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| We have a very similar situation. Our home is a 1932 1,440 Sq ft Cape Cod style. The basement is poured concrete and they bricked the basement wall outside above grade (I assume it doesn't go down much below grade but never had to dig around to find out), and our basement walls are a bit thicker than a traditional poured concrete basement wall, but being concrete, it probably doesn't add much insulation value. We have 4 heat ducts in the basement, all in the ceiling. The previous owners installed 3/4 foam insulation on the inside and finished the walls. I insulated the rim joist and had a heating & cooling person take a look several years ago. We were told we needed more heat ducts in the basement, which made sense to me considering that we have 10 heat ducts in the main level. They said we needed more heat ducts in the basement and some more cold air returns. We ended up installing a 240 volt electric heater in a wall from a big box store & it only lasted a couple years. We replaced it with a heater from one of the local electrical contractors/supplier and while it was a bit more costly, I think it's going on 15 years and still works perfectly. I would also say that our home is fairly reasonable to heat, probably not as efficient as a new home but its a really well built home and is fairly easy to heat. My last 5 years of my career I worked out of my office in our basement and we kept the basement at about 70-72 degrees all winter long, and every day at work in my office I was totally comfortable. Now that we're retired and the kids gone we don't use that heater very much but anytime we want it more comfortable, we just turn it up. I pretty much claim the basement bathroom at all times of the year. We have a door at the top of the basement stairway and we can shut it to keep heat in the basement but we usually just leave it open. When we heat the basement, it always adds heat to the main level and our regular furnace tends to run a bit less, but not enough that it concerns us. | |
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Thoughts on supplemental basement heat
