Ceiling/Floor Air Circulation Fan Issue

[mrplayer67]

My home has a finished basement where we have a wood stove. The pervious owners had installed a fan in the ceiling that helped draw the warm air in the basement to the 1st floor. When used, that fan helps my wood stove heat the entire house! That fan has broken and needs to be replaced, but I have been searching the web for an hour and not found anything that looks like a suitable replacement. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

I have posted imaged of the fan unit below. The 1st is the way it looks on the ceiling of the basement. Image #2 is the way it looks on the floor of the main floor of my house, and #3 is the inside view of the fan unit. Any help is greatly appreciated!

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[Redox]

It looks homemade to me, and a pretty good one at that. Nutone used to make a room to room fan that goes in the wall, but I have never seen anything for the floor. You might be able to use something like their vertical fan like this:

(broken link removed to http://www.nutone.com/product-detail.asp?ProductID=10177)

and put the floor grate back on it. You can Google room to room fan and find some possible alternatives, but I doubt that they can handle foot traffic. You might just take the motor out and see if Grainger can match it up with something. Sorry I can't be more helpful.

Chris

 

[oconnor]

mrplayer 67

Is your basement stove vented thru an external flue? If so, let me tell you a story:

My basement installed stove with outside flue created lots of heat, so I decided to blow some of the hot air out of the room. One night, I reloaded the stove after the coals had started to die off, switched on the fan and went upstairs to bed. 30 Mins later, I woke up to my smoke alarm going off, ran downstairs and was met with a room full of smoke.

So what happened? - the basement of my bungalow, any bungalow for that matter, is below the neutral pressure plan of the house. Any warm air leaving the basement needs to be replaced. As the coals had started to die down, my flue had cooled, and did not provide much draft to start the fire. My fan added to the air leaving the room, and the laws of physics required something to give, so the flue reversed it's flow, and the smoke came out into the room.

So what did I do wrong? - First, I left the room before the fire was going strong. I assumed that it would start, and had damped it down. Second, I aggrevated the below neutral pressure plane condition with the fan, which increased the tendancy of the flue to reverse it's flow, and become an air intake versus exhaust.

So what did I change the next time? - Always made sure fire was fully develeoped before damping down and leaving room, stopped trying to move hot air out of my basement.

Instead of moving hot air out, I set up a fan and duct to blow cold air from the cold area upstairs to the basement rec room where the stove was (small inline fan I bought at Princess Auto, simple and cheap, and not a high flow rate). This helped the pressure plane issue (marginally, but at least it did not aggrevate it), and allowed the bouyant hot air to make it's way all through my house, even the farthest bedrooms. It also noticably decreased the cold draft that came down the stairs into the rec room.

What would I do if I was still living there? - Insulate the unfortunate outside flue. Mine was a steel Selkirk, so I would need to build an insulated chase around it. If it had been a lined masonry flue, I would have insulated the liner.

Hope that helps

 

[InTheRockies]

I wonder if that's a modified, dated bathroom exhaust fan. I don't know if you can find a low-profile exhaust fan that can be wired to fit your space. Good luck.