Use radiant in-floor heat. Radiant heating is installed directly underneath your floor. It heats the space evenly, keeping both the air and your feet warm. Decorate the area with cozy furniture, ambient lighting, textured rugs, and inviting throw blankets and pillows.
This creates an inviting atmosphere that shouts warmth and comfort. Featured Finish: All in the Details. Subscribe to the Blog. Share this Post. What makes basements cold? This could be at the top or the bottom of the stairs. Keep this door closed. An open stairwell to the basement is a giant whirlpool of cool air. This cooler heavier air from the floor above settles into and pools at the lowest point, the finished basement!
Now the air is always circulating and mixing throughout your home. This is especially important if you do not have a door to the basement as I mention above. Bump the temperature for a treat! That is… provide comfort. But before you do this, you will need to make sure that your furnace is capable of handling the extra square footage.
You will also need to Install a cold air return at the base of the wall; this will help pull the cold air that hangs out at the bottom of the room and take it back to the furnace where it will get recycled into warm air.
Often people have their cold air return mounted at the ceiling or up close to the ceiling, and by doing this, you are not moving the cold air, only the warm air. When the hot air is coming out of the register from the ceiling, all of the hot air will hang out around the middle of the room and up to the ceiling.
Making the lower half of the room colder. All that the cold air return will be doing is, it will be pulling the warm air out of the room and sending it back to the furnace. Image 2 Correct Setup — Now, by moving the cold air return down towards the bottom of the wall, this will now begin to pull the cold air circling the floor out of the room and back to the furnace, while also sucking the warm air down closer to the bottom of the room.
It is recommended that you have a dehumidifier going in your basement at all times. The reason for this is because basements tend to be a damp and cold environment, due to moisture coming up through the foundation, water sources, or from high humidity inside of your home.
There are tools on the market such as a thermo-hygrometer that will help monitor the humidity levels for you. Click here for the current price. As you can see, for both your health and your comfort, it is important that you make sure to maintain the proper level of temperature and humidity in your basement. Cold foundation walls subjected to 20 to 30 percent relative humidity will cause condensation, which can lead to mold , mildew, and rot. More than 60 percent of basements in existing homes have a problem with moisture, according to the American Society of Home Inspectors.
Winter months make spring in your basement so chilly. Studies in Canada—a nation that knows about cold basements—have shown that exterior foundation wall surfaces take about 3 days to react to changes in outside temperature. At the exterior base of your foundation wall about six feet down , it takes about 69 days to catch up to outside temperatures.
Snow may seem like another cause of basement cold, but not so. Researchers have found that snow accumulated on the ground near your basement walls have almost no impact on basement temperatures. It's only when snow exceeds two feet that temperatures in the basement can start to be dramatically affected.
That is one reason why temperatures in your basement often feel so unseasonal. Basement foundation walls can literally be one season behind, transmitting those temperatures into your basement.
Do you have a single zone heating system? With this, one furnace supplies heat to both the basement and upstairs. The thermostat is located upstairs. Solar heat gain warms the upstairs during the day but it does not warm the basement. After all, upstairs has the windows, downstairs does not. As a result, the upstairs temperature is higher because:. Cool spaces need a long time for heat to build up to become comfortable. By the time you get home at the end of the day and go down to the basement, the cold you're experiencing is the result of a day's worth of reduced heating cycles.
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