HVAC-Duct work and Furnace Question

MikesProjectHouse · 10-27-2006, 11:54 PM

Should have waited, should have bought a newer house. But this is the one i bought 120+ years old. I have a forced hot air Furnace not much heat on the 2nd floor and for the time being am trying to get heat to 4 to 5 rooms and a Return to the 2nd floor without building alot of Soffets to store the duct work. there's 7" tall by 13" wide openings between the ceiling and floor from 1st floor to 2nd between the joists. and i'm in the middle of gutting a room on the 1st floor which would allow me to put some square duct work in between the studs (if possible) and get it up to the 2nd floor without loosing usable space. What i would really love to do is to do away with the Forced hot air and go with Bassboard heat. The Furnace is a fairelly new OIL Burning furnace and i don't know if it can be converted from forced hot air to hot water for the baseboard heat. I really don't know what my questions are but i have a picture in my head and lots of before and after pictures of the house of what it was before and what it is now. It's come along way but i hate cutting into these hard wood floors for registers and would love to preserve them if at all possible. Any help,ideas,etc with this would be greatly appreciated..thanks

Mike

#CARRIERMAN · 10-30-2006, 08:19 PM

Hi MikesProjectHouse

You kind of shot us a loaded question. If you already have a central system downstairs and you want to use it to heat the upstairs. The first thing you need to do is find out if its big enough to do the job. The second thing I would suggest is figure out what you are willing to settle with. If you have room to do put a seperate system in the upstairs. I would happen to fall into this same category. The main part of my house was built in 1898 and the last addition was added in 1924. Its a beautiful old house, I installed two Carrier 90 plus furnaces with two R410A heat pumps. I take advantage of the dual fuel operation. But enough about my house, it was hard for me but I had to settle with what was important for both us and the house. The other thing I would not do is settle for crap equipment. Hope some of this helps make your decisions a little easier.

Good luck
Rusty