|
Posted by Steve on October 3, 2007, 7:45 am
alt.building.construction:
> I recently bought a house which was built in 1924 and has been added
> onto and remodelled at various times since. It is in Northern
> California where air conditioning is unnecessary but heat sure comes
> in handy sometimes.
>
> The house is about 3400 square feet, two story with an attic and a
> partial basement and crawlspace under the rest. It has a relatively
> recently installed gas forced air furnace in the basement which is in
> good shape, and ducts which run from it through the basement and
> crawlspace to the ground floor rooms. There are NO ducts or
> registers on the second floor. This was apprently common practice
> around here when the house was originally built - some heat would
> find its way upstairs, and that was considered enough back in the
> day. I expect its going to get pretty frosty by modern standards
> upstairs.
>
> Question is what can I do about it and how much will it cost me.
> Obvious solution is to put a second furnace in the attic. There is
> good headroom and access up there so this should be feasable. Ducts
> fom the furnace to the area above each upstairs room should be pretty
> straightforward, but it gets complicated after that. Running ducts
> from the ceiling to the basebords will not be easy. It would be easy
> to put registers in the ceiling, but, as some have previously pointed
> out, heat rises, so ceiling registers will presumably give us toasty
> ears and frozen toes, and when in bed we will not get much heat at
> all. And even if I just put registers in the ceiling, I would need
> to put returns lower and put ducts in for them.
>
> Do I have to suck it up and just open up walls for ducts? Each
> bedroom has pretty good sized closet, maybe I could just run ducts
> inside those? Even though this would not result in ideal register
> placement, it would probably be better than ceiling registers and
> wouldn't require much tear up.
>
> Anyone have experience with the 2 inch flexible ducts designed to be
> used with high pressure fan systems? Suppossedly you can fish them
> through wall cavities like romex.
>
> Any other ideas? Advice on holding down costs?
I don't know how they built houses back then, but you may be able to
just open up the top plate and use a stud bay as a duct. Cut a hole in
the top plate, cut a hole in the wall near the floor, hook a duct to the
hole at the top, and Bob's your uncle.
If you have fire blocking in the middle, things get tougher.
It's California, so local code could say anything.
Only works for interior, non-load-bearing walls.
--
Steve B.
New Life Home Improvement
| 
Yahoo! 
Google 
Windows Live 
del.icio.us 
digg 
Netscape 
XML Sitemap