Colder BR in Ranch House Oil Furnace

[gggvan]

hello,

I have a bedroom that when the door is closed, gets colder than the other bedrooms. All 3 BR's/hallway are on the same thermostat and on first floor. How is this possible as the thermostat calls for heat, the heat has to get through the colder BR to get to the warmer BR. Shouldn't all BR's be same temp? Colder BR is also closer to furnace.

 

[brenndatomu]

Must be higher heat loss in that room...more windows, a leaky window, air leak to the attic? Something like that...

 

[laynes69]

Lack of return air will do it too. Especially when the door is closed.

 

[salecker]

Sounds like my kind of house...
i sleep in the cold,i insulated the floor and all the walls to my upstairs bedroom,if i leave the door closed you can feel the temp difference when you go in the bedroom.
But yea if you leave the door closed you arn't going to get air moving.Once the room pressures up no more heat is going to come out the register.

 

[peakbagger]

If you did a heat loss calculation there will be a difference between the rooms or there are construction details differ. Your baseboard fins may also be plugged in one room.

 

[brenndatomu]

Is this hydronic heat or forced air?

 

[gggvan]

hydronic heat. when the door to the room is open, the room is same temp as other rooms. baseboard is cast iron finned registers about 8" high with 3/4 copper pipes. in the room in question, 6' or 8' runs on 2 walls.

 

[maple1]

Are you sure about the direction of flow through your zone?

 

[brenndatomu]

Baseboard plugged up? (water side...or air side full of "lint"?) with door open its probably just getting heat from the hallway.
I would get a temp reading off the baseboard with a infrared thermometer...compare it to the others

 

[peakbagger]

In some installations, the radiators are not piped in series where all the flow goes through all the radiators. In some cases they tap a smaller diameter pipe off the supply and return with a venturi tee on the return to drag some flow off the main loop into the radiator and return it to the return line. This sends equal temps to each radiator as opposed to series piping where the radiator nearest the boiler gets hotter water and then the temp drops through each radiator to the return. In theory this arrangement can have one radiator plugged yet the flow does not drop. IF the heat loss calcs are done right the supply temp at each radiator is calculated so the output is adjusted to deal with the temp drop.

Radiators rarely get plugged unless the water chemistry sucks like on an open system where oxygen is always getting in.

 

[salecker]

My rads have TRV's and their own zones for each room.I do have a couple rads in series in a room,i find that unless we are going through a cold snap the second rad gets very few BTU's to radiate into the room.Cast iron rads are very good at removing the BTU's from the water and heating the rooms.