How to Heat a Cold Room
When household comfort feels inconsistent during winter, it’s sometimes necessary to take extra measures to heat cold rooms that are stubbornly chilly. Sometimes a certain room doesn’t receive enough daily sunlight exposure or insufficient attic insulation in that part of the house doesn’t hold heat efficiently.
Rooms located out on a wing, separated from other living spaces and not getting a fair share of heat, may obviously stay colder. There are many reasons why a particular room or rooms may underperform when it comes to comfort.
Here are four ways to heat cold rooms without major expense:
1. Make sure all registers are open.
That goes for the vents in colder rooms, but it also applies to all other rooms in the house as well. If registers have been closed in certain rooms and left open in others, furnace airflow through household ductwork may be unbalanced, causing some rooms to receive insufficient heat.
2. Check for drafts.
Feel for cold air intruding around windows and replace worn weatherstripping if needed. Also look for cracks along the joint between the walls and ceiling or down along baseboards that may let in unconditioned air. These can be easily filled with silicone caulking.
3. Evaluate the placement of the thermostat.
If the system thermostat is located in a particular part of the house that is typically warm, other rooms far away from the thermostat may have chronically low temperatures. Relocate the thermostat if necessary to an area where the temperature is more representative of the entire house and not close to a heating vent or in direct sunlight.
4. Borrow heat from a warmer room.
If an adjoining room is usually comfortably warm while the room next door is chilly, think about adding a room-to-room ventilator. These quiet fans with efficient electric motors install into the wall between rooms and move heat from the warmer room into the colder room. Thermostat operated so they only run when needed, room-to-room ventilators can be installed for as little as $100.
