Move heat with fans?? 8 February at 11:12PM in Energy 25 replies 747 views

SuzeQStan

I’ve seen on here in the past about people using fans to move heat around their house.  

We have a multi fuel burner (built into chimney so no ‘top’ to put a fan on). It gets hotter than we need of an evening and would like to move this heat to other areas of our home. Like our bedroom upstairs - burner is in downstairs lounge.

we open the lounge door to the hall when it gets too warm and have an external door curtain in there which I’ve pinned a huge blanket to prevent drafts. 

The stairs in the hall are open to the landing and short hallway leading to our bedroom. We keep the bedroom door open and all blinds etc shut in the room but the heat never seems to reach all that far.

any thoughts what type of low energy fan we could use to encourage the heat to go upstairs? Or another method if possible?

grateful for any ideas, thank you

Apodemus

It may simply be the relative temperature.  We have a stove top fan and on a cold day, with the central heating off, you can feel the warmth through the house if you leave the doors open.  But it takes only a very little heat from the radiators to take the chill off the room to the point where you no longer feel any benefit from from the fan.  There is always going to be a temperature gradient from the stove to the bedroom, and there will always be a point in that gradient where the air-flow is no longer higher than the ambient room temperature. 

Alnat1

On another thread someone suggested a fan at floor level blowing air out of a cold room allowed heat to enter more easily but I'm not sure if this would work for an upstairs room. If placed on the bedroom floor it might help the slightly warmer air on the landing move in.

SuzeQStan

Apodemus said:

It may simply be the relative temperature.  We have a stove top fan and on a cold day, with the central heating off, you can feel the warmth through the house if you leave the doors open.  But it takes only a very little heat from the radiators to take the chill off the room to the point where you no longer feel any benefit from from the fan.  There is always going to be a temperature gradient from the stove to the bedroom, and there will always be a point in that gradient where the air-flow is no longer higher than the ambient room temperature. 

Thanks @Apodemus - that makes good sense - we are looking to ‘move’ the heat of an evening as we only use the GCH for 2x hrs in daytime.

our upstairs bedroom is typically around 13-14 degrees of an evening. With log burner on + hall & bedroom doors open we can usually get the bedroom up to 15-15.5 degrees but no higher.

there is no supplemental heating in the bedroom from 1pm onward each day.

we have a heated under blanket so don’t mind sleeping in a cooler bedroom, but I was just hoping we might be able to make use of the surplus heat from the log burner 

SuzeQStan

Alnat1 said:

On another thread someone suggested a fan at floor level blowing air out of a cold room allowed heat to enter more easily but I'm not sure if this would work for an upstairs room. If placed on the bedroom floor it might help the slightly warmer air on the landing move in.

Thanks @Alnat1 - I’m going to experiment with 3x small fans I’ve got from H&B for a fiver each. Am thinking to try one just in front of the LB, one at bottom of the stairs angled ‘up’ and another at the bedroom floor as you say.

will let you know how I get on

Mstty

SuzeQStan said:

Alnat1 said:

On another thread someone suggested a fan at floor level blowing air out of a cold room allowed heat to enter more easily but I'm not sure if this would work for an upstairs room. If placed on the bedroom floor it might help the slightly warmer air on the landing move in.

Thanks @Alnat1 - I’m going to experiment with 3x small fans I’ve got from H&B for a fiver each. Am thinking to try one just in front of the LB, one at bottom of the stairs angled ‘up’ and another at the bedroom floor as you say.

will let you know how I get on

What's the power rating of the fans and how long would you use them for. Always good to know the cost and if there's a different cheaper solution available.

Apodemus

SuzeQStan said:

Apodemus said:

It may simply be the relative temperature.  We have a stove top fan and on a cold day, with the central heating off, you can feel the warmth through the house if you leave the doors open.  But it takes only a very little heat from the radiators to take the chill off the room to the point where you no longer feel any benefit from from the fan.  There is always going to be a temperature gradient from the stove to the bedroom, and there will always be a point in that gradient where the air-flow is no longer higher than the ambient room temperature. 

our upstairs bedroom is typically around 13-14 degrees of an evening. With log burner on + hall & bedroom doors open we can usually get the bedroom up to 15-15.5 degrees but no higher.

 I'm talking about much lower temperatures than you!  Our CH is controlled by room thermostat in a bedroom and set at 16C, so getting it to 15.5C with the log-burner at the other end of the house would be a dream!  In practice we can "feel" the stove's warmth at lower temperatures, but it would probably struggle to get the bedroom up to 13C or 14C.  With heating off overnight, the bedroom drops to 10C or 11C, hence the benefit from the woodburner to take the chill off the bedroom in the afternoon. (Yes, the house is in need of insulating!  We are also in northern Scotland, so have a longer heating season and cooler ambient temperatures.)

SuzeQStan

Mstty said: What's the power rating of the fans and how long would you use them for. Always good to know the cost and if there's a different cheaper solution available.

They are those tiny USB fans - I’ve got some extension cords with USB ports so was gonna use them to power.  

I’m probably well underpowered I know but wanted to try the cheapest option 1st as I already had these fans from the summer for use at work.

gonna experiment tonite - will update

diystarter7

Hi OP

We are a bit like you but with CH

We have a part open plan house, ie massive lounge, fllor to ceiling windowns south facing, and a sperate kitchen but the lound open on to the bick area before the staris - the half of the hall is then seprated from this to the from door an area of about 10 x10 feet and have a rad on their to balance heat loow setting

We have rad on full, almost full blast ground floor by the stairs, hot near where we sit, lower setting others and as heat rises, we had the landing heats full but rooms and bathroom low and it works for us, ie heat moves upwards.

Thans

Qyburn

I don't know your house structure but wonder if you could have a direct path between sitting room and the bedroom directly above. A high level register in the sitting room, and low level in the bedroom with passive convection passing warm air.

alanwsg

We had our 40-year old c/h system replaced with a combi boiler + all new radiators.
The old system had a huge cast-iron boiler in the kitchen which, while inefficient, heated the kitchen itself.
The new system had one radiator at one end of the kitchen with the result that the other end of the kitchen never really heated up and was always freezing.

I bought a set of 12V car dashboard fans + a thermostat off Amazon and rigged them up to an old laptop power supply I had laying around. The fans are at ceiling level above the radiator and blow towards the far end of the room.

The difference is astounding, the far end of the kitchen, once freezing, is now the first place in the house to warm up.