Recirculate Air to balance rooms

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Chris Traeger

Hello,

 

I have a house that gets quite hot in areas and quite cold in others.  I've put together a spreadsheet below to see if something like this is possible.  Ideally a call to the fan to turn on and open and close the selected vents would help balance out these rooms (taking cold air from lower liv and guest br and circulating with Office.  Is there any option like this available?  Currently the fan only turns on if there is a call to heat or AC.  I believe this would be very beneficial to efficiency as well as cost savings.

 

Room Temp Set Point Status  
Main 72 72 Active close
Office 77.1 72 Active open
Office 2 71.6 72 Away close
Master BR 72.6 72 Away close
Lower Liv 67.7 74 Active open
Guest 66.2 72 Away open
Br 3 72.2 72 Active close
Main East 71.2 72 Active close
Master Bath 72.9 72 Away close
3

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    Richard Roulx

    Allowing for air recirculation in rooms that are under the set point (in summer) or over the set point (in winter) would help save energy...

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    Chris J
    • Edited

    This is this biggest down fall / omission in the system right now.

    My theater room is downstairs and gets over cooled. Likely result of being below grade, really well insulated ( sound mitigation ) compaired to the rest of the house and return vents pulling cooler air down a split foyer from upstairs. The upper floors get heavy heat soak from Midwest sun so the imbalance does not surprise me.

    What I notice is the room will be cold but feel damp / humid without air circulation. Ideally I would like to open all vents in (or active rooms at least) when I let the circulation fan run to help even out the house, and reduce 'stale' air.

    I had read somewhere about a beta that was getting ready to launch to test just such a feature but I have not heard anything for months on it.

    Right now when trying to curculate, I think having alot of the vents closed creates higher residual static duct pressure that ends up causing the cost of operations to increase as the load on the fan would be higher due to higher back pressure, hence a higher amp draw (key word above.. I think)

     

    I also find I end up with alot of cooler air settled downstairs that would be better to be circulated through the house. This ends up running the system more often than if it could balance things out also using more energy. (Again.. I think.. )

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