My basement is c-c-c-cold!

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albo23

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I bought this house not too long ago and it has some sort of a finished basement. I brought some couches down there and a few rugs as well as my computer but it is still really cold.

There is insulation between the drywall and concrete wall, however, near the furnace there is only bare concrete, no insulation or drywall. I'm not sure how much that is affecting it all. The floors are tile. There are two bedrooms and one bathroom.

Regarding HVAC, there are AC/heating vents that push warm air into the basement, but it is clearly not helping enough. The upper level of the house is plenty warm, though. I've done a bit of research and I see there are no cold air return vents? I'm not entirely sure though.

I have created a video giving you a mini-tour of my basement: [ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPkrKKXo1sU[/ame]
Here is a crappy panoramic picture of the main room: http://i.imgur.com/Mwl1e.jpg

Based on what I have described and what you have seen, what are your suggestions?
 
Heat rises, so try
-baseboard heaters with blowers, 10W per sq. ft, roughly
-radiant heating in your existing floor or under an added floor layer
-ceiling fans
-blowers in your ceiling ducts but they may be noisy
-a duct with fan running from the warm upper floors to the baseboard of your basement room. I've seen in-duct thermostatically-operated fire doors to keep a fire from spreading.

Rent what you can to see what BTU/hr or kw you actually need on your coldest night.
With one of these HD kilowatcher meters you can measure the duty cycle of an electric heater and figure out how cold it would have to be to have this heater run all the time. Along these lines you might also look up your Outside Design Temperature - for my area it's +14F.
 
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The larger vent in the hall is a return air. You could try closing the heat registers up stairs and make sure all the basement ones are open, if that helps the basement, you might be able to balance them. When you are heating a basement it should be insulated with a wall built 1" away from the concrete. And welcome to the site.
 
As you were told on another forum, a good way to not heat the ceiling is to move the hot air registers from the ceiling down to floor level. Hot air rises, as any owner of a hot air balloon will tell you.
 
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