Sewing in a cold basement, HELP!
 

I've spent the past month sprucing up the basement so I could have a place to "spread out" and be creative. Today I finished doing alterations on the last wedding dress I will ever do, and my treat was to go downstairs and sew! After two hours into the evening, my neck is stiff, and I feel a coldness in my back. If I am going to enjoy this little hideway, I am going to need an alternate heat source! What kind of portable heater should I be looking for? There is no place for a woodfired stove ( would love one).The gas furnace heats the upstairs, and I get a trickle of heat in my new room.

Anyone else sew downstairs where it's cool? What do you use?

i have a tall portable heater i got from my old job. It works with a remote too. Once while still at my job, the heater quit working and I gave it to the maintenance department to keep. They fixed it and brought it back to me since it's more for a small area and not a large open one like theirs. Nice of them. it still works fine. Now, it's outside my sewing room. In the larger area where i watch t.v.
. My sewing room gets warm after awhile with the lights on and if i open a heating vent too. So no worries there.
i have a small square portable heater for the upstairs bathroom. It really blows heat out very well. You may look for one like that. Not sure of the name but it cost a bit if I remember.

If the furnace is down there, it should be relatively easy to add a single duct into the room you are working in. Talk to a furnace guy.

Also ... there might be things you can/should do to the room as well.

Is it carpeted? Adding a carpet pad and carpet will help a lot to keep the heat in.

Are the windows good and tight? Are they thermopaned or just a single sheet of glass? If the windows are not the greatest - cover them with thermal drapes or the plastic stuff that you tape on then hit with the blow dryer to harden. Both will help keep out the drafts.

What about the walls? If the walls are just concrete you are getting a lot of cold seeping from those as well. Ideally, cover them with a insulation then dry-wall over them. If money is an issue, cover the walls with floor to ceiling heavy drapes.

Well, I will think of you when I sewing in my dining room which is about 10 feet from our woodstove. :)

Seriously, look into getting a baseboard oil filled electric heater. We have one that we use in our camping trailer - love the heater.

Shari

I have the opposite problem--in the summer the air conditioning hits the bottom floor first and works it's way up--if I turn it down the upper floors get no air and in the winter same problem--upper floors get no heat :( I had a space heater down there but ended up having nightmares about all my fabric catching fire (kept going back downstairs to 2-3 times to double check that I had turned the heater off). I felt like I had OCD so I opted to move back upstairs when my daughter and her kids moved out. I hope you get a good answer!

I have a small electric heater in my sewing room, the room is 12X14 feet, and in less than 10 min. it`s real warm. I don`t know if we can use brand names here on this site, but I`ll give it a shot. Mine is an Eden Pure and can be carried easily from room to room.

My sewing room is also in the basement. It is a finished room with heating vents, so it's not too bad. It helps to have carpet on the floor, and I have a ceramic portable heater that I occasionally have to use. I also have a great fleece vest and a flannel shirt that I keep down there for added layers of warmth....

We don't have a basement, but our house was built as a beach home without insulation. We have an unheated porch and unheated laundry room. We use the oil filled radiator heaters. They run about $40 at Walmart and work well. We also use plastic on our old windows- it always seems like the air blows right through.

Electricity is cheap here. I have a small electric heater near my feet. That works for me. I also wear sweaters.

vertualbernie, may be too late to help (or you may have tried this anyway). When switching from heat to air and vice versa, did you go around and change all the vents? Hot air rises, so in winter you want all the vents on lower floors open and all the vents on the top floor closed. Cold air sinks, so in summer you want to close all the vents on the lower floors and open the vents on the top floor. We have to do that or we would have the same problem you had.

Believe it or not I use my swing arm lamp. It's the kind that you bolt onto a table and it swings in all directions. I swing it around and set it about 2 feet from my back and the 75 watt bulb warms me up in no time. I don't need a heater, it's not that cold.
Syl

I have one of those oil radiators in my sewing room during the winter. I keep it on the low setting and set the thermostat in about the middle and it keeps this room nice and warm.

The portable oil radiators are great! One will heat a large room and no flame or electric glowing wires.

Hi,

I also sew in my basement....love my sewing room! I do get some heat from the furnace in my room, my husband put in an extra vent as I am next to the furnace room, but in a MN winter it isn't enough...believe me! I have a small electric heater, bought it at WalMart, and I have it about 3-4 ft. from my sewing table blowing at me. I usually go down and turn it on half an hour before I plan on going down and it's just perfect down there. I also have a fleece shirt I keep on my sewing chair. I don't run it on high speed or temp, just enough to get the major chill out. Works well for me.

In the summer I close my two vents or I freeze from the central air. Spring and fall are great! :)

Bev

I sew in an unheated/unairconditioned room. In the winter I use one of those little round body heaters, not a space heater and it really keeps me warm. I think it is a haolgen heater. In the summer I turn the air con in our apartment down to 71 and put a fan to blow the cool air to me across the hall to where I sew.

I agree. I have two of these, and they come in handy in the wintertime, here or there. The radiant heat is very cozy. Just don't leave any electric heater turned on or even plugged in if you are not there. Also, make sure you keep the dust off any parts which get hot, (which on these is the tops and bottoms of each of those metal loops which hold the oil).

I also sew in the basement -- be weary of the little box heaters...they're expensive to run!! A couple years ago over Christmas break, I spent almost 2 weeks solid(about 80 hrs) in the basement sewing and it doubled my electric bill - or about $50 for those 2 weeks of heat!!

I am getting ready to buy a couple of those oil heaters. They have a thermostat on them. I do hear you have to turn them on before you go down there to warm up the space - but have read great reviews. The Honeywell at Home Depot has a 3 yr warranty on it.

Wish I had a basement to spread out my stuff but unfortunately the water table is too high in our area so houses don't have basements! I continue to squeeze all my sewing things into a corner of the office!

If you do go with a portable heater, plug the heater and a lamp into the same surge strip and use the toggle on the strip to turn them both on/off. This way you can tell at a glance if the heater has been left on.

You've had a lot of good suggestions ... and not knowing all the variables of your situation, it's hard for us to know how to zero in on your solution.

I sew in a finished basement with cement floors. I do have carpet around my sewing area ... a nuisance for pins and thread, though warmer underfoot, and some padding when standing at the ironing board. Compromise!

For the heat rises, cold drops issue ... I turn the fan of my furnace on before I go downstairs and that helps to get the air moving, so I get more use of the heat!

If you can, position yourself near where the duct work brings the heat to you. If not, consider some renos to the ductwork to make it work better for you.

And I always keep a fleece vest handy to put on/off as needed!

When it comes to summer ... you'll love the coolness of your basement and will discover it's the BEST way to beat our Ontario heat and humidity! I get a lot of sewing done when it's just too hot to exist ... and as I go up the stairs, the wall of heat hits me!! :)

Make sure you get a electric ceramic heater. They are much safer.

I had several different space heaters , the one with the oil in the core work wonderfully. If its a sewing day .. I go down and turn it on about 45 minutes before. One thing I would not do with out... WOOL socks ... simple but its amazing how much warmer I am.

Ok I know this sounds crazy but I like to sew bare footed so these little piggy get cold. I have a heated welping pad under my machine. These are like heating pads that are use in dog kennals are in ferrin crates for pigs

They have those electric space heaters that are really nice and put out a lot of heat. They are also making them a lot safer than they used to. You can find a lot of different kinds at Lowes or Home Depot. Even Walmart handles them. Be sure to check the size space they heat on the box along with all of the diferent features. Hope you find somethig that will make your new sewing room extra cozy. Happy quilting!

I have a friend who swears by her "ceramic" electric heater. It's very small, maybe 10 x 10 x 10. She claims it's very energy efficient.

I have a portable heater.

Do you have a door on your sewing space? In our basement family room there is an opening, but no door to the stairs. In the winter we hang a heavy curtain over the door. That stops the heat from rising and limits some of the drafts.

The family room has two more doors and a window. We hang a heavy drape over the entire window wall in the winter. The door to the garage is not insulated, so we put extra weather stripping around it and a heavy drape on it too.

We have an oil filled radiator that we keep on low all the time and bump up when we are watching TV in there. The radiators are nice as they do not have a blower. There is no noise and no problem with patterns being blown around (I sew clothes too).

We use the plastic sheeting on our two bathroom windows during the colder weather. It works really well.

Someone else mentioned a fleece vest, I agree, keeping my back and neck warm makes a big difference.

If you don't need a lot, for some reason it seems to raise the temp a few degrees if you run a dehumidifier. I know lots of people use portable heaters and I have in the past as well. But my electrician friend REALLY doesn't like them and told me at least if I was going to use one not to run it on the highest setting. i've heard some good things about some newer ones that do run on electricity but it sounds more like the draw is more equal to a light bulb. Think there are some kind of quartz or ceramic parts that get heated up. I don't really know about them but have the impression that they are safer and also less expensive to run.

Bad draft where I sew. Have a small heater that is wonderful.

We converted half of our garage into a bedroom and added a window to make it "legal" but no heat run. Bought an "oil heater" and that sucker is great. Kicks out lots of heat. Check it out. Others are suggesting it too.

I have a portable ceramic (electric) heater that I bought at Wal-Mart for about $20. It is pretty quiet and produces a nice amount of heat.

If you decide to add a space heater, please look into the quartz infrared heaters. We heat our entire house (small but all chopped into small rooms) with the Eden Pure brand heaters, no furnace....we use three. They plug into standard 110 volt outlet and are very effecient. Our electric bill only went up $30 per heater per month, so total cost to heat house in the dead of winter was $90 per month. Not bad for electric heat. There are different brands to choose from, but I can only testify on Eden Pure.

thanks for the tips
 

Last night after my sewing stint, I took a warm shower and pulled on my fleece pj's, and wrapped my wool pashmina (sp?) shawl around my shoulders. Today I am stiff up there, but I just came back from my fitness class, and I think all the stretching we did today will help it. Still cold in my back, but I have on my shawl again.

I see in the Canadian Tire flyer there is a small 4 quartz element heater on sale, I had to get a rain-check as they were all sold out, as well as all the other CT stores in my area. What about those oil heaters, do they run on oil? Do you add oil to them, like a furnace?

In the mean time, until the heater arrives, I'll think of other ways to keep cozy. The light bulb heating up my back idea sounds good! The car has electricly heated seats, I wonder if having a heating pad strapped to my back would make a difference. Maybe not the most attractive...........lol

You ladies are great with all your ideas and tips and suggestions! And I do look forward to sewing down there in the summer. In the mean time, I have a few ideas to try here. Thanks everyone!:thumbup:

I broke down and bought one of these for this drafty old cottage last year and I love it! It's quiet, doesn't "blow" on me, can be heated up and turned off to let radiant heat come from it, and the size I bought is very portable. They can even serve as a side table - you can actually place things on top of them. http://www.edenpure.com/

Jan in VA

The oil heater I use is sealed , you never add anything. Mine is silent( a huge plus). I like this type better than the fan type, as I found the fan type dried out my eyes and mouth/throat.

My basement studio is very damp in summer (dehumidifier) and cold in winter. I love my

oil filled electric radiators.

They are totaly self contained so no need to make any adjustments or adding oil to them. No flame or heat element to worry about either.

I use three of them In a full 1500 sq ft space. They make it warm without any drafts and I don't even have to put them on high heat. I live in a cold climate. If I loose the electric I have kerosene heater for a back up.
hope you find what will work for you.
peace

I like my infrared heater - it is another brand (SunHeat) than the EdenPure, but the same principle. It is efficient, and economical. It keeps our family room warm - we had a wood stove and replaced with a pellet stove but they both were almost too much as well as having a smell.

I use a small micro heater you can buy them either at Home Hardware or Canadian Tire stores...works great for me!

Why not try a good kerosene heater? They are inexpensive to use and if you keep the wick fresh, there is no odor.

I have a small portable heater. With of the lights, and the heater, and of course wearing thick socks, I'm in heaven. In fact, sometimes I'm so warm, I'll leave the sewing room for a short time so I can cool off. I think mine is a menopause thing.