equalize temperature on all floors
Butch70
| Posted in Energy, Heating & Insulation on
My House has a first floor with a “bonus room” up one story over the garage . the “bonus room” stairwell is open to the downstairs. All rooms are serviced by the central heat/airconditioning system. The result is the “bonus room is HOT in the summer and cozy (warmer than the first floor) in the winter.
I recently read of a 3 story house that used a reversable circulating fan to create a flow of air from the top floor to the bottom floor in winter and from the bottom floor to the top in the summer, effectively creating a uniform temperature in the house. I cannot locate the article I read and I wonder if this same circulating design would work effectively to give me more uniform temperature in my house?
Any thoughts?
Butch 70
Replies
Butch
When we built this place we place Hydronic in the first floor concrete. Put it in the floors of the two baths upstairs. Kept an open "loft" area over the greatroom-put a couple 4' water baseboards in two remote bedrooms. Added a couple small floor vents in those rooms that made their way over the large room (back entry/laundry) below-opposite end of the house from the great room.
With the doors open upstairs-the air circulates around the house, passively except for a ceiling fan in the greatroom.
Cool it with a moderate sized window AC. The whole house.
You can blow air up to remote places, but it needs to replace air that goes somewhere. Create a loop. You can only put 10 pounds of shit in a 10 pound bag. Unless there's a hole in the bag.
moving air around
It sounds like you had the good sense to design some neat functions for your house.
Thanks for your input!
Butch70
Before you go to that effort and expense, try running the blower on your existing furnace on low speed continuously. This is done by selecting the "fan only" or "fan on", rather than "fan auto" on your t'stat, and by making sure that the "fan only" mode is running off the low-speed tap that controls fan speeds (usually four) of the blower.
This will tend to average out the house temps throughout the year by constantly mixing air from all the house. It probably won't cost much more, if any, to run the furnace blower rather than the reversible fan.
Before you go to that effort
Thanks for the input on the existing furnace. I have been running the unit fan in the "on" position and it does help. I usually do it for short times though because i was concerened that i would wear out the fan. I did not know about ther low-speed mode.
Thanks for the heads upI
I will check it