lowes, etc should be able to cut the sheets so they fit in your Jeep. Take the measurements with you and perhaps they can cut it to the size you need (remember, you want to try to get this to fit as snug as possible and not have the stacked sheets get stuck when you try to lower them in to the opening.) They should at least be able to cut it to fit in your Jeep, making sure to observe your measurements to give you the most yield.
Keep in mind that this is the season when heating takes a priority but sometimes can lead to fires, so better to be a little cold than out in the cold.
Von, unless you spend a lot of time in the bedroom, I'd just invest in a replacement for the electric blanket. We have a 2-story house, so it's always hot upstairs (bedrooms) and cold downstairs. One other reason I'd love to move to a single-story house.
Our HVAC system does not work at all, and has not for several years, so we are constantly too hot (I am) all summer and then freezing all winter. We have done the same thing using little electric heaters, but it also blows the breakers in our house, so we have to be careful what we have turned on at one time. If the heat is on in the living room, and you are going to make a pot of coffee, then we have to turn off the heater until the coffee is done. What we do is only heat the room where we are at, which means closing all of the other room doors and heating just the living room during the day, and the bedroom to 60 at night. This year, we also put up two heavy insulated curtains in the walkway from the living room into the kitchen and into the hallway that goes to the bedrooms . This helps a lot with keeping the heat all in the front room during the daytime, and also to blocking it into the bedroom at night. We have an electric blanket, so in the evening, we turn on the blanket to warm up the bed, and start the heat into the bedroom so that it is not so cold when we go to bed. It is just the two of us, Bobby and me; so this works for us and the only other room we use is the bathroom, and we just live with a cold bathroom and kitchen.
I am not sure why an electric heater is causing the breakers to trip. I wouldn't think the 1500 watts would be a problem, but then I am no electrician. Our house has all 20 amp circuits, so I have never had an issue. You could try one of those oil-filled radiator-type heaters that have a lower initial draw, or use one of the heat panels of the type shown here: https://www.warmlyyours.com/en-US/radiant-panel
I wondered the same thing. Perhaps the breakers are fatigued. If their wiring is like an old house I grew up in, perhaps having breakers with low thresholds is a good thing. And I have a couple of those oil filled radiators. I use one in my bedroom, because the wood stove heat doesn't make its way into it.
The tripping breaker could be because there are already power draws on the circuit and the heater just pushes the limit. We have a couple of outlets in our family room that are on the same circuit and we have to be careful what we have plugged into them at the same time.
Update: I closed the closet door and went back a couple hours later and the change was very welcoming. I'm a happy camper. Thank you all I will keep in mind all of your suggestions as to what I am able to do or not. I do have a door draft stopper and will use that as well.
I'll toss this out there: If you don't feel like messing with a formal insulating solution project, get an old blanket/quilt, fold it over until it is at least a foot or so bigger all the way around than the opening, shove it through the opening, lay it out to cover the hole with the border overlapping the perimeter, then put the access panel back in. It will take all of 10 minutes and will help keep the heat in your entire house. /advice