Tips for Heating Your Basement

Whenever you finish out a formerly unfinished area of your home with intentions to spend time there, you will need to think about heating and cooling it. There are a number of options for heating and cooling basements, attics, garages or add-ons. Each has advantages and disadvantages, so here’s some information that may help you make your plans for heating your basement — or whatever room you decide to turn into living space.

Baseboard Heating

This is a great way to heat a room. Baseboard heating is easy to install and eliminates the need for adding or extending ductwork. This type of heating is quiet and unobtrusive and requires no maintenance. Relatively inefficient as a means of heating an entire house, it doesn’t really cost that much when you’re just heating a room. The type that are hard wired into the home are preferable to those that plug in.

Extend the Ductwork

If your furnace is sized appropriately to provide the heating to another space, then extending the ductwork into the basement may not be a bad option. As long as your ductwork design accommodates the extension, you should be good to go. Extending ductwork can be rather expensive; however, it could be a more efficient option as long as your furnace has the capacity to heat the extra space.

Ductless Mini-Split

Mini-splits are heat pumps that, as the name implies, do not need ducts. They consist of an outdoor compressor/condenser, and an indoor air handler, and are connected by a conduit that contains the electrical and refrigerant lines. Heat pumps are not always the best choice where winters are cold, as they are not particularly efficient heating sources when temperatures fall below freezing.

It might be that in addition to the heat pump, you would need some kind of backup auxiliary heating source, such as heat strip coils. The condenser should be mounted at least two feet off the ground in snow country, and protected from snowfall overhead.

To find out more about heating your basement, contact C.R. Wolfe Heating and Air Conditioning. We serve Middletown and the surrounding area.

Our goal is to help educate our customers in Middletown, New York about energy and home comfort issues (specific to HVAC systems). For more information about heating and other HVAC topics, download our free Home Comfort Guide or call us at 845-367-4482. 

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