Heating unused rooms, is it worth it?

[Prada]

OK we just got our stove in the middle of last winter. I decided to keep 2 of my unused back bedroom doors shut and let those rooms stay cold. We started burning regular again this year in the beginning of Nov. Daughter came to stay with us over Thanksgiving and I went in to one of the cold rooms to give it a good cleaning before she arrived. I discovered mold on the oak sills of my windows and that REALLY upset me. I went into the other cold room and even found mold on a beautiful leather recliner in there! Grandma always kept her unused bedrooms shut so I did too, but no more!

 

[billb3]

If it is 10 degrees outside and that room is 50 degrees, then it is heated, just less than an adjacent room.


It might help to go in there twice a month and dust and vacumn.
Check for frozen bodies and such.

 

[michaelthomas]

My house had a large addition put on in 2000 and has a pocket door closing off the original house from the great room and rooms above the garage(addition). the original part of the house has always been heated by my VC and I used to close the pocket door at night to keep the stove heat in the main house to improve heating of the upstairs. Because I had the greatroom thermostat on a timer it would get down to 55 at night in that part of the house. It always felt like there was a door left open from the cold air transfering from the large cold room into the heated rooms. Last spring I put the "30" in the greatroom and have been heating the whole house with the 2 stoves. The house stays much warmer, much longer with the even heat throughout the house. No more cold breezes from the unheated areas.

 

[xman23]

A friend would leave his cabin unheated in the winter. It would get so damp the sheet rock wall would be wet. I leave my house at 40. We heat the whole house, including the unused rooms with the stove to keep them dry on the weekends. Yes, it does take more heat to heat unused rooms. If you need to close them off, I would heat them periodically.

Tom

 

[gyrfalcon]

Re the moisture problem, I think it probably depends on how old and therefore how airtight the house is, no?

If you've got a nice leaky old house, try doing what they did in previous centuries with wall hangings and tack up some old blankets on the interior walls of the closed-off rooms, which should reduce some of the heat transfer (and make the rooms a lot colder).

 

[Hiram Maxim]

A friend would leave his cabin unheated in the winter. It would get so damp the sheet rock wall would be wet. I leave my house at 40. We heat the whole house, including the unused rooms with the stove to keep them dry on the weekends. Yes, it does take more heat to heat unused rooms. If you need to close them off, I would heat them periodically.

Tom

I heat the whole house every Sunday with the forced air furnace.

Sunday is my shut down the stove and clean out the ashes day!

I think its wise to cycle/run the furnace anyway.

 

[DavidV]

The wife and I are somewhat at odds on this.
The "bonus" room was my oldest's bedroom when she was in high school. When she would visit her mother, we would close it off. Closing that one room made a big difference in how effective the stove is for heating. It's a bit over 300 sq feet so it will really suck the heat. Now that she is away at college, my wife likes to keep the room closed off.....but I don't .....because that is were I put my beer to botle condition and I worry about it getting too cold for the yeast to stay alive. So we go thru a ritual of me opening the door and her closing it. It really doesn't matter too much, because at night the thermostat is set for 66 and wen it drops down that low the heat comes on and warms up all the rooms. I have found that closing off any of my heat/ac registers is counter productive.

As for moisture...it must be different around here. It's hard to get the house below 50% humidity in the summer. Now that it's winter, I put a ful cast iron kettle of water on each day and we also dry clothes on racks in front of the stove. It still struggles to get up to 21% humidity in the house.

 

[Backwoods Savage]

We close off one room, but only during the very coldest part of the winter. At this time of the year the house gets too hot with that room closed off, otherwise we would close it in the fall and leave it that way until spring. My wife does store some things there, including foods, so enters it every day. She does appreciate a cool spot occasionally.

Hiram, I am wondering why you close down the stove for cleaning out ashes? We generally remove ashes once every 4 days in winter and once per week now, but certainly don't close down the stove. Besides, it is our only source of heat so we can't. However, I agree with you about running that furnace occasionally.

 

[sleepie]

i have a similar setup and use the cold rooms as sort of a thermostat---by that i mean as the stove room gets too hot,or sometimes a little cooler is just right,,,then i open those doors and let the cool into the stove room---i would never open a window and let it out,,,so i use the extra heat from time to time to just heat those rooms-----pat

 

[Backwoods Savage]

I forgot to mention something like that. We like to exercise during the winter and do so in our living room which is quite warm. So, we then open that room and enjoy the cool air while exercising, then close it off again. Works for us.

 

[bsruther]

I have two bedrooms that stay closed off from the rest of the house year round. the heat ducts are closed and the returns are covered in those two rooms as well.
I hav a brick ranch and it's pretty well insulated, so those rooms don't get terribly cold. It seems to save me a lot of money on oil usage and AC.
When I run the wood stove overnight, I have to open those rooms to balance out the temperature. It's just too hot to sleep if I leave them open.

 

[Hiram Maxim]

Hiram, I am wondering why you close down the stove for cleaning out ashes? We generally remove ashes once every 4 days in winter and once per week now, but certainly don't close down the stove. Besides, it is our only source of heat so we can't. However, I agree with you about running that furnace occasionally.

Dennis,

Something I'm trying new this year. I load the stove up on Saturday night and on Sunday night I clean out the stove and fire it back up.

I'm kind of figuring that its good to run the furnace for 6 to 8 hours to get some humidity into the air, warm the basement, crawlspace, & 2 extra bedrooms.

Looks like we will be getting some real winter weather here for the next week or so?

Hope all is well.

Hiram

 

[InTheRockies]

Wonder if the new "paperless" drywall really helps reduce risks of mold in new construction like they say in their ads. I think one of the reasons our grandparents didn't see this problem when closing off rooms was construction techniques, as well as draftier homes. Walls in old homes were generally lathe and plaster. Drywall (with paper) is a more recent, post-WWII tract home building development thing.

 

[Prada]

My home is fairly new and has a lot of insulation along with new windows etc. I still find mold on many things in closed cold rooms. I just can't afford to keep them closed any longer because of the damages.

We don't have a problem with keeping them open even though they are very large etc. but I hated to because I didn't want the kitties camping out in there for me to have to worry about when guests come is all. We have tons of heat from our Buck Stove which is so far away from these rooms, but when the doors are open the rooms come up to aprox. 68 degrees. So the Buck heats it all quite well. Ummm, that's with us STILL keeping at least one window open in the family room where the stove is located! That stove is a BEAST! LOL

 

[gyrfalcon]

My home is fairly new and has a lot of insulation along with new windows etc. I still find mold on many things in closed cold rooms. I just can't afford to keep them closed any longer because of the damages.

Right. That's the point. There's actually a down side to well-insulated tightly-sealed homes, and potential condensation and mold is a biggie. My leaky old farmhouse doesn't hold heat as well as your new home, but there's no chance of mold problems.

 

[Prada]

Oh Ok gyrfalcon.......I was just responding to what 'In the Rockies' had said. So your saying that the tighter the house the more concern for mold....Hrmmm.

 

[gyrfalcon]

Oh Ok gyrfalcon.......I was just responding to what 'In the Rockies' had said. So your saying that the tighter the house the more concern for mold....Hrmmm.

Yup. Think about what happens to the insides of your car windows in wintertime and how you fix it-- by blowing outside air onto the inside of the windshield. Opening the side windows does the same thing. That's why houses have roof vents and why you can't insulate a floor with only a crawlspace under it. Etc.

 

[Prada]

Gottcha *makes sense*

 

[Adios Pantalones]

More chance of a poor draft in the stove, and of CO poisoning etc.

This is how I rationalize the leaks in my log home- LOL

 

[gyrfalcon]

More chance of a poor draft in the stove, and of CO poisoning etc.

This is how I rationalize the leaks in my log home- LOL

Yeah, that, too. Fresher air and all that jazz. If heating fuel wasn't such a big cost factor, leaky houses would win hands down over tight-sealed ones on every count, IMHO. OK, so there's more dust and more spiders, but still.

 

[firefighterjake]

More chance of a poor draft in the stove, and of CO poisoning etc.

This is how I rationalize the leaks in my log home- LOL

Yeah, that, too. Fresher air and all that jazz. If heating fuel wasn't such a big cost factor, leaky houses would win hands down over tight-sealed ones on every count, IMHO. OK, so there's more dust and more spiders, but still.

Forget the dust and spiders . . . I'm still having nightmares from the pics that guy posted a few weeks back showing a very large black snake crawling up and into his home. Egads . . . if I saw that I wouldn't be able to sleep for a week.

 

[gyrfalcon]

More chance of a poor draft in the stove, and of CO poisoning etc.

This is how I rationalize the leaks in my log home- LOL

Yeah, that, too. Fresher air and all that jazz. If heating fuel wasn't such a big cost factor, leaky houses would win hands down over tight-sealed ones on every count, IMHO. OK, so there's more dust and more spiders, but still.

Forget the dust and spiders . . . I'm still having nightmares from the pics that guy posted a few weeks back showing a very large black snake crawling up and into his home. Egads . . . if I saw that I wouldn't be able to sleep for a week.

Idon't mind snakes, but that one was too much for me, too. Like something out of Indiana Jones.

 

[Prada]

Well I DO mind snakes and if I ever saw a snake anything what so ever like that one.......I WOULD MOVE! No way could I ever live here and what's bad is we live out in the woods and it's quite possible. OMG.......Just thinking about that picture makes me shake as I type. I would DIE! :bug: