Cold air in Glenview Kingsley Model

[Rainy]

Hello,

I was wondering if anyone else had issues with their Glenview Kingsley model blowing cold air in the upstairs spare room (room furtherest from the furnace).
They told me that that the some rooms would be hotter then others and could be fixed by balancing it.
From what I can tell there was some bad work done on these models.

If anyone has the same issue or knows what the solution is, can you let me know.


Thanks,

Rainy

[Sarah2012]

If it's cold-ish air coming out of the vents then I would say that is typical of the recirculating fan running when the furnace is not. When you run it, it does help even out the temps throughout the house but it does feel "cold" when you put your hand over it.

If it is the room that is cold then there are a few things you can look into (happened to us, not with Glenview, so I'll share in the hopes it helps) - balancing of the vents could help, HVAC tech can also increase the furnace CFMs, or bring in an inspector like Phil Acker to use his thermal imaging gun to check for air leaks. It was a combination of all three of these that made our guestroom tolerable through the winter.

[Halton Home Inspector]

Balancing is the first step. Have them do that asap to see if that improves the situation and that it does not cause problems in other areas of the home.

As stated in the previous post, have them ensure that the furnace is set up properly.

Another thing to consider is the BTU size of the furnace. I can't say what you should have in the Ottawa area but where I am, just west of Toronto, the size of the furnace in a typically built 2900 square foot home would be between 60,000 to 66,000 BTU with some higher end builders would putting in a 80,000 BTU furnace.

[HMBTUX]

Originally Posted by Halton Home Inspector

Balancing is the first step. Have them do that asap to see if that improves the situation and that it does not cause problems in other areas of the home.

As stated in the previous post, have them ensure that the furnace is set up properly.

Another thing to consider is the BTU size of the furnace. I can't say what you should have in the Ottawa area but where I am, just west of Toronto, the size of the furnace in a typically built 2900 square foot home would be between 60,000 to 66,000 BTU with some higher end builders would putting in a 80,000 BTU furnace.

"Typical" 2900 sq ft shack in GTA.....must be nice! Just teasing of course

On a serious note we had similar issues (home similar size to Kingsley). VERY hot in summer afternoons and VERY cold in winter nights. It turned out to be a variety of factors, they’re list worthy, see below:

1. The room has a huge window (about 7 ft tall, 6 ft wide), so some additional temperature swings are inevitable. The window faces West so summer afternoons/evenings = sauna.
2. Room is in corner of house so two outside walls, as well as part of third wall exposed since the room "juts out" a bit, so this adds to it.
3. Room has higher than normal ceilings, including partial cathedral. Also contributing factor.

We suspect that the builder plans for ductwork were based off sq footage rather than cubic (which seems silly) and also didn’t consider the other two points above (not sure if the plans account for these factors or not). In any event, we eventually (in Year 7 of Tarion Warranty, as second owner) got the builder to come add a second “heat run”, which means new duct work all the way from basement to add a second vent in the bedroom. This was after them checking insulation and doing the balancing etc. They found a decent duct route through main floor closet and bathroom but there was still drywall, tile and paint repairs etc required that they took care of. We also got them to add a second “air return” vent closer to the floor in the room (to draw the cold air out in winter). Even after opening the wall and adding this second air return, they didn’t notice that said air return was a hole (2 holes now) to nowhere – literally….no ductwork and the cavity in the wall was sealed at the floor. Through further troubleshooting myself after all these repairs still didn’t solve the problem, I discovered this and got them to come in again and fix the air return vents. After all this it seems better/tolerable, still very hot in summer afternoons, but the winter nights were our main concern for our toddler and he is fine leaving the door open at night for now which of course helps. The last of the repairs were March/2018 though so we have yet to go through an extended period of very cold winter nights and that will be the real test. Either way I don’t think there’s much more that can be done, but wanted to share the experience in case it helps someone with similar issues. It was a lot of time and effort, including numerous builder no shows etc etc.

Good luck!