If you have a hot water or steam boiler in a seperate room or area in your basement, try this trick. I took a cold control (the thermostat) from an old window air conditioner and used it to switch on a small blower. Both items are mounted at the ceiling over the furnace, and plug into a convienient outlet. It goes like this: The furnace turns on and as it and it's piping get up to temp, warms the air around it which naturally rises to the ceiling, where the cold control senses the temp rise and turns on the blower, sending that warm air out into the basement. I ended up using some 3" rnd. duct to point the air where I wanted. Colder air from the floor goes into the furnace rm. to replace the warmed air. Some of the cold air is used for combustion, and some goes up the draft hood on the flue (where the warm air used to go before the system started sending it into the rest of the basement) I'm not going to pretend I got this thing right on the first try, but it wasn't that hard to figure out which of the salvaged fans/blowers I had was the right size, and how much opening I needed at the top and bottom of the furnace area for best air flow. (duct tape and plastic to start) I did this because the idea of all that warm air going up the flue just bugged me. The flue pipe from boiler to wall is short enough that I don't think condensation will be a problem, so some day I'll replace a section of it with well sealed B-vent and hook a fan to one end of the outer section of that too. I'll let you know.
- posted
17 years ago