forced hot air heat, help?

[Petunia]

People with forced hot air for heat, where is the best place to put your rat cage? It's getting so I'll have to turn the heat on soon, I'm cleaning out the ducts and such but I'm having a hard time figuring out where to put the kids so they'll be warm but not be affected by hot dry air. Can you help me figure it out?

with Brenna's resp issues I'm actually terrified of turning the system on.
I've been using the oven to heat up the kitchen (baking potatoes and such, I usually use the microwave but now I"ll use the oven just for the heat it throws)

But I know sooner or later I'll need to turn the heat on.

There are vents in almost every room, but one room only has a return vent. there is no insulation under this room in the basement so it tends to be quite cold.

This is a very old building with a dirt basement, bldg is well over a hundred years old.
I have an air purifier that does one room.

oh this is hurting my head, I'm not feeling up to making such big decisions and am afraid of what will blow out of that furnace the first time it's turned on

:gaah: I just want to go back to bed

 

[victoria]

I find I always have a few days when I turn the heat on in the winter and air conditioning on in the summer when the rats get a little sneezy and congested but they bounce back pretty quickly, even the ones with chronic issues. I don't worry about drafts either, it's not the same as a draft of cold, humid air from outdoors.

One thing you should do - for the animals and yourself - is make sure the filter is changed. It's not that expensive if your landlord is too cheap to do it. That will catch a lot of the mold and dust and prevent it from being spread all over. You also won't have to dust as much

 

[Petunia]

I find I always have a few days when I turn the heat on in the winter and air conditioning on in the summer when the rats get a little sneezy and congested but they bounce back pretty quickly, even the ones with chronic issues. I don't worry about drafts either, it's not the same as a draft of cold, humid air from outdoors.

One thing you should do - for the animals and yourself - is make sure the filter is changed. It's not that expensive if your landlord is too cheap to do it. That will catch a lot of the mold and dust and prevent it from being spread all over. You also won't have to dust as much

yes that's one of the things I'm worried about. I've had forced hot air heat in the past and always bought and changed my own filters.
I went down to see what size filters my furnace here takes and could not find a filter anywhere.

The landlord was here Sunday and he told me what size to get but said that the tenant he has doing work for him as a kind of handyman, could get the filter and install it.

I said I'd prefer to buy my own as I like the more expensive ones, and last I knew the landlord was ok with that, but the handyman/other tenant was telling me that the landlord "took him aside" and told him not to let me pay for my own filters.

I thought this was odd, but hey, this guy is not the landlord, the landlord himself did not tell me I couldn't buy my own filters, so I ordered the ones I want, emailed the landlord to show him which ones I got so I could make sure they are the right ones, and suggested that the handyman/tenant show me how to put the filter in, because I change the filter each month during the heating season, and I don't want to "bother him" that often as some ppl only change the filter once every 3 mos as the pkg suggests that can last than long.
with a dirt basement in a very old house they are NOT going to last 3 mos, and frankly I don't want to have to rely on anyone else to change the filters, it's too important to me.

I haven't heard back from the landlord yet but it hasn't even been a full day so...

I got the instructions for the particular furnace we have here but I still can't see how to get the old filter out and the new one in, in fact I could not find any thing that looked like a filter.
I asked the handyman/other tenant if there was a filter in there and he said there was, but even if there wasn't you could run the furnace without one.

which is not true, so you can see why I prefer to rely on myself when it comes to these things!!

 

[MuffinsMum]

Your poor head! We've been trying to go through options about boarding the girls and at the end of each pro and con session I just feel like crying ...

We have forced heating, and have put the girl's cage in a passage way that has no ducts in it, but that collects the warm air from 3 different rooms. It's a little bit of a squeeze to get past the cage and it's a high traffic area, but we feel that the girls are happy there, so we're making it work!

We do need to get a humidifier going after a short while of the heating being turned on or the air becomes horribly dry - we try to keep the humidity at 50%.

I hope that you can get this figured out perfectly! I was just reading your thread on head bumping and had no insight to offer there, but I can really understand that you have SO MUCH going on right now and are tryng to do the best for your sweeties! :hugs: