We live in a tri level home in the Midwest. About ten years ago we put an
addition on the home, a large living room, entry hall, hallway, coat closet,
pantry and half bath. We are so uncomfortable in the living room in the
winter. The heat is uneven, and it just never seems comfortable in winter.
We have a gas fireplace (glass front, no blower, small vent straight out
only), but it has proven to be a bit expensive to run all the time. We do
not sit on any of the outside walls.

The living room is in the best insulated part of our home. We have Anderson
wood insulated windows. The room is completely carpeted. It is 16 1/2' by
24'. It also has a low cathedral ceiling (10' ?) and ceiling fan. It is over
a crawl space. The walls of the crawl space are insulated with foam sheet
insulation. There is a sliding glass door at one end and an equal width
window on the front of the house. Both have curtains, though not insulated
drapes. We also have a room humidifier for the winter. The room is separated
from the rest of the house by a hallway, the entry hall, the coat closet and
the pantry. The entry hall does have a heat register.

We are always cold in this room. I suspect part of the problem is it is too
far from the furnace. We installed a new larger gas furnace when we did the
addition. It is in the old part of the house. I have really just suffered
with the cold every winter until I started babysitting in a home with 22
foot ceilings. I am comfortable in that living room all day long and the
thermostat there is set on the same temperature as ours. The house even
faces the same direction as ours. It also has windows on each end of the
room about equal to the same square footage as ours. That house is older
than our addition.

I took an electronic thermometer around to every room, left it about 10-15
minutes and was shocked to find the living room was actually the warmest of
all the rooms. The rest of the rooms only varied as little as three degrees.
The thermostat is in the lower level of the tri level, in a finished room,
in the middle of the old house, by an open staircase and it registers three
degrees less than the room it is in. (the temperature was three degrees
higher on the thermometer than the thermostat) I was planning on adjusting
some of the dampers in the heating ducts with the hope of making the living
room warmer.

I am stumped as to what we should do to improve the heat in this room. It
has three heat registers in it, two with heat deflectors on them to direct
the heat into the room away from the curtains. Only one is blocked by
furniture so I keep the table away from it. I would hate to put up insulated
drapes, as I planned the room so we would have natural light in the morning
and evening.

I need some suggestions on what we should do to make this room more
comfortable? Should we insulate the pipes so the heat coming into the room
is warmer when it gets here? Should I still try to adjust the dampers to get
more heat into the room? I am afraid doing that now that I took the
temperature in all the rooms that I would make them too cold. I don't know
off hand the R values of the insulation in the walls and ceiling, but the
ceiling was about double that in the rest of the house. In the hot summer it
is a very comfortable room. Suggestions??

Thank you for the time and help.

Autumn