Room to Room Ventilators

cac4 · Sep 24, 2009

There was a blurb on these things in the latest "Family Hanyman" magazine. So I looked up one of the products:

http://www.tjernlund.com/Tjernlund_Aireshare_Lit_8500730.pdf

Looks intriguing. In my 2-story house, (stove on the first floor), the upstairs bedrooms are heated "ok" just by circulating air, if the doors are left open. Its only ~5 degrees cooler, more or less. But I do notice when walking through the stairwell, that a lot of heat seems to accumulate, and just "sit there". When I walk out of a bedroom, and head down the stairs, I can really feel it smack me in the face. Since one of the stairwell walls is shared with my bedroom, I'm thinking if I put one of these things up high, and had it blow down the stud cavity and come out low in the bedroom.
(house is a simple, rectangular center-entrance colonial, with a straight stairway going right up the middle, just to give you a picture of the layout. The stairwell is all enclosed, so its like a big plenum. My bedroom is pretty much everything on one side of the stairwell.)

Because of the temperature differential between upstairs and downstairs, I don't turn the pellet stove down too much at bed time, so it doesn't get too cold up there. Thinking I could save a little energy if the air could circulate a little better.

LIpelletpig · Sep 24, 2009

This idea really works with moving air from lower level to upper floors. Above my living room where the stove is located is my sons room/baby room. My son only being 1 when we got the stove installed it was hard to heat the bed room with the pellet stove being on the first floor. I put a air exchange through the floor and put a exchange booster fan on top of the floor vent and it increased the room temp to a much more comfortable level. I took readings of the air temp at the ceiling level in the living room where the stove is located and they were to 79-82 degrees on average. 9' foot ceilings. That hot air when I pulled that air through the vent from lower level to upper level the air lost a few degrees but was still warm enough to heat the kids room. I am going to look into a more powerful fan though. The weblink you attached might be a great option.

Glenalmond · Sep 24, 2009

I would love to do something along the same lines.

However I live in an old house and its all century old horsehair plaster walls. If I even look at them wrong they start crumbling and falling apart.....after my curtain rod experiences I will steer clear on cutting any more holes in to the walls

kast · Sep 24, 2009

Glenalmond said:
I would love to do something along the same lines.

However I live in an old house and its all century old horsehair plaster walls. If I even look at them wrong they start crumbling and falling apart.....after my curtain rod experiences I will steer clear on cutting any more holes in to the walls

ha-ha same here! I would how-ever try to move the air from 1st floor to 2nd floor. My ceiling seems durable

smoke show · Sep 24, 2009

I see they have decibel ratings of 42-45. How loud is that? maybe a comparison to something I may know?

kast · Sep 24, 2009

Not sure how accurate these are but here yeah go...

* Aircraft at take-off (180)
* Fireworks (140)
* Snowmobile (120)
* Chain saw (110)
* Amplified music (110)
* Lawn mower (90)
* Noisy office (90)
* Vacuum cleaner (80)
* City traffic (80)
* Normal conversation (60)
* Refrigerator humming (40)
* Whisper (20)
* Leaves rustling (10)
* Calm breathing (10)

smoke show · Sep 24, 2009

perfect, thanks

evil · Sep 25, 2009

Does anybody know how much CFM's this unit has. For my application i would need some serious air movement. Thanks!

cac4 · Sep 25, 2009

evil said:
Does anybody know how much CFM's this unit has. For my application i would need some serious air movement. Thanks!

Its on the pdf I linked in the first post.

75cfm

evil · Sep 25, 2009

Yeah, Sorry. Should have noticed that. Would you think that 75 cfm would be sufficient air movement?

gbreda · Oct 8, 2009

Has anyone tried one of these? Curious on the amount of effective air movement.

evil · Oct 8, 2009

I really like the idea though. I wonder if you could modify the fan motor for a DC one with a higher cfm rating energy savings?

gbreda · Oct 8, 2009

evil said:
I really like the idea though. I wonder if you could modify the fan motor for a DC one with a higher cfm rating energy savings?

Same here. I am not sure that 75 CFM is enough to move enough air to or from a basement area. But many people with wood stoves have used very small corner fans to circulate air through a home. I would think that a squirrel cage would do more.

Andy H · Oct 8, 2009

I really like this idea and I'm going to look into it more. The hardest part for me will be to get electric up to the ceiling. Fishing wire through an insulated wall is a pain the in butt.

has anybody tried just putting a regular vent cover in the ceiling and floor above it? Is the fan needed or will the warm air come up through the vent?

MCPO · Oct 8, 2009

It seems reasonable to believe that if you can blow down (thru a floor vent) enough cooler return air to pressurize the heated finished basement some warm air has to return up the stairway or thru other vents but one problem I`ve encountered with moving air up to the next floor (from the basement) is the noise.
A small quiet muffin fan @55 cfpm didn`t make any measureable difference. I think I`d have to find something like 100cfpm to get some kind of results but the noise level is like another pellet stove running at the same time and something I don`t wish to tolerate.
Your mileage may vary.

cac4 · Oct 8, 2009

I wouldn't think that you'd need a fan to move air from a lower level to a higher one...as long as the stove level is insulated. (that is...in an unfinished basement, the walls would suck all the heat, regardless, and there just won't be "enough" to rise.) My cousin has open grates in her house, between the first and second floors, and says that their second floor is warmer than the first floor, where the pellet stove is. You don't hear that situation very often. Part of it may be that the house isn't very big, and heat moves much more easily from "down to up" than it does laterally.

in-control · Oct 8, 2009

I purchased a couple of cheap fans last year and directed the heavy cold air out of my second floor bedrooms to a hallway, placing them in the far corners of the rooms. There the air falls down a flight of stairs to the first floor where the stove is, its amazing you can feel the cold air tumbling down the stairs. I have tested this and the bedrooms reached the same temp. as my hallway w/i 1 hour. The only negative is that you have to keep the doors open. Which my teenagers take issue with, but if they want to stay warm...

These fans are also used in the summer time to bring cool air into the rooms via open windows. it's all good, no construction/ flexible and cheap.

Andy H · Oct 8, 2009

BTW- wouldn't a bathroom vent do pretty much the same thing and cost a lot less?

jlore · Oct 8, 2009

i looked into the price of this room 2 room fan and it was 200 plus shipping?

would this work just as good?
http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc...splay?langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053

Andy H · Oct 8, 2009

I just asked our HVAC guy about it at work and he said for this to properly work you would need a place for the cold air to go because you can't just keep pumping in warm air. He said that you would almost be better off with an open vent between the ceiling of the warm room and the floor of the room you want to heat and then a vent on the floor of the cold room pushing cold air back into the room with the heat source..... if that makes sense.

mnkywrnch · Oct 8, 2009

Andy H said:
I just asked our HVAC guy about it at work and he said for this to properly work you would need a place for the cold air to go because you can't just keep pumping in warm air. He said that you would almost be better off with an open vent between the ceiling of the warm room and the floor of the room you want to heat and then a vent on the floor of the cold room pushing cold air back into the room with the heat source..... if that makes sense.

Makes perfect sense to me as my house is older with forced hot air no ducting to the second floor just registers in every room and a large one in the hallway,I never use fans or anything to move the heat it just moves naturally through the registers.Also the large register in the upstairs hallway is right above the room the stoves in.
Todd

Fsappo · Oct 8, 2009

kast said:
Not sure how accurate these are but here yeah go...

* Aircraft at take-off (180)
* Fireworks (140)
* Snowmobile (120)
* Chain saw (110)
* Amplified music (110)
* Lawn mower (90)
* Noisy office (90)
* Vacuum cleaner (80)
* City traffic (80)
* Normal conversation (60)
* Refrigerator humming (40)
* Whisper (20)
* Leaves rustling (10)
* Calm breathing (10)

Wife Yelling at me to stop talking to the neighbors and get back to doing the yard work (220)

WoodPorn · Oct 8, 2009

jlore said:
i looked into the price of this room 2 room fan and it was 200 plus shipping?

would this work just as good?
http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc...splay?langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053

This fan will work wonderfully ....if you can deal with the noise. Picture your average over stove exhaust vent running 24/7.

180 CFM is a good deal of air for a small fan, The average bathroom exhaust is between 60 and 100 CFM.

MCPO · Oct 8, 2009

jlore said:
i looked into the price of this room 2 room fan and it was 200 plus shipping?

would this work just as good?
http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc...splay?langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053

At 4.5 sones it`s gonna sound like a 2 cycle lawn mower.
Check out the Nutone (Ultra quiet) series fans .

Here`s one rated at 110 cfm with only .7 sones It could be a bit challenging to fit your installation but it would be reasonably quiet and probably well worth the effort..
http://www.nutone.com/product-detail.asp?ProductID=11027

Here`s another rated at 150 cfm with only 1.4 sones.
http://www.nutone.com/product-detail.asp?ProductID=11029

cac4 · Oct 8, 2009

There's also this one, which was actually intended for this purpose (moving air laterally). posted it in another thread a couple of weeks ago...

http://www.homedepot.com/webapp/wcs...angId;=-1&catalogId=10053&productId=100047556

it says 200 cfm, but doesn't give a sound rating. the reviews are positive...one said that it was "quiet"...(but how do we know that guy ain't just deaf?)

I even looked through the directions...no sound levels in there, either.

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