Home System Guidelines

[Dan O.]

We have recently purchased an old colonial home that is seriously lacking airflow. I am considering installing registers in the upstairs rooms, and a couple downstairs so i can circulate air throughout the home, and in the hot days exhaust to outside through the attic. Are there any good ventilation circulation guidelines to follow? I have not been able to find any informative reference material out there. Also does anyone have suggestions about how to impliment a system control? Something home-grown perhaps? The off the shelf control modules tend to be expensive and lack flexibility. Thanks for any direction..

[16x80]

dan-o

First off let me say this, "What you are about to undertake many people before you have learned from there mistakes by trial and error"

The problem you face is to do the work without reducing the esthetic's of your Colonial appearance. If you install registers in the upstairs rooms and you take them from the existing duct work you might be robbing valuable resources from the existing system causing more of a problem.

If your idea is to put in duct runs that just transfer the air from one room to another then you might be able to achieve this without to much loss of comfort to the lower levels. You can use a duct booster which runs off of 120 vac or 24 vac and wire them to your blower on the furnace/air handler. Removing air from the attic to the outside might be as simple as installing ridge and soffet vents with a few temperature controlled attic fans!

System controls? I have seen many that worked well and others that offered no DIY abilities. I have seen those that run off of temp controls and even one that you could implement from Windows on your PC. The hard part is to create a control interface that would control everything you wanted it to. You will probably spend just as much doing it yourself than buying one off the shelf.

I will leave this for now and let you reply with a question. I will offer as much assistance as I can, This is not a post that can be answered in just one reply.

16x80

[Dan O.]

OK, thanks.

Yes, what I am talking about doing is adding ductwork. The existing heating system is Forced Hot Water (Via Baseboard radiators). The vents are a completely new addition to the house.

The main goal is to get better circulation in the house as a whole, but this will differ with the seasons. With the booster fans i can take the air out of the upper rooms and re-circulate to the lower level (via. single duct down) or expel outward (through attic then outside).

The control would need to have the ability to turn on/off three booster fans and operate a couple of gates. It would be much nicer if there were a home kit that would make it easier to wire up the controls.

So i guess my post has two specific questions..
1) Am i designing the airflow part of the system correctly? Is there a reference that would confirm what i think the air is going to do actually does.
2) Is there a kit to make it easy and still allows customization, or am i stuck soldering chips and writing code?

[16x80]

Home kit? I do not know of a kit that can make this easy for you. You will need to get the duct work in place wire the gates and booster fans to a central point. You could use remote sensors that run off of 24 vac to trigger the gates and fans according to your preferences. Keep in mind that a 6 inch duct only carries about 150 cfm and a 8 inch duct carries about 200 cfm. Length and number of turns would affect this also. You might come up with a push pull system this would help circulate the air alittle better. By your willingness to do this on your own I assume you have some working knowledge of electrical and mechanical systems of some type. Use your head on this one you might be able to make a good show of it.

Draw it out on paper before you start cutting holes, airflow is tricky it rolls when it moves!

16x80