Nature Show Landscape

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Snaking across the valley by Andrew Priest, on Flickr

I am not sure of the location of this photo but I know we had left Saint Ėtienne Vallée-Française and we had not yet reached Le Martinet. I suspect this is the view across the Le Gardon de Saint-Martin river valley.

Chemin de Stevenson-2018-D12-07: Day 12 of 12 – St Germain de Calberte to Saint Jean du Gard: Walking the Chemin de Stevenson (#GR70 Robert Louis Stevenson Trail) in the south of France.
 
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John King said:
Ridiculously large for just the two of us, Richard. Most of the downstairs has 4m high cathedral ceilings. I don't like 2.4m flat ceilings ...
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Avondale87 said:
Um. Well, yes! Forgot about cathedral ceilings even if I did build such a house few decades back :rolleyes::blush:
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We had a rental place that had a loft space that opened to the great room below. It was not our favorite design. In the cold part of the year, all the heat just escaped to the second floor, where none of us spent most of our day! Had to have the ceiling fan going to help bring it back down where it belonged, but that also made things feel cold.
 
Darmok N Jalad said:
We had a rental place that had a loft space that opened to the great room below. It was not our favorite design. In the cold part of the year, all the heat just escaped to the second floor, where none of us spent most of our day! Had to have the ceiling fan going to help bring it back down where it belonged, but that also made things feel cold.
Click to expand...
Yeah, Randy. You have to force air where you want it to go.

Our gas central heater is a downflow type. 970+ cu.ft. a minute. When it was installed, 30 years before we bought the house, the installer neglected to install the third wire for the fan control from the thermostat, several rooms away.

I worked out where on the control circuit board that was supposed to go, and installed a manual switch for the fan. It is just below the RAD. The other switch controls the duct damper.

The return air duct is also about 2m above floor level! Basically, the heater was good at keeping itself warm ... See photo below!

So, I rehung the door between the front and rear of the house so it didn't cover the return air duct, relocated the heater ventilation/combustion air vents from the bathroom (illegal and dangerous), had a plenum chamber made and installed behind the return air duct to the top inlet of the heater (it had previously been drawing air over the unsealed edge of asbestos cement sheeting), had a duct damper installed to isolate the rear of the house, had the 900x900mm grill made and installed in the door.

By having this door open, the heater fan (heating off) draws hot air from the upper parts of the front rooms (7), then cools it in the concrete slab ducts and recirculates it, plus the air cooled by the 3 reverse cycle airconditioners, throughout this part of the house.

Shut that door, and the heater (heating on) draws cold air from floor level, heats it, then recirculates it via the floor registers.

I had to explain how this worked to the installer, a guy with 35 years experience in the business!

It all now works as described above, with the heater doing more than just keeping itself warm, and the airconditioners cooling the air throughout the house.

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John King said:
Yeah, Randy. You have to force air where you want it to go.

Our gas central heater is a downflow type. 970+ cu.ft. a minute. When it was installed, 30 years before we bought the house, the installer neglected to install the third wire for the fan control from the thermostat, several rooms away.

I worked out where on the control circuit board that was supposed to go, and installed a manual switch for the fan. It is just below the RAD. The other switch controls the duct damper.

The return air duct is also about 2m above floor level! Basically, the heater was good at keeping itself warm ... See photo below!

So, I rehung the door between the front and rear of the house so it didn't cover the return air duct, relocated the heater ventilation/combustion air vents from the bathroom (illegal and dangerous), had a plenum chamber made and installed behind the return air duct to the top inlet of the heater (it had previously been drawing air over the unsealed edge of asbestos cement sheeting), had a duct damper installed to isolate the rear of the house, had the 900x900mm grill made and installed in the door.

By having this door open, the heater fan (heating off) draws hot air from the upper parts of the front rooms (7), then cools it in the concrete slab ducts and recirculates it, plus the air cooled by the 3 reverse cycle airconditioners, throughout this part of the house.

Shut that door, and the heater (heating on) draws cold air from floor level, heats it, then recirculates it via the floor registers.

I had to explain how this worked to the installer, a guy with 35 years experience in the business!

It all now works as described above, with the heater doing more than just keeping itself warm, and the airconditioners cooling the air throughout the house.

View attachment 331139
Click to expand...
Yeah, that rental had some serious design flaws. It had two piddly vents that fed the two bedrooms that were built over the unconditioned garage below. Those rooms faced east, and were basically exposed to unconditioned air on 4 sides! To make matters worse, the AC condenser was on the west side of the house, where there was no shade. I remember the AC would run nonstop from about 3PM to 10PM on a 95F+ day and not even keep up. Being a rental, I had no control over any of those conditions. The two east bedrooms got really cold in the winter. Just bad design all around.
 
Darmok N Jalad said:
Yeah, that rental had some serious design flaws. It had two piddly vents that fed the two bedrooms that were built over the unconditioned garage below. Those rooms faced east, and were basically exposed to unconditioned air on 4 sides! To make matters worse, the AC condenser was on the west side of the house, where there was no shade. I remember the AC would run nonstop from about 3PM to 10PM on a 95F+ day and not even keep up. Being a rental, I had no control over any of those conditions. The two east bedrooms got really cold in the winter. Just bad design all around.
Click to expand...
That's pretty bad, Randy.

Even if the owners were idiots, you expect qualified installers to know what they are doing ... Unfortunately, as we both know, the installer is often just as ignorant as the owner!
 

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