12 foot high walls and a 12:12 pitched roof in my Victoria's Cottage design. I will be using a wood burning stove and electric (Cadet) heaters in key zones for heating. Should I consider adding a ceiling fan? Should I look at other ways to get the heat to recirculate?
Thanks as always for your individual and collective advice.
mt
I like the ceiling fans for that purpose - otherwise the air just sits up there - hot on top and cold on the bottom. Ceiling fans don't use much power but really move the air down -and most are reversible to either pull or push.
I have ceiling fans in almost every room in the house, and I live in Wisconsin. They help the cooling affect so the air conditioning doesn't have to be turned down as far. For heat I do use them too.
What type of Cadet heater(s) will you be using for your zone heating. I don't see having wood heat in my future 1 1/2, or the soon to be built garage / bonus room. Thinking an electric heat option for our occasional cold weather use might be the best solution for now in the bonus roon atop the garage... what type do you recommend?
Ceiling fans are great summer and winter. Our suburban house has a total of 5.
FYI, for those doing the off-grid thing, there are 12/24 VDC fans available as well so you don't have to run the power thru the inverter. They are very efficient power-wise. Some are also available with scientifically designed blades. Most fans use flat paddles, which work fine. On AC power grid tied systems you'd never notice the inefficiency and power lost.
THe downside of the DC type is they tend to be a bit more pricey than the "specials" on AC fans that can be found at big box stores.
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Anyone who knows propeller driven aircraft, full size or scale models, knows that efficient propellers have specially shaped blades.
I had to go back to through the months to find this thread. I will go with a ceiling fan to get help recirculate air in the main living area. But my place also has a basement. Is there a way to pull the air from near the top of the house all the way to the basement? From top to bottom, that is close to 30 feet? I was thinking of a duct with a fan in one or both ends. I was also thinking about putting a gridded opening in the main floor down to the basement (with a fan) so that air could be pulled in. Are these ideas just a big waste of time and (human) energy?
mt
Moving air from the top to the basement thru a duct and fan....
I think that would work just fine. What a great Idea!
Re: heating with high walls and cathedral ceilings
I placed two fans in each of the rooms upstairs in my place.
One fan pulling air up, the other fan pushing air down.
I get a nice circulation of air for the entire room that way.
Some of the framing construction
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The duct from the floor of the top floor to the basement floor if the basement is heated will work best. Think of warm air rising and cold air falling.
Also -insulating the duct or insulated flex duct as you don't want it to have hot spots in it where the warm rising air from the middle floors heating the outside of the duct is counteracting the cold falling air.
The inventor of the wood stoves I used to build used this method to pull air into back rooms of the house. Ducts went under the floor from the floor of a cold distant room to the bottom of the base of the wood stove. It had ducts around it and pulled cold air up through it with only convection. The warm air was then pulled through the house by the lower pressure in the cold back room.
This would probably do it 6" dia. $28.95 8" dia. $30.95
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More here http://www.airboosterfans.com/ductfans.html
in our 1 1/2 storey with 1/3 open to ceiling I was thinking of using one of those duct fans by taking air from the ceiling peak at tha far end of the loft and discharging in the ceiling of the first floor.
Wood stove is in open are in front 1/3. So heat should circulate up in open area, through loft then down by blower in to back kitchen.
the ducting in loft would run beside exposed 6x8 rafters
If I was going to install a duct system like this I'd try to find a high efficiency low speed blower assembly so when it's running you don't hear it so much. They are used in modern high efficiency furnaces. Most of the best actually use DC motors with a converter built into the unit.
We've found that setting our A/C unit to allow constant running (during the peak need hours) allows the A/C compressor to run less frequently. Same applies to the furnace though we don't notice it so much. With an regular higher speed AC blower that would be most annoying to me. Plus the AC use more power.