# One bedroom way too cold, others fine.



## curls00 (Jul 12, 2007)

Hi everyone. We have 3 bedrooms on the 2nd floor of our townhouse. The master and spare are perfectly fine temperature-wise. However, the baby's room is always a fair amount cooler and we can't figure out why.

We've sealed the windows in both the spare and the baby's rooms with the clear shrink plastic -- didn't help the baby's room. We put foam gaskets behind all exterior wall plugs and outlets -- no change there, either. We have experimented with keeping the baby's door open or closed at night, and there still isn't much change.

The baby's room sits on the NW corner of the house and the window faces west. The spare room sits on the SW corner of the house and the window also faces west.

What else can we try (aside from a space heater in that room) to even out the temperatures? We have a feeling that the cooler temperatures are causing our daughter to wake up too often at night because she's uncomfortable.

Thanks.
Eric
PS: We're located in Ottawa, ON, and the temperatures are hovering around 0*C / 32*F right now. We fear the difference between rooms will only get greater when the winter really sets in.


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## chris75 (Aug 25, 2007)

What type of heat are you using? I would dampen down the warmer rooms and you should be fine, this will balance the rooms, if your using hot water baseboard close the louvers a bit in the warmer rooms, if you have duct work, then close off the vents a touch in the warmer rooms, this will take a little bit of experimenting to get it the way you want....


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## curls00 (Jul 12, 2007)

Natural gas central heating. The house is 4 years old this winter, and the furnace was tuned up this past spring by a professional.

I'll try dampening the warmer rooms to hopefully give more airflow to the cooler room. Does it matter that the baby's room (the cold room) is slightly further from the furnace than any other room in the house?

Cheers.
Eric


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## s0lidgr0und (Nov 24, 2007)

Does the line from the furnace hit the spare room or the baby's room first?


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## chris75 (Aug 25, 2007)

curls00 said:


> Natural gas central heating. The house is 4 years old this winter, and the furnace was tuned up this past spring by a professional.
> 
> I'll try dampening the warmer rooms to hopefully give more airflow to the cooler room. Does it matter that the baby's room (the cold room) is slightly further from the furnace than any other room in the house?
> 
> ...


Not really, basically when they design the heating system each room requires a certain CFM, and your babies room either got miscalculated or the 2nd floor just needs to be balanced, you will be surprised what a difference it will make just by dampening off the warmer rooms...


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## curls00 (Jul 12, 2007)

s0lidgr0und said:


> Does the line from the furnace hit the spare room or the baby's room first?


No clue. :innocent:



chris75 said:


> Not really, basically when they design the heating system each room requires a certain CFM, and your babies room either got miscalculated or the 2nd floor just needs to be balanced, you will be surprised what a difference it will make just by dampening off the warmer rooms...


Hard to say if it was miscalculated -- it's a cookie-cutter house that has plenty of others just like it built at the same time. I've closed the spare bathroom vent about 75%, and noticed as well that the spare bedroom vent was 100% closed already. However, that door always stays open, whereas the baby's room the door stays closed about 12 hours a day.

We'll see how this goes. I plan to buy a few cheap thermometers to put in various rooms to truly balance the system and mark the settings on each damper for summer/winter mode. Thanks for the input!


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## s0lidgr0und (Nov 24, 2007)

The only real experience I have ever had was when I was doing general maintenance a couples years back. One of the offices was always cold and nobody could really figure out why. My boss and I adjusted the snot out of the damper, etc. We ended up having a professional come in and he said that the office was so airtight that it didn't allow more air into the room because there was no exit for other air to leave. We installed a vent in the wall down low to the floor and everything seemed to fix itself.

I'm not saying that's the case here because I assume some architect somewhere along the line took this into account.


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## Kingfisher (Nov 19, 2007)

Is there an air return in every room? if not is there a gap under the doors to allow the air out? If both these are good try turning the fan to ON. This will keep the unit fan on even when it is not heating or cooling and help even all the room out temp wise, you wll need to change the filter work but its cleaning your air more too:thumbsup:


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## troubleseeker (Sep 25, 2006)

curls00 said:


> No clue. :innocent:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


This may be part of the problem also. Keeping the door closed will not make the room warmer, but will add to the temperature problem, by creating a "dead air" room. The air must be free to get pulled back through the return air, as more "new" tempature conditioned air is dumped from the register.

If dampening the other rooms a bit does not help, you need to look at how that supply lines are piped, as suggested. Often a "tee" will be used in a line instead of a "Y", and the air will naturally flow straight throught the tee, since that is the path of least resistence, starving the branch on the "tee".


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## curls00 (Jul 12, 2007)

troubleseeker said:


> This may be part of the problem also. Keeping the door closed will not make the room warmer, but will add to the temperature problem, by creating a "dead air" room. The air must be free to get pulled back through the return air, as more "new" tempature conditioned air is dumped from the register.
> 
> If dampening the other rooms a bit does not help, you need to look at how that supply lines are piped, as suggested. Often a "tee" will be used in a line instead of a "Y", and the air will naturally flow straight throught the tee, since that is the path of least resistence, starving the branch on the "tee".



We have to keep the door closed from about 7pm - 7am because that's when she is sleeping, and since we have two cats that just love to cuddle, we don't want them smothering our daughter.

There are return air grilles in every room including the baby's room up high near the ceiling near the door. I assume it's near the ceiling because it's the top floor of the house, and it's placed here to catch warm, stale air from the rest of the house and return it to the furnace to be filtered and/or conditioned. Since the return air grilles on the entire top floor (all bedrooms) are like this, and this room is the only one with a problem, it's not likely because of their placement, but probably because of a lack of warm air making it to this room. I think the dampering may help and I still have to get to the store to buy a few thermometers to even out the temp. upstairs with this method.


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## Joba Fett (Aug 14, 2007)

Stop making those silly excuses.....
Leave the door open, and get rid of those cats....
who do you value more...your child or those cats....


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## AllanJ (Nov 24, 2007)

With the room door to the hallway open, do you actually get warm air coming out of the heating duct?

Check in the basement for manual lever controlled dampers in some or all of the individual heating ducts branching off the main duct.

With the furnace on, do you see a suction effect if you wave a strip of tissue paper near the return air grill?


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## curls00 (Jul 12, 2007)

JGarth said:


> Stop making those silly excuses.....
> Leave the door open, and get rid of those cats....
> who do you value more...your child or those cats....



Obviously you seem not to like cats. That's fine. Keep your useless comments out of my thread. Keeping a door open should NOT be a prerequisite to getting a room warm.


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## curls00 (Jul 12, 2007)

AllanJ said:


> With the room door to the hallway open, do you actually get warm air coming out of the heating duct?
> 
> Check in the basement for manual lever controlled dampers in some or all of the individual heating ducts branching off the main duct.
> 
> With the furnace on, do you see a suction effect if you wave a strip of tissue paper near the return air grill?


I have tested with door open and closed and warm air does come out in both scenarios. However, since changing the damping around the house I notice MORE warm air coming out in both scenarios, so I think that definitely helped.

I'm 95% sure there are no manual levers near the furnace -- I wrapped all of the ducts I could access in the furnace room and don't recall seeing any levers of any sort.

I'll check the return air grille thing today after work. Thanks!


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## DIY4EVER (Apr 10, 2007)

curls00-

I own a three bedroom duplex which has a problem very similar to yours....master bedroom is warmest, office is a little cooler, and spare bedroom (NW cormes w/ windows facing W)is coldest. This is what I found in my situation..... dampered the master closed about 50%, dampered office closed 25%, have spare room open 100%. Keep the door open as much as possible (i.e. when the baby is not sleeping). The main culprit in my case was how the heat duct line was run to feed the spare room. They used a piece of 6" flex duct to go from the end of the main duct line, bent the flex pipe down to go below the floor joists in the basement, went over two joist bays with the flex pipe and then bent it again to hook up to the line feeding the spare room. Every change in direction of the duct line reduces air flow. Make sure that the line feding the baby's room is as straight a shot from the main duct line as possible. Also, I have heard that you can get those booster fans (not sure the technical name for them) but they are installed in the duct line and basically boost the flow in the line. Maybe installing one of those in the line that feeds the baby's room will help boost the flow to that room...?

good luck!


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## Dave in Michigan (Sep 24, 2007)

Eric, I don't have an answer. I just want to say that I have a similar situation. My house is facing NW, so there is this room that is facing NW that is coldest compared to other rooms.

I asked my friends once, and they just said, "oh yeah, that is normal."  One friend said she had a house with similar orientation and had exactly the same problem. She said that facing NW and the fact that the room was further from the furnace were the reason. She wasn't a technical person, but that's her opinion.


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## Dusty (Aug 9, 2006)

curls00 said:


> Keeping a door open should NOT be a prerequisite to getting a room warm.


Actually it's really important, hands down, the room will probably be cold if the door is shut. It's just the way forced air works. I rediscovered this in my last house when I got a pup who I had to keep in the room with me at night. Suddenly that bedroom temp dropped like a stone which was absolutely fine by me because I had always found it too warm anyway. All it took was shutting the door, a principal I had totally forgotten. 

You see I happened to have a mom who insisted we shut doors if we weren't going to be in room just so the furnace wouldn't be going as much. Those rooms got cold and stayed cold until the doors were opened again. It's also important that the cold air returns (which I have never heard of being up high... seems totally wrong to me since cold air falls...you may have warm air returns which don't seem really useful in heating season) are free and clear.

So, find another way to keep the cats out because I bet if you test that room, the temp will be better with the door left open.

As for the levers, there are probably some levers somewhere. Maybe you could call the builder and see where they are (probably the same in all their homes). I've never seen a system without duct levers. If you open the door and turn on the furnace, you should be feeling air moving from the register. That will tell you if the duct is open. If it isn't delivering the same amount of air as the other rooms, then you may have a partially shut duct (lever) or one that is blocked (builder crap in it) or has a break (joint came apart).

Meanwhile, after watching Holmes on Homes enough, it could be an insulation issue if the builders missed doing part of the room/exterior. You'd hope a builder wouldn't allow such things but then a neighbour I had in a new house discovered his bathtub drain had never been hooked up after he moved in, so it might be worth checking.


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## Kingfisher (Nov 19, 2007)

Did you ever try what I said about leving the fan in the on position? This will help greatly in evenling on the air in all the rooms. They do not put levers in all ducts now days so if you don't see them you may not have them.


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## curls00 (Jul 12, 2007)

What I have done to date:
- adjusted the dampeners (controls in each register in the house). Helped somewhat greatly.
- Monitored the cold room vs. our master bedroom with two identical thermometers: Difference is now only about 1*C at most. Getting MUCH better.
- I have tried it with fan on continuously, and just in "vent" mode (random on/off of the fan). Neither makes a big difference from the other, so we keep it on "vent".
- There are no levers near the furnace room at all. Just the dampener controls on each register.

My take on the air-return ducts being at the top of the wall on the top floor is to recycle stale air (since warm, stale air rises... it'll be returned via these higher-up ducts). Every house I've seen that is under 5 years old has upper return ducts on the top floor, and lower return ducts on the rest of the floors.

I've tested the registers and all cold air return ducts in the house, and they all work well (as per the tissue paper test).

Since the difference between the cold room and the rest of the rooms is so minimal now (even with the door closed!), consider this case closed.  I believe adjusting the dampeners made the biggest difference, so thanks to those who suggested that!

Cheers.
Eric


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## Kingfisher (Nov 19, 2007)

look not trying to sound like and ass but try the simple fix if you want all the room the same temp run the fan in the ON postition to equalize evereything the easy answer may just fix all your problems. This is the last time I will tell you, just try it please:whistling2:


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## curls00 (Jul 12, 2007)

Kingfisher said:


> look not trying to sound like and ass but try the simple fix if you want all the room the same temp run the fan in the ON postition to equalize evereything the easy answer may just fix all your problems. This is the last time I will tell you, just try it please:whistling2:





curls00 said:


> What I have done to date:
> - I have tried it with fan on continuously, and just in "vent" mode (random on/off of the fan). Neither makes a big difference from the other, so we keep it on "vent".


Kingfisher,
I took your advice previously, and as I said, found no difference in temperature between having the fan on continuously, and having it on vent. On my thermostat, "vent" mode for the fan turns it on probably 2 or 3 times an hour, for a total of 30 minutes per hour or so... so about 50% of the time, the fan is on. Since there was no difference according to the thermometers I have set up (within 0.5*C), we chose to leave the thermostat set to "vent" mode for the fan.


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## keelhaul5 (Dec 1, 2007)

do you have a hydronic heater


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## curls00 (Jul 12, 2007)

keelhaul5 said:


> do you have a hydronic heater



:confused1::confused1:


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