For those of you with basements

Good question, I have no idea! My house is just annoying on how it works. You see when we bought our house we looked at the vents to see wich ones opened how they worked ect well our basement ones I can't get them to close at all after opening them. I've tried duct taping cardboard to them & it just gets blown off I too had wanted to know if it made a difference cause sadly when I do my wash in winter it's warmer in the basement than it is upstairs. But because of our septic we have not invested alot in making our basement a living area of any kind. And I would like to do that as it's also cooler in summer. Or if I had my way & the money I'd sell this chilly place and upgrade to something a lil bigger and with newer things. As we need new windows, furnace upgrade, & maybe even tyvek but that all costs $$ & alot of it.

Quite frankly I'm getting a little sick of all your cold weather talk ;)

I'm only guessing here... It seems to me that you would save money by opening the vents in the basement. Yes, it is extra space to heat. Assuming that most of it is underground, I would think the heat would stay in that area real well. With the heat rising & warming the floor of the 1st floor, you wont feel as cold & may possibly be able to keep the thermostat cut back some. I could be wrong, but I think I'd try it. If it doesn't work, you could always stop doing it!!! Oh yes, insulating the attic will help tremendously too!!!

I open the vents in my basement for a few reasons, one, my daughter sleeps down there, two, the laundry room is down there, and three, I think that it helps keep the floor a bit warmer. I am not sure how it effects the heating bill, it is just something necessary in my house so I try not to think about it.

We open our basement vents but it's because our family room is in the basement and that's where we spend most of our time. I don't know if you spend more in heat because as you say, heat rises so it seems to me that you would do well letting the basement vents open unless of course you have a home with three or more stories high. Our heat never seems to reach the third floor and it is always cold. We save on heating by keeping our thermostat down during the day when we are not home and again late at night while we sleep. The thermostat does this automatically and for the most part we are comfortable and our heating bills are much lower than our friends when we compare them.