Heating ideas for a Vaulted Ceiling Room (grill, window, AC)
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The best way to heat a room like this is with radiant heat in the floors for those building.
Sounds like your using forced air heat, you can try to push more heat to the vaulted room by partially closing some of the registers in the other rooms on that zone that are warm. Also consider where the thermostat is and make sure the simple things are done like no lamp near it or the sun doesn't hit it. These are long shot questions.
Another thing to consider is blinds or similar window coverings that are either insulated or have air pockets.
One last thing to investigate is where the return air grill is located. Do you have one up high or in the vaulted room? Your trying to get some circulation of air and not stagnate it.
Aww... is there anything else besides a ceiling fan to help with heating? I will be building soon and like some ideas..
Don't put in vaulted ceilings if you live in an area where heating is important. Vaulted or high ceilings are great in warm climates because the warm air rises and it feels cooler but in cold climates they are expensive to heat.
One thing we noticed when we visited family up north (NY) was that their floor vents for forced convection heating made the rooms much more comfortable in winter. Dunno how good that is for the cold air conditioning required in the hot summers of the south.
Dunno where you are, but a floor level vent seems very attractive to us these days
We have a very open floor plan with a two story family room and two story foyer - basically, a big heat suck!
The house is brand new which helps in terms of insulation and windows, but we are getting a ceiling fan installed ASAP! I can really tell that all the heat is going upstairs when we run our gas fireplace, the room doesn't get any hotter, but the catwalk hallway upstairs is nice and toasty.
We are in PA and right now it's about 15 degrees, so I am anticipating one hell of a heating bill. Yea, the floor plan looks really nice and gives the house a very nice feel, but the bills are gonna kill me (BTW, it was my husband who wanted this grand feel )
Hi,
I have dealt with many vaulted ceiling issues and I agree that they are for looks only. I also have had to make some heating jobs work or I didn't get paid. In the cases where the ceilings were high and the major part of the heat is keeping the roof warm, I believe in the use of fansor in smaller rooms 1 fan. The fan should be set to move the air up toward the ceiling in the heating season, your not trying to blow the roof up just move the air 24/7. You want to use a fan with big blades that will move a large volume of air not a large velocity slowly up against the ceiling. This will create high pressure above the fan(squeezing the hot air) and push the heated air out to the sides and down the walls. The other side of the fan (the bottom) is creating a low pressure area under the fan and the really warm air from above and the cooler air will mix and the thermostat, if it is on an interior wall in this room will actually be satisfied. The key is to run the fan 24/7 and should be about 8-10 feet above the floor to get a good mix. This will help reduce your fuel consumption as now you are using that heated air way up at the peak. If you want to cool this enviroment in the summer switch the button on the fan and blow down. This will evaporate the moisture off from your skin and cool your body.
Also, you might consider having a GOOD heat/ac guy come in and measure the (something..air output?) of the vents as compared to the return IF there is a return in the room
We have this problem and while you're might not have the same cause it turns out that WE need an extra vent put into the room to somehow compensate for the size of the return. Folks chime in here if I'm not explaining this correctly or if it just sounds like bunk, but we have two SMALL vents in our living room and a BIG return. The room is on the northside of the house and that is one small part of the problem. The other (as explained by the heat guy) is that the return is pulling the air back at too great a level before it actually heats the room.
So, we're going to have a new vent put in.
Also, what we have done up until now (as our TWO former heating guys didn't mention this as a possibility and our new "guy" just told us that this is a big part of the problem) is to run a heat radiator and also a "regular" fan. I'm talking about the kind of fan that sits on a table. Hunter Douglas makes a good 'regular" (and not large fan, but with a lot of power). We found that the ceiling fan barely raised the temps in some tests we did.
The oil radiators aren't expensive and I think DeLongi (or something like that) is a better brand. The benefit of the oil radiators is that even when you turn them off (after achieving the desired temp) is that they continue to RADIATE heat. Usually Lowe's, walmart, home depot carries these. They're not very pretty to look at, but make our living room more liveable. I like oil radiators better than the hot air kind of small heating units.
How about radiant heat in the floors? You'll still be sending most of it to the nice little pillow of warm air 15 feet above the floor, but at least it's got to go past you first to get there.
My first thought in seeing vaulted ceilings or tall ceilings in a home is "I wonder how much it costs to heat this place?"
Improving the envelope is the best choice (ie....changing to low E windows or whatever is possible if anything at all)....then if still needed verify airflow to that room and heat loss of that room by manual J procedures. You will not need to know the entire house load just one room to figure out heat/airflow needed for that room.
Next would be to have an HVAC contractor check the amount of air being delivered to that part of the home. Most likely it was not sized by Manual D procedures the heat loss for that room will need to be known to be able to figure out the amount of air needed.
Third would be to just add a ceiling fan. Don't use it when your not in the room.
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Heating with vaulted ceilings
