Rooms without heat.

Andrew_8

In addition to my bathroom heating problems, I also have 2 rooms on the third floor that have no heat. No holes in the floor where radiators used to be, either. House has hot water radiators. We recently bought the house, so winter heating performance is unknown. We had A/C installed, so thought about running the fan to distribute warm air from rooms with heat to rooms without. Would this have the same effect as having a furnce, or would it not dry out the air as much? Also, if we did a similar thing, but put a hot water coil in the loop so as to remove the radiators, would that also dry out the air like a standard furnce?

Anyways, assuming we don't have enough heat for those two rooms, that would leave me with a need for heat in there. These are third floor, and I have access to the attic, so I could run a PEX line up into the (insulated, unheated) attic, then drop down into the walls and hook up standard radiators, baseboard rads, or wall mounted rads. Would the possibility of freezing be too high for this? Some of our radiator pipes run in outside walls. I do have a couple of radiators that I have removed from bathrooms that will soon have underfloor heat, so I could use those, if need be.

Any advice?

Mike T., Swampeast MO

Attics usually don't freeze as long as the heat is running below. They will be unfortably cool but unless the climate is extremely cold or terrible infiltration/complete lack of insulation, they shouldn't freeze.

Running the forced air system might distribute the heat a bit, but I wouldn't expect a miracle. It might just make things uncomfortably drafty... Replacing your rads with a hot water coil in the air handler give you an AIR system with its attendant problems.

"...up to the attic, then drop down walls and hook up rads..." IMO you should avoid going up then down if at all possible. You'd likely have an air problem in the rads connected in that manner.

You'll have to verify that the radiators you removed are sufficient in size to produce the level of heat you want. To lessen any chance of freezing I would keep the rads on INSIDE walls.

Eric

My attic will freeze in about 30 days here in alaska.

Is your attic vented?

Andrew_8

The attic has some ventilation, and we are probably going to have an attic fan installed soon, although it won't be running in the winter. I'm in Pittsburgh, coldest temp around 5 degrees F.

As far as air, I could install an automatic air vent. And under the windows would be better, as far as draftiness is concerned.