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The house was built in 1995, and I'm assuming the natural gas furnace and blower are original. As far as I know, the blower only has a single speed, and is electronically controlled.
I counted the open and closed registers today and found that 12 out of 18 are open, or 2/3. I'd guess this is enough to relieve the ducting pressure. I would also think the unused bedrooms would stay warm enough to stave off mildew problems just by conduction through the thin doors. My strategy is to block off many of the upstairs registers where the unused bedrooms are, and open all of the downstairs ones. Since heat rises, this usually does a good amount of warming the entire house. Besides, the wife likes to sleep at 60 degrees or less.
Today I went into the rooms and estimate the temperature was 60 when the rest of the house was 67 degrees. I blocked off the gap under the doors with towels and will monitor again tonight. It's supposed to be 13 degrees tomorrow night! That's low for the valley (~200ft elevation).
There was a thin layer of snow this morning that caused a lot of trouble for commuters. I was worried my Dodge/Cummins wouldn't start with the extremely weak batteries, so I plugged in the block heater for the first time. Any idea how many watts these usually consume? I don't know where my Kill-a-Watt is at the moment, so I can't measure it myself. How long should I plug in a block heater (I'm assuming that's what it is) before driving off?
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