Hyfire II - Return Air

AJ,

No, no ducts to the blower fans. Don't need it. By leaving the basement door open, cold air RUSHES downstairs and into the blowers. Like I said, try the no cost way. Install the fans and heat the house you normally do. FEEL what happens and THEN take the next step IF need to.

Exactly as I outlined in my previous posts. Why pump air when convection is for free as the Romans taught us 2000 years ago and then nature abhors a vacuum and there we go the cycle starts slowly I admit but fast enough. Once an equilibrium is reached its almost completely quiet.

Here's an article that I found recently, written by Martin Holladay.

Don't Use a Standard Furnace Fan To Distribute Ventilation Air:

Most new homes include some type of whole-house mechanical ventilation system — for example, a passive outdoor-air duct connected to a furnace's return-air plenum. Some builders provide ventilation by connecting a heat-recovery ventilator (HRV) to the home's forced-air ductwork.

Both methods have an Achilles heel: They depend on the furnace fan to distribute ventilation air. In homes equipped with air cleaners, homeowners may leave the furnace fan running continuously. This can carry a substantial energy penalty. Furnace fans are designed to move a lot of air — up to 1,400 cfm — yet most homes require only 50 or 100 cfm for ventilation. In fan-only mode, certain furnaces can draw as much as 700 to 800 watts.

One solution is to specify a furnace with a blower powered by an electronically commutated motor (ECM) that draws 200 to 250 watts in fan-only mode. Another is to choose a different type of ventilation system — a simple exhaust-only system or an HRV with dedicated ventilation ductwork.

No matter how you look at it, the worst place to get a supply of air to be heated is off the floor of the basement. It's the coldest air in the house.
All furnaces that are properly installed have cold air returns from the heated rooms, returning cool air from the living space to be reheated. If modern furnaces did not have the closed-loop system, they would lose ~half their efficiency.

Unless you want to heat your basement with air that should be heating your upstairs, then hook up some form of positive airduct from your cold air return to the fan inlets, and the openings on the 'bonnet' over the sides of the Hyfire.

WNY reported about a 1/3 savings in coal use, and an increase in temperatures upstairs from a max of about 62* to a comfortable 72*.. proof that this works.. heating warm air to hot is better than heating cold air to warm..

Give it a try, a bit of ductwork and head scratching will get it done, and you then can tell us how well it worked..

Greg L