Question about homes with vaulted ceilings

[HIU8]

DH and I are very seriously considering putting our house up for sale. However, we have also been looking at homes to see if there really is anything out there that we would be willing to move in to (in our price range it was disappointing to us what we have been seeing in the school districts we want to move to). Suddenly, some better quality homes with more of what we want have come on the market. Now, we cannot buy unless we sell, but at least we know there is hope for us finding something we actually want. We are looking at one this weekend with a vaulted ceiling (contemporary style). DH doesn't like a vaulted ceiling b/c he says the home is hard to heat and cool and our utility costs would go up. I have heard mixed things--some that vaulted ceiling homes are more expensive to heat and some that say they are not any more expensive if you have a decent system in your home. Opinions? Anyone with this type of a home that can give their insight?

[sunshine873]

I haven't noticed it to be a problem, but I would definitely recommend a ceiling fan. Ours is almost always going.

[katerinasmom]

We have a vaulted ceiling only in our bedroom. It is beautiful but it is also the only room in the house that does not retain either the heat or cooling for very long. It heats up well enough and cools down well enough but it cools almost immediately after the heat stops pumping and heats up as soon as the central air goes off.

[wencit]

We have vaulted ceilings, and since this is the first home I ever purchased, I don't have anything to compare it to. However, I don't think our energy bills are astronomically high. Personally, I think the heating/cooling thing has more to do with the location of the room than the vaulted ceilings themselves. Rooms upstairs will be warmer, and rooms downstairs will naturally be cooler. Another thing to consider is that newer homes (contemporary styles with vaulted ceilings) generally have better and more efficient heating/cooling systems than older homes.

[sunshineandme]

We have vaulted ceilings in our living room - while it looks nice, it's cold in there most of the time and takes a really long time to get heated up. On the other hand, it's nice in summer since it's cool.

[egoldber]

Your DH is right. We have a vaulted family room and I hate it. It looks cool, but I hate it.

We have two heating/cooling systems and it only helps marginally.

[Globetrotter]

Ours is hard to heat or cool... definitely a power sucker!

[ChunkyNicksChunkyMom]

Our six year old home has a double height living room (hate) with separate heating and cooling systems for each floor. The heating bills are OUTRAGEOUS (think $600- Ohio winters) and the air is about 1/2 that. And this is for a 3400 square foot home, so not huge, huge. I also had a nasty heating/cooling bill surprise at the last condo I owned. I would ask to see actual bills to make an educated assessment, sure wish I had!

[crazydiamond]

A bit complicated to answer. Generally yes - more money and harder to keep comfortable than other spaces but it depends on how it was built.

We are about to constructed an addition on our home, and it will include a "mini" vaulted ceiling over the new family room and master bedroom. However it will have a super insulated ceiling and walls, fire place and ceiling fans. It will also have a zoned damper seperately controlling the HVAC to those spaces.

So you might find a home with a vaulted ceiling... that was done right.

[s7714]

I think a lot depends on the layout of the house and how your heating/cooling system is set up. In general I'd say it's harder to consistently cool or heat a room with a vaulted ceiling, but if you have ceiling fans it can help a lot.

When our house was being built we asked about putting in ceiling fans in our vaulted formal living/dining area (ceilings are a little over 18 feet up) but were told it wouldn't be necessary by a clueless sales girl. Now we really wish we had them put in from the beginning because the room acts like a big funnel that pipes all the warm air up to the second story (which makes the second story get too warm in the winter and harder to cool in the summer). Our neighbors have a central vaulted living room like us, but they have two thermostats in their house--one for upstairs and one for downstairs--so they haven't noticed any of the issues we've had.