Forced Air issues.. :(
 

My house has forced air heating. The furnace and the kitchen are at the opposite ends of the house (2 floors, 1600sqft).

The problem is that the floor vents in the kitchen have little to no air or heat coming out of them. I did the Sears duct cleaning service, and afterward, they said my vents were extremely dirty, but it still didn't resolve the issue. They also said that it could just be because the vents are so far from the furnace that the air doesnt make it all the way to the kitchen.
I kind of refuse to believe that, because that would mean it's a really crappy house design. Their suggestion now was to just get a portable heater, or a board heater..

Does their suggestion sound reasonable? is there really no other way to fix my heating issue?

You need to balance your heating system ...

This means closing the opening (making smaller) the vents that are closer to the furnace, and fully opening the vents at the end of the runs (your kitchen).

Some places will have dampers to control (kinda like a valve for an air duct, but they will be under the floor). Also, hope that you don't have any ducts that may have seperated or leak air to the remote ends.

Is it a finished basement? Can you see the ducts if any of them are leaking, have gaps that may prevent the flow to the far ends?

Did the kitchen vents ever have a good amount of heat comming out of them? or did you just move in? Could be under sized piping or you're losing air somewhere along the way. Maybe a connection wasn't sealed properly or has come loose.

I agree with ddm, you probably need to balance your heating system. Don't know the company's that come out to do the balancing, I've seen some of them do their work when I've been on different job sites and they test airflow and temperature at the different vents.

It's in Richmond, so, no basement :(
I've tried to closing the vents closer to the furnace, but it didnt seem to help a great deal.. I will experiment more later; it's my rental property, so it's harder for me to get in there and troubleshoot. Is it worth it to have a professional company do the 'balancing'? of course I dont know if i wanna pay someone to open and close vents though..

I just got the place recently, so I'm not sure if there was ever ample air flow out the vents..

Even if it costs a reasonable amount of money, i want to get it fixed. I don't want to go with the portable heater solution.


So the other thing the Sears guy said to me was that it's possible that the thermostat is broken, but the furnace is fine.
Originally, I'd put the thermostat up to 21 degrees, but the temp would read as 17. Now I've got the tenant to put it up to 27 (!!!) degrees, and she said that the temp reading is now a stable 20..
So I'm not exactly sure of the best way to proceed..
Hopefully the thermostat is broken.. but if it isn't, then my heating bill will go through the roof, as the furnace will always be working overtime to get it up to 27, but the temp only goes to 20..

How old is the furnance? Maybe you can get a more efficient one? But then that's a few grand.

^I'm not sure how old it is, but it was supposedly serviced just before we moved in. Previously, I think it didn't work at all, but we told the sellers that it needs to be fixed/serviced before we take possession.

It's probably as old as the house then. If it's over 15 years, it's about at the end of its life.

is there any air coming out at all? I have this issue in my townhome which is 3 levels. Of course the 2nd floor is hot as hell and the bedrooms upstairs are cold as heck. There is air coming out in the top floor, but not just as warm as the floors below.

There is air coming out of the far vents, but its cold, or room temp.
I think my furnace just might need to be replaced. But the rest of the vents work fine, so it seems necessary to replace a furnace just to have warming air out two of the furthest vents..

Get a company to check your furnace and thermostat out and see what they say.
The thermostat could be broken, the air ducts could have leaks, your furnace could be old and therefore has a weak output for air. Lots of viable options why it's not as hot, yet you have to expect that on the other side of the house, the air has lots of time/space to cool before reaching the kitchen vent.

Again the pro's will know if this is a viable problem or just normal common occurance.

Get a programable thermostat from Home Deopt - they're pretty cheap and really easy to install. Plus the advantage is you can program them for peak hours and to turn on and off automatically - thus reducing your heating bill!

I wonder if you could get a thermal camera to find a break/leak in the ducts?

BTW how much was it to clean the ducts? I'm probably going to get this done in the next couple of months.

this (along with possibly getting the furnace looked at)

getting a programable T-stat made a HUGE difference in my place

not only because the old was was junk (original 80's) and would read wrong, but i'm able to set difference time periods so it's cools down during the day and starts to heat up just before i come home, and cool again at night