how to be green...

[shambles]

I was watching (again) that guy with the moustache and the unfeasibly lovely family in 'How to be Green' last night. He has a load of tubing which he uses to transfer warm air around his house. But I also noticed he has one of those clever fan thingies (Ecotec?) that sits on his woodburner - and that set me to thinking...

The room I currently sleep in is directly above the room I have the woodburner in, so it gets quite a bit of warmth from downstairs anyway. I could, I suppose, improve things by punching a hole in the floor and ceiling and fitting a suitably attractive vent and a short bit of pipe to trickle some warm air from downstairs up to the bedroom. I guess that might work on its own. But for added techno-satisfaction, what about if the power-generation part of the ecotec fan was decoupled from the fan itself? Then I could have a little fan inbetween the two rooms, sucking a portion of the the warmth from one room to the other, powered by the woodburner... Hey, if I had a battery in the system, and a timer, I could set it to suck the warmth from the sitting room and put it in the bedroom just about as I go to bed... Then I could avoid having a radiator heat cycle earlier in the evening to heat the bedroom. Wouldn't that be cool?

Or is it just daft?

[Ivan]

The concept makes sense. However, air is a very mobile thing, and moves very easily upwards of its own accord. I have a similar setup, and generally find that the temperatures upstairs in the early hours (if I can face them) is generally much higher than downstairs. The heat tends to rise overnight, unless all the doors are closed. If you want to improve on this, then your vent hole in the floor will certainly have a good effect, but ideally you need two holes, to allow the cold air to drop down into the living room Ideally one vent would have a plastic pipe extending upwards towards the bedroom ceiling and the other would have a plastic pipe extending towards the living room floor - this would accelerate the rate of air exchange, without the need for any fans. I think just having two air vents through the floor would be more than adequate, however.

[Amaterasu]

without wishing to pour water on a great idea.
Please remember that floors perfom many functions.
They hold the ceiling up.
They support the weight above.

And perhaps as importantly - but often overlooked, they provide a firebreak between downstairs and upstairs.

If you are contemplating opening ducts between the two please make sure that there is sufficient firestopping.

If you are not careful and a fire breaks out downstairs you will create a very effiective chimney inside the house. Especially if you provide a downwards duct as Ivan suggests.

Many years ago as part of my Fire service duties I used to give talks to schools and WI etc etc. To put the point over I used video footage of a staged fire in a living room caused by a cigarette butt falling down the gap between a cushion and armrest on a sofa.

Once ignition occured it took less than 3 minutes for the room to become an inferno. Granted materials in sofa's are now flame retardent but there are still many combustibles that will add to the situation.

[Ivan]

On that note, leaving the living room/bedroom doors open when the stove is running is probably the best option!