Fan placement?

[tickbitty]

Seeking advice for fan placement to get the heat down the hall to the two bedrooms at the end, if possible. The living room and core of the house get quite warm. The bedrooms etc have ceiling fans, but the living room where the stove is does not (no ceiling fixtures at all in there in fact). The hallway gets quite warm but once you turn the corner into the hall to the bedrooms it dips quite a bit. Corner fan in the doorway into the hall? And maybe one from the den door into the living room, to move air to the stove?

These corner fans, I am kind of dreading all the cords hanging about. Do you all leave the fans installed in the off season too?

 

[Cluttermagnet]

Your floor plan is fairly similar to ours, with an inside chimney on the far end of the Living Room from the bedroom end. How we solved the heat distribution initially was to set up some powerful small fans (~9.5 in dia) in the doorways of the two bedrooms- at floor level. They are a minor nuisance, both for noise level and tripping hazards, but they do the job. We got them at Walmart for 10 dollars each. Probably now discontinued. I see a model HT900 for sale on the net. It's slightly larger. These fans are so small we just leave them hooked up year round, push them to the side out of the way.

Honeywell HT800 Fan

The idea is to push the coldest air along from the far ends of the house towards the stove at floor level. The heated air rises off the stove and creates lakes, rivers, and waterfalls of warm air which flow outwards along the ceiling towards colder areas. The cold air you blow towards the stove gets replaced by some heated air. Your Den doorway fan sounds good. The hallway corner fan doesn't (if you mean on an inside corner- on an outside corner, maybe). I think that doorway fans for the bedrooms would help a lot.

Our installation has the unique feature of a two-sided fireplace with a free standing stove out in front in the Living Room. This allows the use of a 22 in box fan on the far side, blowing air through the fireplace, and across the stove pipe and the back of the stove, improving convection. I usually run it on Low, sometimes Medium. We also have a ceiling fan in the Dining Room behind the chimney which helps a lot. I run it on Low.


Last winter I added a direct vent at ceiling level between the Living Room and the Master Bedroom, using 4x10 in duct as a liner through the wall. It helps a little, but generally wasn't worth the effort. With the bedroom door closed, however, it makes a big difference, replacing the normal airflow through the hallway- this because I also just recently added a powerful squirrel cage fan mounted in a closet in that bedroom, at floor level. It also blows through 4x10 duct. The fan can move up to ~400cfm. I'm running it throttled way back, maybe 100cfm or so. It's making a big difference in improving the temperature in that normally chilly room. BTW this is a DC fan that runs on ~50VDC and it needs a DC speed control voltage as well. I'm an electronics engineer- I built my own power supply for it from component parts. Most folks might better choose fans that run directly from 120VAC.

415 cfm Squirrel Cage Fan

Note: The wall penetrations between the Living Room and Master Bedroom may violate fire code in your area. A safer way of doing this would be to deploy temperature sensing grilles which slam shut in the event of a fire.

 

[Cluttermagnet]

(Bump)

Can anyone else weigh in on this fan placement question?

 

[begreen]

Nice diagram, very helpful.

Use a simple table fan to experiment with. That way you can get placement right. You want to blow the cold air that is low, near the floor, into the warm. Place a fan on the floor at the exit from the den, pointing into the living room. That should start a nice circular convection pattern through the d/r, kitchen and then den. The bedrooms will be tougher due to the hallway and right angle flow into the dead ends of the bedrooms. Maybe try placing the fan on the floor in the far bed room near the outside wall, blowing out into the hallway?

 

[tickbitty]

Thanks to both of you. You have already helped quite a bit, because I was thinking more in terms of getting those corner fans for the tops of doorways and wondering which way to point them and which doorways to put them in. I had not thought about moving the lower air at all. And my stove is a very low stove so that might help quite a bit.

 

[Cluttermagnet]

Here are a few photos of my squirrel cage fan setup. This is experimental and is only roughed in for now. Seems to be pretty effective in improving heat transfer to the Master Bedroom. Each opening is about 4x10 and contains a piece of 4x10 duct about 5 inches long (in finished version) as a liner. The ceiling level duct is minimally useful with the room door open, very effective with the door closed. The fan is pretty quiet, throttled back as I run it, and does a good job. Fully cranked up, it is louder, but would exchange all the room air roughly every 2-3 minutes, with the door closed. The key is running at reduced rpm/cfm for quietness using an 'overrated' air mover. Blade type axial fans are significantly louder than these 'centrifugal' fans.

With my floor plan, there is no Living Room closet, and the Master Bedroom closet has a 'nook' in the middle- it's two separate closets on the left and right. The passive ceiling duct is at the top of the nook (Red "X"), the fan is in the bottom of the outside/RH closet (Blue "X").

There are hundreds of threads on this subject in the forum. I've learned a lot by spending hours going through them. It's a complicated subject with a number of interacting factors in play- and there can be safety concerns as well. I'll list a few links below. My search term was "fan".

Some of my personal observations so far:

◊ Best to blow cold air towards the stove- the warm air takes care of itself
◊ Bigger fans are better if you have room- you can run them slower (= quieter)
◊ Trying to use the existing HVAC ducting in a house is usually a big waste of time
◊ Trying to get stove heat downstairs is problematic (but see the last link below)
◊ Efforts to seal air leaks and improve insulation are the most worthwhile of all
◊ Properly seasoned wood is essential- all else depends on this


Air return system
How To Get Heat Into The Rest Of The House?
Doorway Fan
Where to put my fan/fans?
Pushing or pulling air for heat distribution?
Heat circulation via an in-line fan
Using ordianary house fan on stove???
Spread the heat in the house
How would u get serious heat into this room??
Ceiling fan
Air circulation question
Circulating Fans
Circulating Heated Air
Heat circulation
Makeup air from downstairs bedroom

 

[Cluttermagnet]

I did a forum wide search on "fan". Comes to some 34 pages of results. A number of them are on this particular topic- using fans to distribute heated air from your stove around your house. I've added a few of these new links to the post above, and therefore wanted to bump this back to the first page in "Hearth" again. It's a busy forum.

I'll add a few more of the better ones as I find them. Sorry if anyone feels these are no good because they are 'dredged up' (old). I've just finished an intensive, two day search (part time), and these are my results. I linked to the ones I feel are most useful and relevant. I bookmarked this thread, and will refer to it again in the future, for the links.

The fact that this is a dredged up 2+ year old thread illustrates the ongoing nature of the challenge we all face to one degree or another, depending (at least in large part) on the configuration of our living spaces. Rick

Indeed. Each installation is unique. There are a variety of ways to accomplish fan- forced air movement. A lot of different opinions in evidence here, but also some central ideas and a lot of common ground.

It so happens that the last two weeks I was doing my closet fan project, so I'm still flush with enthusiasm for that. Works real good, too. Sorry for shamelessly hijacking your thread, Tickbitty. :red:

;-P

 

[dispatcher101]

I too have been looking into better ways to move air around my house. The biggest problem I am having is moving heat into the upstairs bedrooms. The hallway is pretty warm. I found these, but didn't know if anyone else had ever tried them? I found these on Home Depot's website for $22. It states 100 cubic ft per min. Anyone ever tried one???

 

[oconnor]

snip...

There are hundreds of threads on this subject in the forum. I've learned a lot by spending hours going through them. It's a complicated subject with a number of interacting factors in play- and there can be safety concerns as well. I'll list a few links below. My search term was "fan".

Some of my personal observations so far:

◊ Best to blow cold air towards the stove- the warm air takes care of itself
◊ Bigger fans are better if you have room- you can run them slower (= quieter)
◊ Trying to use the existing HVAC ducting in a house is usually a big waste of time
◊ Trying to get stove heat downstairs is problematic (but see the last link below)
◊ Efforts to seal air leaks and improve insulation are the most worthwhile of all
◊ Properly seasoned wood is essential- all else depends on this


Air return system
How To Get Heat Into The Rest Of The House?
Doorway Fan
Where to put my fan/fans?
Pushing or pulling air for heat distribution?
Heat circulation via an in-line fan
Using ordianary house fan on stove???
Spread the heat in the house
How would u get serious heat into this room??
Ceiling fan
Air circulation question
Circulating Fans
Circulating Heated Air
Heat circulation
Makeup air from downstairs bedroom

+1. Well said

 

[begreen]

I too have been looking into better ways to move air around my house. The biggest problem I am having is moving heat into the upstairs bedrooms. The hallway is pretty warm. I found these, but didn't know if anyone else had ever tried them? I found these on Home Depot's website for $22. It states 100 cubic ft per min. Anyone ever tried one???

Yes, we tried it. It worked, but it was not as effective as a low fan blowing towards the stove and it was noisy.

 

[jlow]

[quote author="Cluttermagnet" date="1263806878"]Your floor plan is fairly similar to ours, with an inside chimney on the far end of the Living Room from the bedroom end. How we solved the heat distribution initially was to set up some powerful small fans (~9.5 in dia) in the doorways of the two bedrooms- at floor level. They are a minor nuisance, both for noise level and tripping hazards, but they do the job. We got them at Walmart for 10 dollars each. Probably now discontinued. I see a model HT900 for sale on the net. It's slightly larger. These fans are so small we just leave them hooked up year round, push them to the side out of the way.

Honeywell HT800 Fan

I have the Honeywell and I am wondering if anyone has had a problem with the fan being a fire hazard. The reason I ask is that my wife is visiting her Mom for a couple of weeks and I want to continue circulating the air while I am at work during the slow burns. I won't run it if their could be an issue. I do run it overnight, but at least I would know if something was wrong.

Thanks, Jeff

 

[tickbitty]

Thanks very much Cluttermagnet for all the links and info! Much appreciated.

 

[Cluttermagnet]

I have the Honeywell and I am wondering if anyone has had a problem with the fan being a fire hazard. The reason I ask is that my wife is visiting her Mom for a couple of weeks and I want to continue circulating the air while I am at work during the slow burns. I won't run it if their could be an issue. I do run it overnight, but at least I would know if something was wrong.

Thanks, Jeff

I looked on the bottom of one of my HT800 fans for the nameplate info. Included was a sticker indicating that model was UL Listed. BTW Listing is stronger than UL Recognition, as I recall, and it means that samples have been tested and approved by UL labs. Because UL has quite a sterling reputation, if an electric or electronic appliance has been UL Listed, you can pretty much rest easy.

A couple of my 3 fans are developing the early stages of bearing failure. I have a pretty good ear and I can hear it. They are made with cheap sleeve type bearings, no doubt. They start to get slightly louder and more 'rattly'. This is most noticeable when they are starting up, not as much while running. But I bet they last a number of years more, anyway. At ten bucks a pop, I think mine have already paid for themselves.

There are of course no guarantees, but I often leave mine on for many hours while away. The UL Listing says it all, IMO.

 

[bemiller2006]

We had the Honeywell fan, too noisy for us, returned it and still looking for a good solid little fan. We have a bedroom over the garage, we used the fan on the floor blowing the cold air out. I tested with a piece of tissue paper.

Holding the tissue at the top of the door frame I could see a strong draft of warm air flowing into the room, and obviously the cool air was flowing out (or being pushed out) at the floor level by the fan.

 

[Cluttermagnet]

Yeah, the little Honeywell 800 fans are not the quietest I've ever used, but ours are still running good. At 10 dollars each, I'm very glad I bought them.

In summary, after running a season both without and then later with my 415 cfm squirrel cage fan, I am just sooooo happy I decided to try a 'big fan'. It does a fantastic job! Once in a while I run it full open at about 400 cfm but usually I run it slower and quieter. Running at max rpm's, it pulls the heated air from the Living Room into that Master Bedroom pretty darned fast. I'm going to finalize my experimental install this summer. That boy is a keeper!