How to solve common heating complaints

If you have been following us for awhile you may know I have been an HVAC / Gas Technician for many years, which comes in handing when dealing with heating complaints from tenants among other things. We have done a lot of work in renovations and turning homes into duplexes.

I often shake my head looking at the furnaces and heating design in these houses. Quite often the heating system in a home is not adequate to supply enough heat or it’s not in the right location to accommodate a second family and you will get complaints from tenant that they get too cold during certain points of the year.

Here are some ideas to troubleshoot and resolve those common complaints:

1. Sometimes a certain area of the building has adequate heating, but people still complain they are cold. Check to see if the floor It’s over top of a non-insulated space which can make the floor very cold (and also those people walking on it.) You can raise the temperature in this area but quite often it makes no difference. There are two solutions for this situation:

   1. The first one is a little expensive. You can install in-floor electric radiant heating, this warms up the floor just enough to make a big difference.

   2. The other method is to simply lay carpet down, magically people are no longer getting cold feet and therefore they don’t feel cold!

2. Now if there is a bigger problem this won’t resolve the issue. Sometimes the HVAC system was never designed to heat a particular room. The best course of action is to add electric radiators. Everybody is always quite concerned about the cost of electric baseboard heaters, but they are almost always 100% efficient. All the energy that goes into them is transferred to heat. You are bringing supplementary heat into the room (you aren’t using them to exclusively heat the space) so electric baseboard heating will not cost a great deal more if the primary heat source is coming from somewhere else. It’s just a bit of a warm boost for the cold room.

3. If those solutions don’t warm things up you can install ductless heat pumps which will definitely solve your heating (and cooling) complaints. You don’t need to do much of a big change in your electrical panel and the device will also move air around. They are the most expensive option but as all things you get what you pay for.

Drop a comment below if you have any questions about supplementary heating or HVAC in general!