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Air Distribution Options

holocron
holocron Member Posts: 19
in THE MAIN WALL

I wasn't entirely sure which category to put this in, but here goes… (admins, please move to another category if appropriate)

I have a small space that has been converted into an office. It has a window and a door to a central hall. This space shares an interior wall with a conditioned room (heat/AC). The small space generally is suitably conditioned just by natural airflow from the door to the central all, but I would like to take advantage of the adjacent room's "better" conditioning.

Some sort of transfer duct seems appropriate.

What would you recommend for a passive solution?

One high and one low for convective flow between the spaces?

What would you recommend for a more active solution?

Flair vents, possibly tied into home automation come to mind.

There is a closet in the conditioned room that could have a duct with a duct fan. The duct fan could be reversible to either push air from the conditioned room or pull air from the unconditioned room. This maybe still requires a passive transfer duct low for make-up air.

What would be your solution?

Comments

  • Jamie Hall
    Jamie Hall Member Posts: 25,607

    A common enough problem… passive flow almost never works well, unless there is an elevation difference as well as a horizontal difference.

    A pair of big enough ducts or openings will work, with a fan. The key to this is first, make the ducts big enough so you really don't notice the breeze which would be annoying at best. The other key is the fan: you need to spend enough to get a big, low speed, quiet fan. A small inexpensive fan may well move enough air — it doesn't take all that much (try for somewhere around four to six air changes per hour) but like anything small working hard, it will be noisy.

    Br. Jamie, osb
    Building superintendent/caretaker, 7200 sq. ft. historic house museum with dependencies in New England
  • holocron
    holocron Member Posts: 19

    Here is what I am thinking. One of two options show below:

    1. wall mounted vents, 6" duct and in-line fan, installed at the top of the closet

    2. ceiling mounted vents, 6" duct and in-line fan, installed in attic space above

    In both cases, I think I would then put in a passive transfer vent low on the wall between these two rooms.

    Considering:
    https://www.ecomfort.com/Fantech-prioAir6/p62597.html

    or

    https://www.ecomfort.com/Fantech-prioAir6/p62597.html

    image.png

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