Custom builds – tips for over-garage room heating

Building a custom, personalized home can provide you and your family the opportunity to see your dream home come to life! But in bringing your ideas to fruition there are many structural and mechanical items to consider, such as proper home heating, cooling and ventilation.

Our friends at Weiss-Johnson, locally owned heating, cooling and home comfort specialists, have compiled a great list of tips for maximizing the heat and comfort in large custom homes that specifically feature over-garage rooms:

  1. Go for carpet flooring in the spaces over a garage.
  2. Consider a gas or electric fireplace with a thermostat on the second floor to add supplementary heat.
  3. Drop the ceiling over the garage and do a hot box system, allowing for a heat run or two to be located in the dropped ceiling space.
  4. Use your Ecobee 4 thermostat, standard in all Parkwood Master Builder homes, and add the remote sensor to this room so the furnace will run longer to satisfy that space.
  5. Install the mechanical room and furnace as close to the garage as possible so that the heat runs are as short as possible. The heat runs over the garage are always the longest and run through a cold space often so the pipes take longer to warm up and often by the time they get up to temperature, the thermostat is satisfied and the furnace is off.
  6. If the space over the garage is 600-1000 sq.ft, consider adding a zoned system off of the furnace just for that space.
  7. Use a variable speed furnace so that temperatures are more even throughout the house.
  8. When planning out a home think about your family living in it. If little Johnny is always warm and sleeps with his blankets off anyways, put his bedroom furthest away from the furnace if you can. Often little Jane’s room is upstairs around the back side of the stairs furthest away from the furnace and she is always cold, so plan her room closest to the furnace. This can happen with master bedrooms too, often they are furthest away from the furnace on the top floor and even though Dad is warm, Mom isn’t and that’s not good. If Mom isn’t happy, nobody is happy!

If you are looking into building a custom home, we would invite you to come meet us for a free consultation at the Parkwood Design Center. We would love the opportunity to create the cozy and comfortable, dream home you’ve been looking for. Contact us today at info@parkwoodhomes.ca.