In my experience, thick curtains (ie normal curtain material, plus lining) covering a window are effective at cutting down on wind from a window that is not that airtight. You have sheers and venetian blinds and an open area in the top.

Most fans have winter mode, which pushes (hot) air down from the ceiling. A low fan on winter mode should help if the problem is heat in the cathedral ceiling. You may have to find an on-line manual to figure out how to switch the fan to winter mode.

I'd look at:

1) Insulation in the attic over the room. Also look for air leaks, these can suck hot air up to the attic. Is the insulation adequate?

2) Look at whether the room has fewer/less heating elements/radiators than other rooms. If you have forced hot air, is the air hot? Or do you need to insulate the ducts? Can you add a radiator?

3) Is the window tight? Or is the cold clearly coming from the window? How much do the blinds and curtains help with that?

The corrugated is in the eyebrow and there are room darkening drapes over the bottom windows. You don't get much thicker than that in addition to the plastic layer.

Fan is in heating mode.

The air from the furnace is hot but high up in the ceiling and only one register. Smaller room next door has two registers.

With the cathedral ceiling, are you able to get in that area to add more insulation?

It really seem that there is not adequate warm air being pushed into a high sq ft room.

This is a beautiful bedroom, unfortunately there is no easy solution to fix the hot in summer and cold in winter problem. You have a cathedral ceiling, large window, insufficient supply registers, and no return vent. All contribute to the problem. The builder and HVAC installer did not do their job.

My suggestion is to see if it feasible to add another supply vent. Find out how much insulation is in the ceiling. I suspect it less than R-30. If if is then get a quote from a contractor to increase the insulation. A possible solution is to remove the ceiling sheet rock and installed a closed cell foam insulation to get achieve a higher R values in the same space. Consider also doing this for the exterior wall. Also look into replacing the window with one that has a higher value and tighter for air infiltration.

How air rises. You need more registers and lower to the ground.

There are good ideas below. Until then, to keep the four year old from turning into a popsicle invest in really good, thick polar fleece PJs, extremely thick socks, and excellent down comforters rated for cold.

The wind howls against our bedroom wall and for various reasons we could get our AC unit of the window until this weekend. I cracked out my grandfather's 1970's Eddie Bauer down sleeping back, unzipped it and layered it on top of my comforter. It absolutely did the trick.

In general, there should be an attic that is accessible. Some attics have pull down stairs and floors. Others have tiny hatches where you need a ladder and no floor, so you need to put planks over the rafters to move around and look. It's certainly easier and cheaper to add insulation to the space above the ceiling than to remove the cathedral ceiling, even if the attic has no floor and not enough headroom to stand upright.

Can you add an electric baseboard radiator?

@mike_home, I believe there is a cold air return, it is above where the picture was taken from. There should be enough space between the roof and ceiling of this room to put batt or blown in insulation? About the builder/subs, master bath was very cold. Same window set up facing west, tile half up wal/floor in large master. Only one register, I questioned that. Looking up from an unfinished area of basement , they found a register that was tiled over! THey cut thru the tile but it has only minimally helped that room. HVAC guy said not much would help with the amt of tile in the room.

All of the registers on the second floor are in the ceiling.

Attic access is in the bedroom closet back corner opposite this bedroom. Power company did energy audit after they moved in. I know another area was deficient in the amount of insulation present but not sure here.

The 4 year old doesn't complain of the cold at night and loves cozy pj's. It's Mom and the rest of us if we are up there playing or doing things that worry.

"They have the smart thermostat where individual "pucks" are put in rooms to heat to that rooms needs. "

So you have a "zoned" system?

If this room is at the end of the duct run that can be an issue with getting enough heat to the room. Where is the supply vent? On a wall or in the ceiling over the window?

Do you have one furnace or two? Is it/they in a basement or in the attic?

Have you tried to close the vents in the rooms that get enough heat in order to concentrate the heat to this room?

A cold air return is always at the base of a wall, not high up. There's likely one for this floor, maybe in the hallway. Make sure it's not blocked.

@BeverlyFLADeziner You can see the vent on the right hand side by the window in the ceiling. I'm nor sure what is different but where we live all of our cold air returns are up in the wall, a foot from the ceiling. Google says in hotter climates, up on the wall is the preferred location. While it is cold now, our hot, humid season is probably longer. Every room has a return.

Furnace two stories down in basement. It is not zoned but the smart thermostat has "pucks" that are placed in locations that may be difficult to heat/cool. This room then drives the thermostat. This also allows you to monitor the temp remotely.

Close the two vents in the rooms prior to this room and see if the heat increases.

You probably need an HVAC guy to come out and balance the system.

All the 'puck' thermostats monitor the home occupants as well as the heating and cooling. I would NOT ALLOW THEM IN MY HOME. It's an invasion of privacy and in Texas the utility companies use them to change the temperature in your homes without you input or approval.

Daughter bought and owns the pucks , they are not thru any utility. Does this mean you don't have a smart thermostat? They are on wifi as well.

So what is the person in the other room supposed to do for heat in a room over a garage when it's 10 degrees out and we closed their vents?

Closing vent to determine if the volume of heat can be increased with restriction in other areas.

For example, my master bedroom is the last room on my system. To boost the AC to the room in the summer I close the vents in all the bathrooms half way. The ambient AC in the house is enough to keep the bathrooms cool. That way all the cool air makes it to the last room.

Don't take it personal but you are playing a fools game by going at it like this.

Zoning bells and whistles (pucks) only work if installer/user know how they work and how to calibrate them. Experience shows few installers know how to calibrate therefore must tinker with them in attempt to get them close. Tinkering means a few trips back to worksite without pay. Truth is those extra trips are seldom made and brings it to this web search for help from people that can't tell you how it's done. Adding insult to injury, trying to relay from web buds to you and from you to the kids qualifies it as fools game.

What I;m I'm saying is that system might be able of doing the job only if set/adjusted right. Do that before trying band-aid fixes. You are needing an experienced pro or really skilled handyman/homeowner with EYES ON to pull this off.

Daughter purchased a 15 year old home this summer. Upper story, west facing bedroom was hot in the summer and now is cold. It has a large 3 panel window with arched eyebrow above it.

Would taking the cathedral ceiling out, lowering it to above the eyebrow, help much?

Fan is in heating mode.

The air from the furnace is hot but high up in the ceiling and only one register. Smaller room next door has two registers.

It is currently very cold in the midwest and windy, like single digits for the high. This room last night was 65 degrees with the rest of the house near 70, even the cooler rooms. They have the smart thermostat where individual "pucks" are put in rooms to heat to that rooms needs.

While it is cold now, our hot, humid season is probably longer. Every room has a return.

Furnace two stories down in basement. It is not zoned but the smart thermostat has "pucks" that are placed in locations that may be difficult to heat/cool. This room then drives the thermostat. This also allows you to monitor the temp remotely.

So quite a bit to "unpack" here. The house is old, but not that old. The house was recently purchased "this last summer" I presume. Congratulations.

These kinds of things almost always come out of the woodwork after you move in and take ownership. You've or your daughter has tried to remedy this with the gimmicks of the HVAC industry known as "smart" thermostats & pucks for very little money will supposedly and "magically" fix all your HVAC woes. Don't take offense, you're not the only one... the gadget maker market is worth billions of dollars annually. Americans love gimmicks and gadgets even more.

If only it wasn't that cold right now? yeah, your problems would probably be few. Extremes whether cold or hot are going to bring set ups like this to their knees. (please I'm doing all I can for how I was designed--- your HVAC system is pleading with you. "The design".

So lets talk about that... The design is a two story home with a furnace in the basement. It's got a single thermostat to control it... sure you can add pucks and do all sorts of gimmickery but it still does not change the fact it was "Originally designed" to be controled by a single thermostat.

You can (or your daughter I should say) close vents and do all sorts of gimmickery things for little money but as this extreme weather has proven to you (by now hopefully) the gimmicks aren't going to do much when extreme weather comes a knocking... or I should say "howling".

We don't know if this room was added after the builder built the home, this is merely a guess I don't know either? It's on the upper level. The home has two stories and only one HVAC system. So we already know that zoning -- either by controls or by additional systems to zone a larger foot print home -- is lack luster for this home.

To be clear, smart thermostats with pucks or sensors are no where near what a professional HVAC zoned system can do, but even then extreme weather like you have is going to likely weigh heavily upon it.

The other rooms are not boasting ample heat at only 70F so there is no "extra heat" that you can rob peter to pay paul here? Not from what I am reading from the OP. "It's cold and so the system under this pressure points more to possible sizing issues... or very poor insulation issues but at being only 15 years old home leads me to believe "guessing here" sizing issue is more likely.

If this room was added to after the fact, that may be the tipping point?

I get ripped all the time for "supposedly" being a contractor who never does heat load calcs... which is kind of ironic here. Because I have often stated that the heat load calc is a tool, the edumacated know when to pull it out the tool bag and use it.

A better design would be 2 HVAC systems -- zoned to each floor of the house, then do away with the so called "smart" thermostats that are 9 times out of 10 anything but smart.

I service the Katy, Texas area.

(Note: If the system was showing incredible heat else where under this extreme cold, I would have suggested a HVAC zoned system but I think in this case it's not going to do much more than what you got right now.)

The cathedral ceiling is also a design problem, but with a properly sized system it's not really much of a factor, certainly the temp in heating mode of the air up there will be warmer than at floor level. With that ceiling fan in heat mode I don't think it would be worth the expense to do away with it. As at some point in the future when you go to sell this home people buy homes many, many times because of how they look and a cathedral ceiling in that room is a chefs kiss to the untrained frozen eye in the depths of old man winter antics.

It's difficult to heat or cool multiple rooms in a home with a common system and without zoning. Rooms--even of the same size-- can have different heating/cooling loads due to their exposure, levels of insulation, window area, and whether or not they are over a conditioned space or an unconditioned space like a garage. Ditto for trying to heat/cool multiple levels in a home utilizing a common system without zoning. You can install remote sensors and control based on an average of their inputs, but that results in some rooms being hotter or cooler than desired in order to improve the comfort level in the others. That may work fine in an empty-nester home, but not so well in one where all of the bedrooms are occupied.

It's clear from your description that you have air flow distribution issues. You may also have areas with inadequate insulation or air sealing. You can implement improvements by trial and error or you can have someone do the required "homework." Insulation and air sealing issues are easy to identify with an infrared camera. You can purchase an IR module that works with an i-phone for a couple of hundred dollars. I'd have someone do a room-by-room heating and cooling load calculation following the ACCA manual J methodology. Then check the furnace and air conditioner capacities versus the required heating and cooling capacities. Then run a duct work design following manual D. Once you've got the required heating and cooling air flows on a room-by-room basis, you can check them against what you have and develop a plan to correct any deficiencies.

We lived like your daughter for 10 years as our upper floor (2 furnaces - one for lower and one for upper floor) never really did the trick. Blown in insulation in the attic made all the difference for us. Oh, and a dual mini split added to the far run rooms (all for $20k - ouch). But now our upper floor feels great for all seasons.

They have had an energy audit by their utility after they moved in a this room was hot during the summer. I know it stated they needed more insulation in a few places. Just wasn't sure how getting more insulation in a cathedral ceiling worked.

They did have an HVAC contractor out in the summer also. Perhaps they need another one as I don't think solutions were suggested.

I am at their house assisting with 3 under 4 while dad travels starting this weekend. We will play with registers and see if that helps.

They had a zoned system at their last house that the puck ran off of and it worked well. They are missing it now.

Throw the pucks away - they are accomplishing nothing worthwhile. You either need the air distribution fixed, the system zoned, or a much more informed energy audit implemented.

I would suggest that the easiest solution might be a heat pump ‘Multi’ system with heads in each of the rooms that you're having issues with.

Not elegant, not cheap but likely the solution that works and you’ll be done!

IMPO

SR

We will play with registers and see if that helps.

You can try but closing registers is not going to solve this problem.

@mike_home. That what I thought too but we can hope right! Weather is in the teens for the next 10 days or so. Ironically the time frame SIL will be gone. Problem most likely be attacked until he is back. Thanks all!

" Not elegant, not cheap "

And won't benefit you as much as the HVAC person trying to twist your arm with sales puffery, so that you will write a big check. That's this guy's MO.

Yes, put new heads in "each of the rooms" and spend more than the original install for the entire system cost. What a great idea! Who cares if the problem is only in one room?

PS - insulation is relatively inexpensive and may be a good place to start. Try that first if there are spots that are deficient and see if or how much that helps.

Hi, This won't cost anything. If you Have warm air to the room and it still is cold, try leaving the door open about halfway and see if that works. To move air in you have to move move air out.

If that works put some louvers in the door.

Good Luck Woodbutcher

Not sure where you are located but it has been unusually cold and windy where I live in NJ. Conditions like this really magnify the problem. A 1-2 degree variation compared to the thermostat setting is normal. Variations of more than 5 degrees is unacceptable in my opinion.

There is nothing wrong with trying the easy and low cost solutions. This problem requires spending significant dollars. Ask your son-in-law to find an insulation contractor to recommend options how the insulation of the cathedral ceiling can be increased. He also needs to get an HVAC contractor to propose solutions to provided more heating and cooling to this bedroom. I would get the opinions of 2-3 HVAC contractors because they will likely propose different solutions.

I think you'd need to add a lot of insulation to ever make this space comfortable; per the OP's post, it has only one supply. That might be adequate for a walk-in closet, but it won't deliver the required air flow for a bedroom.

Tear out the ceiling and walls and do spray foam if you want to solve the actual real root of the problem. Cathedral ceilings are woefully uninsulated. It does no good to increase the heat if the room cannot hold on to it.

Ironically, this room has a huge walk in closet between the two colder rooms. This closet is warm and I'm not sure it has a vent. We probably need to keep that door open also, at least during the day.

Midwest -- where it has been extremely cold and windy this week