Any of you guys use your HVAC fan to circulate the warm stove air throughout the house? I’ve been doing it since last year when I first installed our stove and with the way my house is setup it works real well, except the fan runs on high speed and almost moves too much air which makes the colder rooms feel drafty, plus I have to constantly turn it on and off manually. So the other morning, while having my coffee, it hits me, why not set the thermostat to “cool” and just wire the fan to run on low. So that’s what I did, wired the fan relay so the fan will run on low when in cooling mode, killed power to the compressor/condenser, then set the thermostat to cool and 73*. This works perfect, the fan cycles about 30 minutes on, 30 minutes off, keeping the main living area at a consistent 72-73* while taking the chill out of the bedrooms without moving so much air that it feels drafty in them. Although it doesn’t heat the bedrooms like the main stove area, it does make it noticeably warmer in them. Now all I have to do is add “rewire fan relay” to my spring checklist so I don’t freeze up the coil come summer.
Nice to meet you. Very cool idea, hope it works well for you. I do not have central heat....I am using box fans and smaller fans. Going to install a couple muffin fans next week too. My childhood home had central air, boy was that nice!! Also, (not sure how central air factors in.....) Backwoods Savage shared excellent advice on how to use fans to move cold vs warm air around the house efficiently.
A tinkering mind always has a upper hand. The trick is to have a very slow fan speed, it helps to disperse the heat somewhat around. Maybe putting a timer if your option isn't practical for others. Here we are dreaming having more distribution on our stoves and we have to throttle back the furnace fan to compensate. I would consider only using one cold air return where the warmest room is if that is practical and also raising higher off the floor. Keep on tinkering
I've been thinking about doing something like this. Our place does not have central heat, but if I add it, I will do it in such a way as I can move the warm air in the living room around to the rest of the house. Greg
funflyer, Yes, been doing that with my HotBlast furnace [one port to duct other 90ed to the basement] for 10+ years, although I removed the Bi-Metal thermostat on the back and added a thermocouple and temperature controller about 5 years ago and stopped using the HVAC fan. Right now I set the controller any temp I want, 205F now but crank it up to 375F when it gets below 30F during the day. I am in the process of gathering and building a more elaborate control panel to control everything with a PLC and relays for the fans. The basic plan is to have the temp controller turn on the furnace blower, then by adding a simple thermostat separate from the HVAC stat that will control the HVAC blower but only if the furnace blower is running and above a set temp in the PLC [the PLC just adds so much flexibility]. That's part of the plan I have now, but I don't need anything else to remember in Spring.
My parents had a second thermostat added just above their pellet stove. When it sees 70 degrees it turns on the furnace blower. The main cold air return is also above the stove. The air blowing from the heat vents feels cold, but the whole house stays 65.
The AC fan has been doing great but unless it's very cold outside (below freezing) it makes the bedrooms too warm so I have to close the register in the master just to sleep. I'm thinking of adding a programmable t-stat to the stove so it stays on low until 4 or 5am, then goes to high.
