Fan with Room Thermostat

[Steve FCE]

Hi,

Just had a customer give me a strange challenge.

What they want is a ceiling fan that is controlled by a room thermostat with a timer.
Apparently their living room gets hot in summer so they want a fan to cool it down and cold in winter so they want the fan to work in reverse and circulate the warm air (its very high ceilings BTW). They want it timer controlled so it doesn't come on when they're out or asleep.

I'm thinking some kind of programmable digital thermostat where I can set certain actions to take place in a given temperature range.

Has anyone come across anything like this?

Cheers

Steve

 

[motorbiking]

wifi switch and then use internet of things app. But it sounds like mobile air conditioner might be better.

 

[EFLImpudence]

Waste of time and effort.

A thermostat will not work like that.

It is only the air passing over your body and causing evaporation which makes you feel cooler.
It will have no effect on a thermostat.
It will still cool you down in the winter.

Obviously you can configure it to come on when the temperature reaches, for example, 25° if they want.

A manual switch will not cause it to come on when they're out or asleep.

 

[deadshort]

Hi, i would use a programmable room stat they are very accurate and cost about £35.00

Regards,

DS

 

[SimonH2]

As above, a manual switch will work best - I'm not aware of any "thermostat" that understands human "comfort factors".

It will still cool you down in the winter.

If the ceilings are high, then it can help. Don't forget that hot air rises, so especially if the ceilings are very high, you end up with hot air where it's doing no good.
It's the first think that comes to mind when I see any of the various property programs on telly, and they go into this property with high vaulted ceilings and exposed roof timbers - "I guess all the heat will f*** off up there then"

In summer a fan can makes things worse if it brings hot air down into the room.

 

[EFLImpudence]

If the ceilings are high, then it can help. Don't forget that hot air rises,

It will still be just a cold draught.

 

[ericmark]

There are many things to consider.
Myson radiator circulates air, however they don't seem to have been updated to work with condenser central heating boiler, can't be sure on that however.
Heat recovery units will also re-distribute the heat.

However I wanted to keep my beer cool and I went through all the options, like us yeast gives out heat when it is fermenting so simply insulating does not work. So there are two methods, one a large space where the heat can escape, or refrigeration. The idea of selected ventilation seems good in theory, once outside is colder than inside the vents are opened, and when outside is warmer than inside the vents are closed. For vents read windows. But to open and close those vents needs manual intervention.

The problem is August when it is 16°C outside at 4 am you want to open windows to cool house ready for heat latter in the day, but October 16°C outside at 4 am and you keep the windows closed as it is unlikely to get that warm latter in the day so no need to cool house down. What is needed is a weather forecast to decide if heat is allowed to escape or not.

The Q glass again needs to be one way around in summer and other way around in winter.

So as with my beer brewing, there may be methods to keep a house cool without using refrigeration (air conditioning) but the control is too complex to be worth doing. Yes you could use a PLC and program in when to do things, but the cost would be well over the cost of a simple AC.

So for winter a heat recovery unit, for summer a AC. Whole idea of a high ceiling is the heat goes into that space, last thing wanted is to bring that heat back down in the summer.

There are exceptions where there are loads of people then air exchange with outside is good. But try measuring the temperature, I have, and in a open plan house I have found upstairs at 24°C and downstairs at 18°C bringing that heat back down in winter is good, but in summer it is bad, in UK how do you decide if going to be warm day or not? and how will you get that info into the system to turn on fans?

 

[333rocky333]

We do a similar thing in ATM pods to keep the machines cool, we use a central heating stat that has BOTH N/O an N/C contacts
For normal heating contacts would BREAK on rise of temperature
So for a fan you want to use the contacts that MAKE on rise of temperature
For more accuracy then you need something digital, again with Both types of contacts, so you would need to check the spec