Using the furnace blower to move heat

[dskup]

I've been told this issue has been discussed before, but I can't seem to find
the right search words. So if you know of a thread, please drop me the link.
Otherwise.... I'd like to discuss it.

I have a great room with an 18' ceiling and a beefy fireplace. Adjacent are
three loft bedrooms, with a balcony overlooking the great room. As one would
expect, the heat collects up there and roasts us out at night. That is until the
wood expires, then we freeze our gonads off... on account of the fact that we
had to go to bed in shorts to handle the heat!

I've tried using the furnace blower to move the air around, but it's not all that
effective. For some odd reason there's only one return duct in the entire
bedroom level.

I've considered putting in some stand alone ducts in the floor of each bedroom
with fans to pull air down, thus moving it around the house more.

Any other ideas?

Also... what's the deal with the crappy temperature switch on the blower of the
Quadrafire 7100P. Isn't it supposed to turn on when the unit is at a certain temp
range? I have to use the over-ride, because it never turns on with the temp switch.


Ok... off my soap box.

 

[atvdave]

Have you tried ceiling fans running in reverse? I would think it would pull some of the cool air up and mix with the warmer air to somewhat even things out.

By the way.. I have also tried the furnace fan, didn't work for me either. I have a ranch house so now I'm going to try some in-line duct fans.

 

[BJ64]

That is until the
wood expires, then we freeze our gonads off... on account of the fact that we
had to go to bed in shorts to handle the heat!

That was funny, but I understand your plight.

I think you idea of vents in each room is the best idea. Somebody said about vents with small fans. That should change the situation quite a bit.

The one question I have is which way do we want to move the air? If we push air down from the bedrooms then the make up air comes from the hot pocket of air from the 18 foot tall great room. Assuming that the temps in the lower level are more comfortable for sleeping, I am leaning towards pulling air up from down there.

Then all you would need is a wake up call to reload the stove when the wood expires.

 

[LLigetfa]

Have you tried ceiling fans running in reverse?

Not sure what "reverse" means but I would try it both ways.

 

[atvdave]

Have you tried ceiling fans running in reverse?

Not sure what "reverse" means but I would try it both ways.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Which_way_should_ceiling_fans_turn_in_the_summer_and_winter

http://www.dansfancity.com/techhelp/wntrsmmr.htm

 

[offroadaudio]

About the switch - on my Quad, the thermocouple that activates the blower is connected with spade connectors.
The wires with the spade connectors on the ends that go to the thermocouple were very short and they pulled off very easily.
Check that those connections are tight.

 

[Roxburyeric]

I have a very similar set up to you and I leave the bedrooms doors either closed or only open a crack during the day and then at night I open them up a little less than half way. We leave the ceiling fan on medium speed all day and night. The bedrooms will stay cold during the day and warm up a little at night. The upstairs balcony hallway stays very warm all day but better to keep the heat there where the ceiling fan can bring some of it back down stairs where it is needed. Heating the bedrooms during the day seems like a waste of heat. It took me a month for the light bulb to go off in my head to start closing the doors upstairs, but now it seems to work out pretty good. The bedroom can be a little cold at first but you can regulate the temp by using the doors. Good luck.

I also tried the furnace fan and found it doesn't help much - I do use it to warm up the finished basement a little when I know the kids will be down there playing.

 

[dskup]

Regarding the ceiling fans, good advice... but I do already have two 56" ceiling fans mounted in the peak, rotating in "reverse" (pulling air up.)

Regarding the airflow direction... you bring up a good point. I was just thinking about moving the hot air out of the peak pocket and down. But maybe it would make more sense to positively pressurize upstairs with cooler air from down. I wonder what kind of cfm I would need to accomplish this. The bedroom level is about 650 square feet, the lower level is 950, the greatroom 600.

Offroadaudio... Do you have a 7100? Do you happen to know if I need to pull off the entire face to get to the blower or just one of the grills? I'm going to check the wiring in the switch tomorrow. Maybe I make a mistake there.

 

[BJ64]

I wonder what kind of cfm I would need to accomplish this. The bedroom level is about 650 square feet, the lower level is 950, the greatroom 600.
.

Well lets look at the problem this way. How many cubic feet are the rooms in question and how quick do we want to turn the air over.

650 * 8 = 5200 cubic feet in the bed room level. If we can get a 200 cfm vent fan or fans that would be 5200/200 = 26.

In theory that would be 26 min to turnover all the air in the room.

I'm starting to think a conversation and coffee with a heat and air guy might be a good thing to do. They know more about moving temp around than I ever would.

 

[LLigetfa]

I do already have two 56" ceiling fans mounted in the peak, rotating in "reverse" (pulling air up.)

Some people have reported better results pushing the air down rather than up. Some also run two fans in opposite directions creating a circular flow.

Can you not just leave the bedroom door closed through the day to keep it cool?

 

[dskup]

RoxburyEric... I missed your post before I wrote my last. Great suggestion, and I have been playing with the doors as well. The problem though, is that the opening to the greatroom balcony is via a set of french doors on the master bedroom. The heat must go through the master to get to the other two bedrooms. There is a distinct temperature differential between the master and back two.

When closed, the french doors get kind of warm. I'm not sure if it's good for them (they solid pine w/ glass, finished in poly). I noticed that the astragal pins no longer line up with the set holes. It seems that the heat has already caused the door to warp slightly or shring? I don't know if that's possible, but the pins used to fit and now they're off by about 3/16".

But I've actually only had them open or closed. It never occured to me to try various degrees of openess. A rocket scientist I ain't!

 

[dskup]

Yes, I think I'm going to have to have a conversation with my HVAC guy, Scott the One-Armed Tin Bender (he has one hand and a one hook, but he can work a brake like nobody's business). He actually did the duct work for the greatroom, and created a very well balanced system... when the furnace or A/C is running anyway.

But I like heating with wood much better, so I need to find a good solution.

 

[sgcsalsero]

For some odd reason there's only one return duct in the entire
bedroom level.

I've considered putting in some stand alone ducts in the floor of each bedroom
with fans to pull air down, thus moving it around the house more.

I had a HVAC engineer come out and do some sizing calcs as our old house has been added onto twice....no charge because we previously signed up for a maintenance plan. More returns was definitely one of his recommendations, pretty sure he said for new construction there are returns in each bedroom. I've been using duct mastic to seal the hvac, don't forget about that. You might also want to do a search on 'loft' and 'air', I think there are a couple guys who have posted that have similar construction, good luck. My construction is way different, but definitely open all 2nd flr. bedroom doors wide right before I turn in.

 

[73blazer]

My house is similar to yours, we have 25' ceilings, we just keep the upstairs bedroom doors shut so it's cool in the bedroom.
I initially thought it would be nice to use the furnace blower to move the air around, my thermostat even has a blower cycle option where it'll cycle the blower every other X period of time, but since the fireplace is on the main level, and the furnace is in the basement, the furnace ducts tend to become very cold, so when the blower kicks in, for the first 10 minutes at least, it's sucking nice 72 degree heated air from the main rooms and blowing 67 degree air back into the room. If you want to heat your basement too, that might work, but my house is too big with a too big basement to heat with my fireplace, the fireplace would never keep up with the extra 1000sqft+ basement added to the area it has to heat.

Concerning the snap-disc thing to turn the 7100 blower on, the trick is to keep the ash off the center part of the bottom firebrick. That snap disc is right under there, ash is an excellent insulator, when I re-load my North Star (Same design. parent company as 7100, just a wee bit smaller fire box), I scrap the ash away from the center portion of the firebrick and make sure some nice hot red coals are sitting on firebrick on not ash in that area. It does really help, I had the same problem you do before I learned, from another post on here, about that little trick.

 

[Techstuf]

Let's have a picture of the setup....then I can give you my poorfessional recommendation.



TS

 

[dskup]

Good advice on the snap disc. I will try it.

Had an interesting yesterday. I openend the blower breaker and pulled the switches (fan control and override) to confirm that I wired them
correctly. I did in fact wire correctly, so I put them back together and turned the breaker back on. In doing so, the breaker blew with a pretty
good arc. Ok... so I pulled the switches out again and found the bare ground wire touching the hot side of the override switch. Pretty common
error. I throw the switches back in, turn on the breaker, and what do you think happened? The blower came on in automatic mode. Mind you it
has never done this before with about 4 months of frequent use! However, the blower controller no longer controls the blower. It's stuck on high.
Ugh! So I suspect the surge blew out the solid state fan control.... a $30 error. But I am delighted that the snap disc suddenly started working.
I've purposely varied the temperature of the fire throughout the day to test further, and it is working fine... going off when the temp drops and coming
back on accordingly.

I can't figure for the life of me how a current surge could make the snap disc start working. I haven't actually seen one, but I suspect it's a simple bi-metallic temperature switch. Could it be that (as 73blazer point) that I simply always had too much ash over the disc? I don't think anything was wrong with
the controller in the beginning, because it worked just fine in override mode.