Sewing in a cold basement, HELP!

**phranny** · 10-09-2012, 06:19 PM

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?

**nativetexan** · 10-09-2012, 06:27 PM

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.

**DogHouseMom** · 10-09-2012, 06:30 PM

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.

**Tartan** · 10-09-2012, 06:33 PM

A small electric heater with a fan would probably be enough to heat where you are sitting. My DIL has one for her music room in the basement that is about 10 inches square that she plugs in when she goes in there. It works great and she got it at the Canadian Tire store if that helps.

**Mom3** · 10-09-2012, 06:33 PM

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

**virtualbernie** · 10-09-2012, 06:43 PM

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!

**Prism99** · 10-09-2012, 07:08 PM

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.

**Barbshobbies** · 10-09-2012, 06:53 PM

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.

**spokanequilter** · 10-09-2012, 06:56 PM

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....

**Jen C** · 10-09-2012, 07:00 PM

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.

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