h a l f b a k e r y
No servicable parts inside.
idea:
add, search, annotate, link, view, overview, recent, by name, best, random
meta:
news, help, about, links, report a problem
account:
Browse anonymously,
or get an account
and write.
Login
Create account.
|
|
|
Radiators - they radiate. as much heat hits the wall as the room. Half of it goes up behind the curtains. You can improve it - my radiators are painted matt black (best colour for radiation) and housed in covers which are lined with tin foil. Most of the heat comes out of the vents in the front.
BUT....you
could heat up the room much quicker if you had fans in the top of the radiator cover which drew air up past the radiator and pumped it out into the room, in much the same way as a fan heater blows air across the element. The trick would be to make the fans really quiet, so they did not disturb your tv watching/book reading etc. and economical so they used very little energy.
Alas, my idea is truely half baked. I cannot think of a really innovative way of powering the fans. I kept trying to think of some way of using the heat from the radiator itself, but if you just used the convection current for example, the fans would spin, but just slow up the air that was already moving rather than propel it forward. Bright ideas welcome.
The default would be small, quiet electric fans - I don't envisage them blowing hard like a fan heater, just increase the effieciency of warming up the room by drawing cold air in from the bottom and pumping it past the radiator and out the top.
[link]
|
| |
I've seen these homemade. I don't know if they exist commecially. |
|
| |
Steam turbines could turn the fans. What kind of pressure do those systems use anyway? You could very easily get a couple of bathroom exhaust fans. You're be surprised how quiet they are when they're not mounted in the ceiling. Hook you up a nice little switch and plug for them. There you go. |
|
| |
It wouldn't take much airflow to increase heat transfer rates and to circulate the heat through the room. You could run your electric fans from thermovoltaic cells, although I imagine this would be a bit expensive. |
|
| |
Or you could run the fans from Stirling engines. Quiet and efficient, although I wouldn't be able to do the sums to see if the energy you need is there. |
|
| |
Note that the heat isn't exactly going to waste now. It's simply being recycled. The only thing the fan does is increase the rate at which the room will warm initially. The fan won't make the system more efficient (as near as I can tell). |
|
| |
If the drive train is light, you could use the flow of the hot water itself to run the fans. |
|
| |
Also, electric radiators. They suck, but they're out there. What about them? Yes there is electricty there that could be used to run fans, but that doesn't really seem like the halfbakery solution to me. Likewise if you were going to use regular line voltage to power these fans, don't most radiator's have it nearby anyway? |
|
| |
Actually phoenix, I think it will make it more efficient, as by drawing cold air in at the bottom and passing it over the radiator, more heat will go into heating the air, rather than say the wall behind (even if covered with foil), as the temperature diff is greater between the air and the radiator than it would be if it was static - therefore the air acts as water does in a car engine, taking heat away from the hot bits (the radiator) and being pumped out into the room. |
|
| |
[goff] don't forget that the increase in airflow will increase heat transfer coefficients (that is the rate at which heat can be transferred from one region to another). Changing the heat transfer regime from free convection to forced convection by purposely blowing air across the surface of the radiator could give an order of magnitude increase in the rate of heat transfer from an area of the radiator which heats the room, reducing % wasted heat. |
|
| |
I've used this idea for years. It
definitely works, I just use a
window fan that has a particularly
quiet, low-speed. The room I do
this in is my work/computer room,
and also the house's thermostat is
in this room. I'm able to set the
thermostat lower, but it thinks the
whole house is warm.....the rest of
the house gets cold while I do this,
but I've knocked about 40% off my
natural gas bill. |
|
| |
Here's my idea:
Buy a small USB hub and two USB fans like the Kensington Fly Fan. You could probably do the whole thing for about 30 bucks. |
|
| |
Bonus: you could put some lights in your radiator as well! |
|
| |
Why not instal a ceiling fan that why it will stir the air in the room one way in the summer cooling the room down and then you could switch it over to rotate the in the opposite direction in the winter helping to warm the house up. Sweet and Simple plus dual purpose. |
|
| |
If you are worried about loss through the wall, why not just move your radiator to the middle of the room? |
|
| |
Incidentally, I believe radiators transfer most of their heat by convection already. The air close to them heats up, rises and is replaced by colder air. |
|
| |
I've wondered about this myself.
According to the Wikipedia entry on
"radiator," you can now get radiators
with built-in electric fans, but this is no
help to those of us who have old steam
radiators and want to improve their
efficiency. I do know that a similar
device already exists to help spread the
heat from a woodstove (see http://
www.gyroscope.com/d.asp?
product=ECOFAN). It uses the "Peltier
effect" to power the fan using the
stove's own heat. According this site,
the fan will turn slowly if you set it on a
hot radiator, but it's not clear whether it
will turn fast enough to distribute the
heat effectively. |
|
| |
Query for John T: do you set the fan
blowing away from the radiator or
toward it (to drive cold air under the
radiator and speed up the convection
process)? |
|
| |
And for Loris, a note: I can't answer for
goff, but the reason I can't move my
radiators to the middle of the room is
that they're single-pipe steam radiators
connected to the plumbing in the walls. |
|
| |
Already baked- McQuay makes radiator/fan units that mount on the floor against wall where a traditional radiator would normally be. You can actually swap out your traditional radiator for one of these units and then run an AC line to it in order to power the fan. |
|
| |
This method of heating is used in many apartment buildings that have a centrally located heating and cooling system. |
|
| |