How to heat an unheated room...

[hotblues20]

I have a 100 year old colonial in MA with one room on the 2nd floor with no heat source. Nothing. No radiator, no baseboard heater - it was just built w/o heat.

The room is about 12 x 10, my wife uses it for her changing room/giant closet. We keep the door open to get heat from the hallway, but it is always 10-15 degrees colder than the rest of the house.

How can I get heat in this room without going broke? I am thinking single baseboard heater with it's ownn thermostat - does something like that exist? Can it be plugged into a wall outlet or does it need to be hard wired into the main box? Thoughts or suggestions are appreciated.

Bluesman

[Edwin Pawlowski]

Electric is the most expensive heat available in New England.

Both types are available. If it is a plug in, be sure the wiring is sufficient to handl the load.

[Heathcliff]

room/giant

How is the rest of the house heated? If you have forced-air heat, that's easier to tap into than if it's a water or steam system. But for a quick easy fix, an inexpensive electric heater with blower should easily suffice to raise the temp of a small room 10 or 15 degrees. If it's only a matter of comfort while changing, you could put your plug-in heater on a timer (the heavy-duty kind) and have it just go on for an hour or two in the morning.

[hotblues20]

The rest of the house is oil fired FHW into radiators...not really feasible to tap a radiator into this room.

I know elec is expensive - what are my alternatives? Buring scrap wood in a trash barrel?

If anyone can suggest a plug in/hard wired baseboard heater with its own thero, let me know.

Thanks,

Bluesman

[m Ransley]

Run new pipes for a radiator. Electric is probably near 3 times the cost to operate. In the long term you will be happy you did it.

[default]

What kind of heat do you have in the rest of the house? How close is the nearest existing heat source? How well is this room insulated? Does it have windows? If it's just a walk-in closet, why do you care if it's a little cool? What are the adjacent room(s)? what, if anything, is above it?

If it's a 100 year old colonial, my guess is that it's got very little insulation above and around it, and a leaky old window. So I'd start by cutting a foam insert to plug the window(s), and drop fiberglass in the attic over it. Only then should you look into extending the existing heating system.

[e-mail] wrote:

[Red Neckerson]

You could always get a window unit heatpump.....

[Bubba]

First you need to do a load calculation on the room to see how much heat you need. Then decide on what you want to heat it. Bubba

[JerryMouse]

You're obviously enamored of baseboard heaters. Go ahead, but no one is going to recommend it.

If I wasn't going to do it right, I'd simply put a fan in the doorway floor, to blow the cold floor air into the warm area.

[ElJay]

I don't know if this would work, but how about one of those radiant heat lamps that are used in bathrooms of fancy hotels? The only time it seems that you will ned to heat the room is when your wife is in there. So, she could turn on the light and heat lamp while using the room (in the winter), then turn both off when leaving.