This may be an over-loaded question, but how long should it take for a house to warm up by, say, 10 degrees, assuming a properly-sized, properly-operating forced air furnace? My wife thinks our house is taking longer than it did last year; I’m not usually home to see it as I don’t turn the heat up before I leave for work. Our house is old (1920s or so) and leaky, and the furnace is probably 12-15 years old, and the ductwork looks iffy, but none of that has changed since last year. The furnace filter is new as of a couple of days ago, so that shouldn’t be an issue.
Lemme know if’n you need more information…
Thanks –
did
Blah, yada, whatever, Hi how are you today
Replies
did
No idea but as u know my house is a bit old and the gas burner is totally rusted out and theres baseboard heat on the second floor and cast iron radiators on the first floor.....no storm windows on and wind blowin' through the doors( next year..shud up ..ok?).
Takes this circa:1680 house about 10 minutes to go from 50 to 65......and oh yeh,,,the heating bills are about $150 a week....not bad actually all considered......like dinner out for three in a decent place is about eighty bucks.
Not to mention what my new Sub Zero fridge just cost me...another story!
Be warm/cold
andy
My life is my practice!
http://CLIFFORDRENOVATIONS.COM
What is a sub zero fridge?
Tim Mooney
A sub-zero is one of those high end refigerators(if you have to ask the price you can't afford it) with built in look.
with built in look.
Bill
I scored the one with no front finish on it, or handle to boot. What a fingers hassle....specially for Katrina and her weekly done nails......lol.....
Its set up for when I do the kitchen and the cab faces I'm gonna build....hey..it aint all that bad. we can deal with it for a few ( a few?....bwahahahahaha) months.
Be kitchen ready
andyMy life is my practice!
http://CLIFFORDRENOVATIONS.COM
It was good to see you bond with your fridge like I have my wood stove . :)
Tim Mooney
"It was good to see you bond with your fridge like I have my wood stove . :)"
Does Andy need to setup a "fetish" folder in this forum?
WE have been on here for a long time . I have spent time here reading about all his excapades . Really from the other house . I like to hear him write about what hes excited about . The truth is , Im kinda the same about different stuff normally. He talks about stuff I go , "huh?" , because I havent heard of all the stuff he comes up with. But I dont tell him about what he hasnt heard about in the hillbilly country I live in . If he ever comes to to see me he will be saying," HUH you actually do that ? "
Tim Mooney
My SIL had her house up for sale and an agent showed a prospective client the house. The client pointed to the Sub Zero and asked the agent what kind of a fridge that was. The agent told the client that Sub Zero meant it's a really cold fridge.
So... there is your problem, the fridge is cooling your house down while you are trying to crank up the heat to keep warm.
Last month my gas bill was $494 and I thought that was bad. I am not looking forward to see the gas bill for this month since it's been so much colder than last month.
Tom
We sprung for the sub zero and I got a substantial contractors discount.
still was over four grand but as Katrina and I say....we open that thang a dozen times a day. Sub Zero IMO created a fridge that really works incredably well in all degrees........no pun intended.
As a fine home builder I appreciate a great design and Sub zero has serious high marks in my book.
I absolutly love it.
One of the things I love is the not so deep shelves where you forget about the moldy whatever in the back.....love the freezer below ( we don't eat much red meat so.)....I also love the totally see through drawers, not just the plastic almost see through drawers..the list goes on and I'm glad I "invested" in it!
Be way "cool"
andyMy life is my practice!
http://CLIFFORDRENOVATIONS.COM
Andy,
I don't get excited about anything anymore, probably getting too old for that. Afterall this is my second time around, we got our second Sub Zero about year and a half ago.
The first one we had for 13 years went with the house we sold when we moved to where we are now. Then we had to settle with a harvest gold Inglis that came with the house for 8 1/2 years. When we did our kitchen 1 1/2 years ago we looked at a few fridges and anything that DW wanted wasn't too far in price from a Sub Zero so I said what the heck and took the plunge. Got the same 48" side by side.
Besides all the nice features that you mentioned, the fridge suits our needs. We like to put any leftover, pots and pans and all, in the fridge so we can put them right on the stove the next time. See I am tired of arranging and rearranging stuffs in a small fridge. The 24" depth was also a primary reason because that extra 6" really help the traffic.
I don't know if you know that they have a history of more frequent malfunction(note: not breakdown) than all the other brands, just bear that in mind. Here is an experience I would like to share with you which may help in the future. One time the condensing fan motor quit so I went to get a replacement part. Looked in the Yellow Pages under major appliances-parts and found this place which stocked Sub Zero parts. Phoned them to make sure and yes they had it in stock, $110 + tax. Reasonable I thought. A year later I ran into an old friend of mine who used to sell appliance parts, told him about the motor. He just laughed. He told me there were only two companies that made those motors and they were the same motor for all fridges. If I had told the guy I wanted one for a GE, he would have charged me $25.
Tom
The motor story.....its why when I hire someone to do something for me here I tell them I live in Huntington (it is actually the township of so its no lie) not Cold Spring Harbor cause the minute they hear I live in CSH the price quadtriples....ugh.
PS.I dont care if the Sub Zero malfunctions I love it so much.....kinda how Katrina feels about me....lol
Be well bro
andyMy life is my practice!
http://CLIFFORDRENOVATIONS.COM
PS.I dont care if the Sub Zero malfunctions I love it so much.....kinda how Katrina feels about me....lol
It's easy for you to say. When the fridge malfunctioned, DW called in the serviceman to have it fixed. But she warned me if I were to malfunction too often, she'd take me to the doctor and had me fixed.
Be functional
Jezz that's as bad as my gas bill was and for much of the month I din't have the house closed up to the weather! Only recently has the cold wind stopped blowing in.. still not fully sealed and it really won't get completely sealed this year either.. in fact I expect another 3 years before I will have the whole house closed in completely..
Is your floor radiant system water or electric?
How's the house coming along? Got any pictures?
BTW I had a new high efficiency furnace installed last spring, seems like it's burning more gas than the old 30 year old monster.
the in floor stuff is water and I haven't yet decided on using electric or gas as the source for heating.. If I could find a direct vent water heater that didn't use inside air to burn I'd be inclined to used gas, but to my knowledge all of the direct vent gas water heaters use inside air which as you know will create a slight vacumm effect with the attending risk of carbon monoxide poisening.
the advantage of electric is you don't have a 4 inch hole open 24/7 365 a year. nor do you create a vacumm drawing cold air into the house at every conseivable opening..
there tends to be too much opinion and not enough facts..
My house takes a while, between 40 minutes and an hour. I haven't ever tried to time it, just notice when I'm walking by the thermostat.
Has it been colder outside than last year? My gas provider prints average temperature for the month this year and last so I can compare gas usage to weather.
I checked mine this morning. The temperature outside was 28. The temperature inside went from 60 at 7:30 to 68 at 7:58, so call it somewhere between 35 and 40 minutes for the full 10 degree swing instead of the 40 to 60 minutes in my earlier message.
Gas forced air. Attic insulated, walls not.
It's been windier this year around here and especialy for a leaky house, that drastically effects heat loss formulas.
Excellence is its own reward!
It's been windier this year around here and especialy for a leaky house, that drastically effects heat loss formulas.
No wonder when I wake up my eyelashes are frozen together,......now ya tell me?
Be $125 a week in the gas bill (hey....its better'n dealin' w/ my Vermont Castings this year.way to much to deal with already)! (Maybe...hmmmmm)
andyMy life is my practice!
http://CLIFFORDRENOVATIONS.COM
Id be dealing with the Vermont Castings .
Tim Mooney
DW is complaining about the same thing...
it is a fact that as people get older they turn up the volume of the radio, change light bulbs to a higher wattage and crank the thermostat up a notch.
And of course it depends on the temperature differential and wind as others have already mentioned.
This may be an over-loaded question, but how long should it take for a house to warm up by, say, 10 degrees, assuming a properly-sized, properly-operating forced air furnace?
It's been cold out there for the last few days, -13F, with wind chill -31 at night. So to answer your question... forever.
I'm concerned about the same thing! however I'm certain that my timberframe is gonna be differant than yours so we can't make much comparison there..
others have indicated exactly the sort of things you'll need to answer before you can find out if there is anything wrong..
One thing you can do is be accurite..
do the opposite. set the temp at say 60 from 70 time exactly how long it takes to cool off. then time how long it takes to gain back the prior temp.
Note the outside temp and wind conditions..
Now try to duplicate the temp change by opening a window say half way..
thermostat still set at 70, see how long it takes..
Now you have an idea of the sizwe of the problem.. and next you solve it.. (that's for later)
The higher the temp expected inside the longer it will take becuse of the greater difference of temp to the out side. Its chepaer to run 65 than 75 for the same reason.
Tim Mooney
Let me give you some examples. I can't be very exact since this from several years ago and I don' remember the details.
I was gone over Christmass and set the thermostats back to about 55.
I have 2 separate furnaces one for the first floor and one for the 2nd.
The first floor unit is GROSSLY oversized. I have not done a heat calculation, but based on the fact that is only uses about 30% of the time at 0 I would guess about 2 or 3 times oversized.
After I got back and the temp was in the 20's or 30's it took several hours (again I don't remember the details, but maybe 2-4) for the temp to come back up in the upstairs.
On the first floor it was much, much faster, maybe under an hour.
But looking at your house. You have a lot of thermo mass on the inside with the post and beams compared with a common stick build house with drywall. If you compared your house with anotherone that was insulated ans sized to have exactly the same heat losses under exactly the same weather conditions and you used the same size furance then yours would take longer to come back to temp and it was set back because you would need to warm up all of that mass (and likewise it would cool off slower).
BTW, even though the first floor furance is way oversized it does not cause side temp swings. Probably because I have inslad heat duct and the floor acts as enough thermo mass to temper the space.
MY furnace was oversized too.. especially once the in floor radiant system comes on line.. However it's nice when under construction and nothing properly sealed to let that big mother blast along forcing the house warm.
I may pay for that loss of efficency in the future, but hopefully when that point comes they will have something that runs on air and doesn't use fuel ;-)