Heat Circulation/Regulation in a Gardenia
 

We live in a Gardenia and have stayed in it for the first time during cold weather. All of the bedrooms and bathrooms are warm, but we can't seem to regulate the rest of the living areas. They are cold! Has anyone else experienced that? Is this common or should we be contacting Home Warranty to investigate?

Sometimes the cold weather really is tough for those who have great rooms. They are large with volume ceilings! We have a Lantana and it wasn't our great room that was cold, it was the master bedroom while other rooms were more comfortable. We had someone from Munns come out and check on the duct work to that room. I was certain it had collapsed and only a trickle of warm or cold air was getting to our little nest. Seems it hadn't, it was just the farthest room from the furnace. The technician did go through the house and readjust all the vent openings. It has made a difference. We thought we had done it correctly, but he adjusted some we hadn't done quite right.
Try closing down the vents to your warmer rooms and opening the ones in the great room areas. Might help.

You might try reversing your ceiling fans and running them on low. It'll bring the heat that is hovering around the high ceilings down the walls and into the center of the room. Worked great in our Gardenia.

Xavier

We have a gardenia, and we close the doors at night so our 2 cats wont bother us, but the bedroom is really cold when we do that, dont understand why.

The major return vent for the furnace is just on the other side of the bedroom door in that little hallway.

Xavier

:agree: I agree... if there is no path for the air to return to the furnace, it will be very hard to heat. Consider blowing air into a milk bottle... can't be done unless there is a hole somewhere allowing air to escape! Put your cats into another room and close that door and leave yours open. That should take care of your problem.

Our house (Begonia) has a cold air return inside each bedroom and the den so you can close the door and still get heat. The cold air return is just inside the door in the ceiling. The main cold air return is outside the master bedroom in the ceiling.

We always just turn on one of the fans to circulate the air. If not, from what I remember, the heat stays in the top 2ft area from a high ceiling. Keep the fan on low.

It is very likely that your thermostat is located in that little hallway so is the main air return. In the process of sucking air, all of the heat in the main part of the house has to pass by the thermostat. So, the thermostat says, "oops, I'm warm enough" and shuts off the heat. Meanwhile, your bedroom is isolated and the thermostat doesn't know or care that there's not enough heat in there.

You're suppose to make you own heat.:)

Heat??
 

One of the most important things to do is balance the heating system.... checking each vent to 'force' the hot air where you want and try to make each room equal..."balanced". What I did was start with the vent nearest to the furnace and close that vent down about 3/4... and work my way away from the furnace... eventually I got the system balanced and all rooms fee equal.

We have a Gardenia. There is plenty of warm air in the great room - the problem is that it is close to the ceiling. Put your fan on slow speed in reverse so it is lifting the cool air to the ceiling and distributing the warm air. You can move your thermostat but I would recommend you buy a wireless thermostat which you can move around the house - we have a Bryant wireless thermostat but there are many others like Venstar. We keep the thermostat in the great room in the day time and move it to the bedroom at night.

I have a Camelia and the master suite is the coldest part of the house by about two or three degrees. By the way, the master bedroom does have its own return vent.

The main problem seems to be the architectual design itself that impedes the heat balance. The master suite is the second largest area in the house, yet its main heat source is the one bedroom size ceiling vent and the voluminous master bath has only one bathroom size vent to heat all that area. The very small closet size vent in the toilet doesn't contribute much of anything and neither do the other two walk-in closet vents. The master suite could have used a vent sized like the three main vents in the kitchen, dining room, and living room. Our master bedroom has a "tray" ceiling which is two foot lower than the ten foot ceiling in the master bath. Unfortunately, most of what little bathroom heat you have is trapped behind the wall over the archway that transitions from the ten foot ceiling to the eight foot one and never reaches the master bedroom.

As a bit of history, when the Camelia/Gardenia series was first built, the master bedroom suite had a ten foot vaulted ceiling in its entirety. Since the master bath and master bedroom had the same height ceiling there was an even flow across the ceiling between bedroom and bath. However, there was a problem with the vaulted ceiling in the master bedroom area where a stress crack would appear. This was a chronic problem and the solution was to create the lower "tray" ceiling in the master bedroom that is now seen in the later versions. While that may have solved the crack issue, I believe it created the imbalance in the heat and lack thereof that is referred to above.

I, too, have a new Camellia. Ours has a southern exposure at the back of the house. Thus we get the sun, when it shines, all day on the back of the house (i.e. master bedroom. Our mastr BR is the warmest place in the house when it is cold outside. On the other hand when it is warm, it heats up real fast and I have to keep the blinds closed. Point of all this is you also have to consider what exposure you have.

True about what you said.

My house has a west/east orientation with the master bedroom on the east side . . . . sun only in the AM. But so is my "great room" and that room and the other rooms in the house are at the same temp except for the master suite in the cold weather. So, the bottom line is that, if your not going to get a boost from Mr Sunshine all day for your master suite, the imbalance in the heat distribution certainly won't keep that room warm and toasty. Additionally, I think that, if we had gas heat instead of an electric heat pump, the situation might be mitigated. Gas heat is much more responsive a the heat pump.

Interesting to note that the temp imbalance is only an issue in the winter when using the heat pump and not in the summer when using the AC itself.

If your house is still under warranty I would definitely report this, let the hvac installer balance the system...gn