Anyone Use Their Furnace Blower To Circulate Heat?

I have a couple of regular customers that do this, and they say it works for them. Just turn your thermostat's fan switch to "on" or "manual". This will cause the furnace blower to run continuosly, circulating air throughout the house and evening out the temperature.

Some people use ThermGuard, it is a timer for your fan, so you don't have it running constantly.

http://www.bearmountaindesign.com/

No A/C in Chocolate Town! That can be a problem...

Look for the fan/limit switch on the body of the furnace. It is usually a rectangular box about 3" by 5" or so. Inside there is the dial where you adjust the on and off temp of the fan. One pair of wires opens to shut down the burner and the other side closes to start the fan. Splice in to the two wires on the fan side and put a toggle switch or relay to close the circuit.

Good luck
Chris

Hiskid said:

Yes we have a/c in chocolate town....That is where the fan wire comes from but the return is in the floor..The furnace return is 4 ft off the floor..I was wondering what people used for a timer to connect to the blower switch to turn it on for 5-10 min. every hour..

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Hi Hiskid,

John Walsh here and I am the designer of ThermGuard and would be happy to help with your question. Thermguard was designed to solve your exact problem....how can you get the heat from your stove to evenly heat you whole house.

Could you please provide some more specifics? Are you saying that you have a wire for the fan switch for an A/C unit and no wiring for a seperate forced air heating system? A little more detail and I'm sure we can get you going.

Cheers,
John

www.bearmountaindesign.com

wow, that thermguard looks great, ordered!

Found this thread in the Search venue and hope it's what I need. I'm mechanically challenged so here's my situation. I have an old oil furnace in our basement that does not have a fan only switch(and we do not have any a/c). Can I somehow wire in another switch or something to run just the fan - that would really help distribute the heat from the woodstove which is on the main floor.

bridgerman said:

John Walsh here and I am the designer of ThermGuard

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John, sent you a PM regarding the ThermGuard

kyburnr said:

Some people use ThermGuard, it is a timer for your fan, so you don't have it running constantly.

http://www.bearmountaindesign.com/

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That is EXACTLY what I need for my kids bedrooms upstairs....the hot water baseboard heat pipe goes through an unheated attic, and froze-up on me when I first bought the house in '02.....I worried about that every winter since, and always kept the 'stat up there a lot higher than I should have to. Not any more........

ThermGuard ORDERED!!

Hi Hiskid,

Sounds like you have what you need. If there is a fan switch in the the furnace closet, just put ThermGuard in there. All ThermGuard needs is two wires that when connected will turn on the fan. Connect it across the switch lines and attach to the wall. ThermGuard doesn't need to be attached to the thermostat. You can simply open the furnace closet door and turn it one when you want it to run.

I hope this helps!

Cheers,
John Walsh
www.bearmountaindesign.com

Hiskid said:

Hi John. No, the furnace has no provision to operate the fan manually outside of opening the door an pulling out the switch to turn it on..The blower normally operates by internal bimetal control..The only fan wire at the stat is for the A/C package unit.

God Bless You..K

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bcnu said:

Found this thread in the Search venue and hope it's what I need. I'm mechanically challenged so here's my situation. I have an old oil furnace in our basement that does not have a fan only switch(and we do not have any a/c). Can I somehow wire in another switch or something to run just the fan - that would really help distribute the heat from the woodstove which is on the main floor.

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Hi Bcnu,

Most furnaces have a connection for the fan located on the furnace itself. If not already wired, there is a terminal block that has a couple of screw connections that can be used. Since ThermGuard doesn't need anthing in particular from the thermostat, it can be remotely located close to the furnace. There is no need to run the wiring to your thermostat. Simply install ThermGuard next to the furnace. The most that would be required is to find the fan connection and run a couple of wires to the wall for ThermGuard. If you can't find the connection, a heating technician in your area should be able to find them for you. Many times there is a block diagram glued to a shroud covering the terminal block in question. It should label the connections.

I hope this helps!

Cheers,
John Walsh
www.bearmountaindesign.com

Wow, I'm glad I looked at this thread... This ThermGuard looks like it's exactly what I need to occasionally kick the boiler on during those cold snaps so the pipes don't freeze in the walls while I'm only running the stove(s). I was looking for something to hook just to the circulator, but this looks perfect.

It looks like it's really simple, just attach it to your thermostat and set the frequency which you want it to kick on the boiler/furnace...

I'll have to order one!

Any other users of the thermguard? ? Sounds interesting, and Id like to hear some other opinions. Thank you.

freebird77 said:

Any other users of the thermguard? ? Sounds interesting, and Id like to hear some other opinions. Thank you.

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Here is an entry from Gooserider Posted: 10 December 2006 04:08 PM

"We have found a reasonably satisfactory solution. Our house basically divides into 3rds. On one end is the living room third with the stove, which is totally open to the peak of the cathedral ceiling 24 feet up The other two thirds are two story with nominal 8’ ceilings - The second floor is the master suite, and a small loft area open to the living room. On the first floor is the kitchen / dining area that occupies the center third of the house, then two bedrooms and the main bath in the far third.

Underneath everything is a full basement, with an open area under the living room and kitchen thirds. There is a half bath, the furnace room and a storage room under the bedroom third. It is a beautiful house, but not a very practical one.

There are large passageways between the kitchen and living rooms, and the stairs to the 2nd floor and basement are very open. The first floor bedrooms are in a sort of “T” hallway.

The stove used to do a good job heating the living-room, dining area and master suite, but didn’t do much for the bedrooms. However I’ve gotten a ”Thermguard” from Bear Mountain Design, which is intended for addressing this sort of application. It is a little box that wires in across the fan terminals of your HVAC thermostat, and cycles the fan on a programmable basis. Since we’ve gotten the box, I typically see no more than 1-2*F difference between the living rooms and the bedrooms. As long as I stay on top of keeping the stove loaded, I can keep the house in the low 70’s.

Currently I have the box on its default programming of running the fan five minutes on and 15 off. Haven’t seen any real reason to change it.

(The box also advertises itself as useful in hot water systems for periodically circulating the water to keep if from freezing)

The downside is that I seem to be loosing more heat from the living room than I’m gaining in the bedrooms - It used to be the bedrooms would be in the low - mid 60’s, and the living room would be near 80. Now everything is closer to the 69-72 range.

I’ve been thinking about trying to play games with blocking off different registers and returns to see if I can focus the distribution a bit, but I haven’t decided which way I’m better off doing it - blocking the intakes in the living room and the registers in the rest of the house, or vice versa.

Gooserider "