Best type of fan to move warm air around the house?

[Tron]

Hello Everyone,

I'm currently evaluating using a fan to move warm air from the living room/stove area along a hallway. So I wonder what type of fan is best for that?
Obvious requirements would be:
- quiet
- small area footprint
- ability to move "secondary" air, meaning airflow that gets "sucked" alongside the air being moved by the fan itself.

So as it does not need to cool me down as fans are usually designed to to, I think I need one with a low air velocity. That means a larger area of air movement to be doing anything.

So:

- box fan/garage fan: cheap, usually loud, large footprint, high velocity, only pushes floor-level air (colder), low secondary flow, low WAF (woman acceptance factor)
- slim tower fan: quiet, still cheap, lower velocity, but also gets it's air mostly from the bottom, low secondary airflow, medium WAF.
- arch type tower fan (Dysons): expensive, quiet, low velocity, draws air from along the bottom but high secondary airflow, best WAF.

So what are you guys using for that purpose?
Probably the best solution would be to add a HVAC duct/blower in the attic, drawing air from the top of the living room and pushing it into the office (where I want the heat to be). Probably best WAF of all, but hugely expensive (= effectively not worth it) and I'm not too sure about the efficiency as the attic is uninsulated. Maybe with half a foot of insulation around the duct...

Thanks!

 

[begreen]

Our box fan on low speed is very quiet. We also have 12" table fan that is inaudible at low speed.

You may get better results with the cooler air sucked out of the office and blown toward the stove room. The cool office air that is removed will be replaced with warmer air that gets pulled through the house. However, running the duct through an unconditioned space is going to cool it down further, even via a well-insulated duct if the run is long. This is another reason to pull air from the office instead of pushing it.

 

[MMH]

Our box fan on low speed is very quiet. We also have 12" table fan that is inaudible at low speed.

You may get better results with the cooler air sucked out of the office and blown toward the stove room. The cool office air that is removed will be replaced with warmer air that gets pulled through the house. However, running the duct through an unconditioned space is going to cool it down further, even via a well-insulated duct if the run is long. This is another reason to pull air from the office instead of pushing it.

+ 1 I don’t use fans personally (eco fans and my central air fan do the job) but I’ve read from several that basically pushing the cold room air to the stove tends to work better for them vs pulling the warm stove air to the cold room etc. science says either should work really based on equilibrium however you would think it’d be more efficient to bring the cold air to the stove and it’s heavier/sinks which would be at the fan level etc

 

[Tron]

I agree, the duct variant through the attic is probably not going to work, for several reasons you mentioned.

Regarding the pushing of cold vs. warm air: true, but fluid dynamics (which also apply to gases) tell us that you can give a mass an impulse and create a flow in the direction of the push, but not by drawing a mass in. You can propel a boat with a jet by pushing the water out the back, but the side "sucking the water in" does not create a directed flow, so using just that the boat wouldn't move.

Same thing with the fan, to get cold air out of a room, it would have to be positioned in said room to direct a stream of air out of the room. That is not really feasible in my situation due to space constraints. But I get the point.

I can move the air around using the HVAC system, but it's a separate train in that part of the house that does not include the living room with the stove. And the one in the living room does not connect to the office. The warm air of the stove does make its way into the office eventually, but it takes a while (and we're not in Winter yet).

Hmmm...

 

[Geoff C]

I have a bunch of little Honeywell fans. They are 8 or 10”. Only cost like $10 and are very quite

 

[Tron]

Regular blade fans, I assume?
For that amount, I probably can't go very wrong trying...

 

[Dataman]

I have 2 Box Fans with 20" Filters I run on Low. They do the job nicely and pretty quiet. Yes they take up space, but we walk around them. Glad when heating season is over. On low they are quieter than pellet stove.

 

[xman23]

We have cathedral ceilings. With two ceiling fans it moves the air around. Three speed, and almost silent. in the main great room it's on all winter.

 

[firefighterjake]

I use a plain Jane table top fan . . . on the floor. I think we've had it since the 1990s based on the yellowed looking plastic blades.

 

[BigJ273]

Ceiling fan in the stove room, placed on the setting that pulls hot air downward. A pedestal fan at the long hallway entrance, and another really small, quiet table fan that points down towards my daughters room. Seems to work well. Wife and daughter swear it does nothing to move warm air towards the back of the house, but it clearly does