Forced hot air heat not making it to the top floor
We have forced hot air in our brownstone and a tenant on the 3rd floor who does not get enough heat up there, while our garden floor is hot and our parlor floor is lukewarm. Does anyone else have this problem? If so, any solutions? Thank you in advance for the feedback.
We have forced hot air in our brownstone and a tenant on the 3rd floor who does not get enough heat up there, while our garden floor is hot and our parlor floor is lukewarm. Does anyone else have this problem? If so, any solutions? Thank you in advance for the feedback.
There are dampers that can be installed in the ducts that are thermostatically controlled. Saw them on TOH once but haven’t done a Google search for them. The problem usually is that each branck off of the furnace delivers heat to more than just one floor so if you’re shutting off to the first floor it’s going to shut off the flow to upper floors as well.
Years ago when I did a gut renovation of a three storey Queen Anne in Chicago we installed two furnaces because that’s really only way to effectively deal with the air flow issue. One on the ground floor and one on the top floor.
Check the dampers in the basement. They regulate the flow of air in each duct. They can be anywhere on the duct, including on the top of the duct. If a damper is partially closed, it will reduce the flow of warm air at the end of a run( top floor). Normally warm air will rise if the flow is not otherwise impeded(i.e. a partially closed damper) , the warm air should get there. Early forced air systems were, I believe, gravity systems. The mechanical forcing came later on. The top floor were warmer than rest of the house.
Thank you Daveinbedstuy!! The only thing is that the parlor floor is lukewarm, it doesn’t get very hot and we closed one of the vents on the garden floor. This is our 3rd winter in the house and while we want our tenant to be comfortable, I don’t want to get stuck with higher gas bills.
Very common occurrance. First, you might want to insulate the space between the 3rd floor ceiling and the roof. Federal Conservation did mine. it helped alot. Otherwise the only solution is to run additional ducts directly to the third floor. However, in my case, my parlor level was warm enough with 4 ducts so I sealed off the opening to the one in the living room which also feeds the front bedroom on the top floor (which is the furthest point from the furnace). i don’t see any difference in the living foom on the parlor level and it helped alot in the 3rd floor BR