The second thing that made my heating system efficient is that I had seven separate and distinct heating zones, controlled by seven thermostats. All of my interior walls were insulated, so rooms I wasn't using (big house, I was there by myself) I kept at about 40 degrees in the winter time. Of course all the outside walls were 6", heavily insulated, all the windows were triple pane glass. Entry was through the garage which was semi-heated by whatever heat leaked through the wall to the living/dining room. At 40 below zero outside temperature, the garage would drop down to about zero degrees, which is no problem with a properly prepared Alaskan car.
You don't mention it specifically, but given the number of zones and my limited knowledge about what I see in that photo, am I correct in guessing you had radiant heating? One day I would LOVE to have radiant heating. THAT'S an efficient way to heat a house. You can heat the rooms you want, the heat stays nice and low where the people are, and in the winter you walk on nice warm floors.
Ah! Gotcha. That's exactly backwards from what I have. What I described is what I meant is used in most homes around here, and I suspect a great many in the US as well. At least in places that use forced air.
Indeed, that's why my system is so f'ed up. We have ~9'-10' ceilings. If all my registers are open in the winter, it means that the first floor is being heated from the top-down, which is stupid because the heat takes forever to fall to where the people (and the thermostat) are, and it's primarily the top of the room that's getting the heat, which is very inefficient. Meanwhile, the top floor is being continually heated from the proper direction, but it keeps heating far past the point it needs to because the first floor hasn't warmed up enough.
Sorry, I really hate our system...
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