My house is cold as fuck

[east or bust]

in the winter i keep mine at 65 during the day and 50 at night. it has never actually hit 50 upon waking though. probably steal some of the heat from the tenants below me.

[skideeppow]

I don't believe you have R-110

Basalt, CO is climate zone 6 and currently requires

celiing: R-49
ext wall: R-20 or 13+5
exposed underfloor: R-30
basement wall: R15/19
underslab: R-10
crawl: R-10

my guess is the old criteria were slightly less in 1993

so, for each system in your house: what insulation type & how thick?

then, what are the performance criteria of the installed windows? or, what window brand/type?


or do the energy audit mentioned above...

i am sure you are right.. I will call holy cross and get an energy audit.

[wicked_sick]

in the winter i keep mine at 65 during the day and 50 at night. it has never actually hit 50 upon waking though. probably steal some of the heat from the tenants below me.

I keep my place at 65 as well. 60 overnight, and probably 10 degrees less than that in my bedroom. Any warmer than that and the furnace just seems to run nonstop, especially if it dips below freezing. I have single pane windows and probably newspaper for insulation.

[tuco]

Replace current blinds with insulating blinds

[XXX-er]

wow you ^^ must take it up the butt on heating costs ?

About 8 years ago the Canuckistan gov/ BC gov were both giving away money for upgrades, so I got the 350$ energy audit with the door fans, implemented the auditor's recommendations and I got like 4k back on the 6 K of upgrades, I used to pay 220$ a month for natural gas on equal payment, apres upgrades I pay 122$ so the payback was like 2 yrs

My windows are double pane wood so replacing them all wasn't going to make much of a difference, the weather stripping was small potatoes but upgrading from R 15 to R50 insulation and 95% HE furnace were the big savers

I like 70 if actualy I'm in the house but i sleep better at 60, furnace contracter put in extra cold air returns down stairs and the tennants have always been happy

[XXX-er]

foam sheets cut to fit, draft was brutal. remove most days but they sure have made a warm difference. we actually need new windows but it’s a yhuuge project with 12 floor to ceiling and 3 large glass sliding doors that suck in the winter.

sketchy as fuck eh?

actualy a buddy used to friction fit a 6" piece of blue styrafoam at the bottom of each window so I asked wtf? he said he would get bad condensation at the bottoms of his widows ( double pane cuz we are up narth eh ) but the styrafoam cured the condensation

[wicked_sick]

wow you ^^ must take it up the butt on heating costs ?

I've got new weatherstripping to put in, and plastic for the big windows when it gets cold. That always helps quite a bit.

Gas bill is about $120/month from Dec-March, half that for November and April, but it's a small place. A furnace that's not 50 years old would probably do wonders, but my rent hasn't increased in 6 years, and I reckon this place will be torn down and rebuilt within the next 5. Housing market is crazy down here. Assesment says the house is worth 30k and the land worth 1.1mil.

[XXX-er]

sounds ^^ like Vangroovy

[wicked_sick]

^ A little to the east, but for all intents and purposes same same.

[californiagrown]

I keep my condo at 55 when im not home/sleeping, and 62 during the hours i am home. I dont find it cold wearing a light hoody and gym shorts. My GF fucking hates it, and my parents refer to it as a meatlocker. But i am not opposed to wearing a light hoody indoors in a cold climate during the winter... it shouldnt feel like hawaii during january in Seattle. if it does, then you are wasting resources and money... IMO.

[Shredhead]

i am sure you are right.. I will call holy cross and get an energy audit.

Call Core. My energy audit was free.
They’re normally $100, but some rich environmentalists in the valley has been picking up the tab for years.

[Name Redacted]

Wear more clothes? Get some blankets?

Our place has a Vermont Castings Gas stove on a thermostat for when the in-floor radiant isn't keeping up or when we want to just flip a switch and warm the place up. Works really well with a ceiling fan above to disperse the heat.

[BigDaddy]

Seriously... 15-18' ceilings are hard to heat. Definitely install some fans, but I've seen some cases where they built a temporary lower ceiling to reduce the heat rising. It was done very professionally and worked great. A sort of transparent screen on a grid.

And 61' is warm... suck it up or move the house to Cali.

[skiJ]

I have a 2600 square foot home, built in 1993. The downstairs is all windows, double pane but i am sure they are super inefficient. 15-18 foot ceilings as well. Hard wood floors. There is a crawl space below the entire bottom floor.
I put in a new boiler 7 years ago, much more efficient.

I have nest thermostats.

I have a Vermont Cast iron stove that works great, just get tired of starting fires.

This am i woke up to 61 degrees downstairs. Tired of having such a cold house.

Mid day the temps get up to 69 degrees but once the sun drops, it is freezing again.

Any suggestions for getting this place warmer. I am thinking it is the windows that are the problem.

If you are tired of building fires, the clear alternative for getting your place warmer is turning up the thermostat...

I realize CO is a different world, but 15-18 foot ceilings just seems like A choice to pay for Heat Up North
( but last year, it was forty-sixF ( 46F ) in July Here ( my neighbors ran their furnace every month ) )

choices --
You can chose to stay - but it also sounds like you might be ready for a more efficient house.

Just my $0.02.
Good luck. (tj)

[zartagen]

My thermostat was reading down in the 50s last week one cold night. I put on another blanket.

[Garth Bimble]

Maybe I missed it but how is the heat from the boiler transferred? Radiator? In-floor? If it's in floor you might need to adjust your thermostats. In floor heating systems suffer from lags and overshoots. Once the heat drops down it takes a while for it come back up again (lag) and then if the thermostats are wall mounted it will overshoot because the floor gets much hotter than the thermostat does and will stay that way long after the thermostat calls the boiler to shut down. If you've set the thermos to cut the heat down at a certain time they may be telling the system to shut down before it can recover which is why it gets so cold and never gets fully warm again.

[skialpy]

That’s a good point. If you’re system worked better previously perhaps it’s a call to the installer for commissioning. Could also be the nest. House visit by the installer could be a good first call.

Maybe I missed it but how is the heat from the boiler transferred? Radiator? In-floor? If it's in floor you might need to adjust your thermostats. In floor heating systems suffer from lags and overshoots. Once the heat drops down it takes a while for it come back up again (lag) and then if the thermostats are wall mounted it will overshoot because the floor gets much hotter than the thermostat does and will stay that way long after the thermostat calls the boiler to shut down. If you've set the thermos to cut the heat down at a certain time they may be telling the system to shut down before it can recover which is why it gets so cold and never gets fully warm again.

[Foggy_Goggles]

I guess I don't understand what the problem is. If you are cold, turn up the heat or put on a sweater. If your energy bill is too high, chase down the inefficiencies. Energy audits are good but by experience is they rarely identify any cheap fixes. My best guess is that you have inefficiency by design. Vaulted ceilings and a wall of windows will always be challenging. Get an infrared thermometer in order to see where your heat is going. You may have some cheap fixes in the crawl space. As mentioned in floor radiant, wall mount radiators or what? Bottom line, energy in Colorado is still cheap compared to the cost of upgrading the energy efficiency of your home. Your peak gas bill is probably <$200 a month that those new windows will probably run you $50K.

[EWG]

Call Core. My energy audit was free.
They’re normally $100, but some rich environmentalists in the valley has been picking up the tab for years.

Yes. Do this.

Double pane windows from '93 aren't great, but likely aren't awful. They probably are not Low E glass, which is a bit of a difference but not a huge one. You likely have issues that are caused by the design as others have mentioned (tall ceilings where warmer air migrates,etc) but in terms of substandard construction, the mostly likely thing you will find is gaps in the insulation. In '93 a lot of homes were built quickly, and while the framing is usually ok, insulation was not held to the same standard as today. Look for gaps around windows, walls that are not fully filled with batt, insulation in crawl space, holes around ducts that go outside, etc. Hand in hand with this look for air leakage - gaps in your wall, ceiling and floor. Audit should find a lot of that stuff. Look at the outside walls on a cold day with a heat gun. Easy to find the problems that way. Less easy to fix them, however, depending on what they are.

That's the first thing you should focus on, and I'll bet it'll make a significant difference..

[counterfeitfake]

I keep my condo at 55 when im not home/sleeping, and 62 during the hours i am home. I dont find it cold wearing a light hoody and gym shorts. My GF fucking hates it, and my parents refer to it as a meatlocker. But i am not opposed to wearing a light hoody indoors in a cold climate during the winter... it shouldnt feel like hawaii during january in Seattle. if it does, then you are wasting resources and money... IMO.

Wow. Turn up the thermostat or she's gonna find someone else to keep her warm.

[zion zig zag]

[/fistbump]

If it were purely up to me the 'stat would be set to something like 62/52 in the winter. The matrimonial compromise is 64/60 and I wear shorts. 70* 24/7 makes you fat and weak, fact.

I tasked my HVAC guy to find me a thermostat that I could program to 57 night and 65 day that would display 69 degrees. It's a million dollar idea.

[Bushwacka]

ha house is at 58 degree, and my bedroom I keep at 52 degrees.

I love sleeping in cold temps and I pay almost nothing in heating.

[AK47bp]

I keep my house at 52 in the day 36 at night. Sometimes the AC has to kick in during winter to get it down so I can save money and the environment.

[Name Redacted]

Vaulted ceilings are not a design flaw and can actually help warm the house if it is designed right. Biggest thing you need is a fan or fans. All of our bedrooms are upstairs, so they stay warm with little effort at night because the heat is channeled straight up into them. The air needs to circulate during the day between heat sources.

And replace that Vermont Castings with a similar model but gas with a dedicated thermostat. Trust me. Best thing ever if you don't want to start fires all the time but want a quick, easy, and cheap heat source.

[toast2266]

And replace that Vermont Castings with a similar model but gas with a dedicated thermostat. Trust me. Best thing ever if you don't want to start fires all the time but want a quick, easy, and cheap heat source.

Or a pellet stove, if gas isn't easy.