Old Home

Scott Vaughan

Does anyone know what the devices are called that are installed between floors that allow hot air from downstairs to flow upstairs. I have a round vent in the upstairs floor that allows heat from my dining room up into the room. I would like to add another one and need to know if I can buy a kit to do it. My home is 150yrs old and I have no heat upstairs.

Bill Nye_2

is it

a hole? A floor register? Should be available at a home or hardware store.

I lived in an old house once. You could hear conversations from downstairs that maybe you shouldn't have? I would be hesistant to chop the house up.

Steamhead

I've seen many of these

They were usually used with "floor furnaces" where one room in the house had a huge grate that heat would rise thru, and little grilles like these between floors that were supposed to let heat upstairs. This never really worked that well.

If you want, you can make these from large register grilles and short pieces of ducting. But if that were my house, I'd do what many Dead Men did- get some radiators and put in one-pipe steam. This was the least disruptive retrofit available in the old days, and is still one of the least today.

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