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I made the mistake of designing my system around 10x24 filters and have to order them online. I couldn't really fit any more than that where I put the unit unfortunately.
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Nov 16, 2020 14:18
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Buy em by the box at nordicpure.com. One box a year is likely overkill, which for me the asthmatic is just the right amount of kill. I really need to get an air purifier for my office which currently has 0 filtration going.kastein posted:I made the mistake of designing my system around 10x24 filters and have to order them online. I couldn't really fit any more than that where I put the unit unfortunately. This is a big ole "not my problem" in a few months right?
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Nov 16, 2020 18:45
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Maybe a dumb question, but- I'm installing a gas shop heater in my garage to replace the extremely sketchy old wood burner that was there when I bought the house. What would be the appropriate way to connect the 4" gas heater vent to the existing 7" Class A chimney?
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Nov 16, 2020 19:55
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H110Hawk posted:Buy em by the box at nordicpure.com. One box a year is likely overkill, which for me the asthmatic is just the right amount of kill. I really need to get an air purifier for my office which currently has 0 filtration going. Correct on both counts, that's exactly what I do. I plan to leave the box of filters with the new owner and explain that they can just order <insert ASIN here> on Amazon and they show up a few days later.
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Nov 18, 2020 00:08
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Hello HVAC friends: we have an upstairs bathroom that never feels like it gets any significant heat output from the floor register. Its against the front wall of the house, but is situated in a way that its hard to trace the feed from the furnace itself since the stairs going up are towards the inside of the house, so the register is fed from underneath through a wall that I dont have access into. I've tried to trace it in the basement crawl space but its tough to find any specific vent connection that could possibly be closed or not open all the way, but also its multiple tubes together with no obvious markings as to what goes where. The register itself doesnt even have flaps to open or close and the other bedrooms upstairs dont have the same issue. Is there an easy way to probe that specific register that I could do myself, or is it cheaper / easier to get our A/C guy out to poke through it? (we had to replace our 20yo furnace last year and the company that did it didnt reconnect the A/C system to the power unit, so we got to know a local A/C guy real well as he fixed up all the small stuff they didnt do. :I apparently their sheet metal was great, the wiring not so much) For reference there are probably 3-4 flex tubes in the crawlspace for the air distribution to the front of the house, and none of them seem to have any obvious shut-offs or closures like the humidifier. I assumed it was something like that since the other rooms upstairs get heat, but that also seems kinda silly to even have an entire room shut-off on that part.
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Nov 18, 2020 18:50
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H110Hawk posted:Thanks, I'll try to run outside next time it happens. The closest exposed gas lines are 11' away in a straight line but I have to run through my entire house to get to them. Sorry for the extremely late post. First, I reserve the right to be wrong about everything, I'm just saying it sounds like a sound I heard before. But! Your first step is narrowing down where the sound is coming from. If it happens again, and you put your ear anywhere on the gas line and hear it louder from there, then you at least know it's a problem with the gas. Could be the reg, the baffles, the gas valve, pressure, pipe size, anything. Really just narrowing down the source is your first step, so I was just giving another option for the source of the sound based on something I had heard before. Don't suppose you have any updates though? I'm curious.
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Nov 19, 2020 05:47
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Our house came with a Nest thermostat installed. We want to rip it out and put in something that doesn't arbitrarily change the temperature on us or require any sort of data-mining ~cloud services~ for home automation control from within our home. Right now we have a 25 year old hot water radiator system except for the attic bedroom which is electric baseboard, and at some point in the next 5 years we're going to replace it all with a more modern zoned radiant heating setup, and likely add a minisplit or two for cooling in the summer. So what's good in the category of z-wave/zigbee or local wifi-connected thermostats under $200-ish? corgski fucked around with this message at 09:06 on Nov 19, 2020 |
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Nov 19, 2020 08:59
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stratdax posted:Sorry for the extremely late post. First, I reserve the right to be wrong about everything, I'm just saying it sounds like a sound I heard before. I do! Ironically it got hot out again almost immediately after the issue happened so we simply had a few weeks with the heater off. Sure enough 3 nights ago we had it on overnight (80-85f days, 45f nights) so of course it happened at 4am. Woke us up, woke up the baby, gently caress everything. I did not go on a sound hunt because it was going to result in someone or something getting murdered. Hvac company got out by 1:30pm same day (twice in a month, A+) same guy. He still could not reproduce it and we cranked my house up from 72f (everything off, it was 82f outside) to about 76f. He spent some time in the attic, some time by the gas meter timing out flow rate seemingly, back to the attic and made some kind of pressure adjustment, and said call back if it repeats. He was a man of few words and I was literally in a meeting when he finished up. Last night it ran several times and neither of us recall a noise, but the baby woke up at 3am regardless so who knows. 
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Nov 19, 2020 16:13
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Returning to the topic of my apartment’s hosed up central heating. The forced air heating has no filter. When I asked why, the response was “because we’d have to install a slot for it and a way to change it”. The motherfucker is still spewing crap everywhere. It is by far the worst in the bathroom.  I can handle it in the kitchen, living room, and bedroom, cuz I can vacuum. But in the bathroom, because it’s a small room, it gets everywhere. On the floor, on the sink, on the toilet, in the bathtub. It’s awful and I’m sick of wiping off dust, dirt, wood chips, and bits of plastic every time I go take a piss. I don’t care about heating the bathroom. I want to simply stop the forced air from entering the bathroom at all. What would it take to add a total cover to the duct vent?  This is with the vent “cover” removed. The cover does not have a way to close it at all, so that’s not an option.   My idea is to just put a metal or even plastic “lid” on this to simply stop the air from flowing in at all. Something airtight so no air can get through. Plus, I can just remove that cover once I leave. Is this doable? And yes, I know I could just use a vent cover that does close. I’m trying that out first. This is just in case! Pollyanna fucked around with this message at 16:43 on Nov 19, 2020 |
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Nov 19, 2020 16:38
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Pollyanna posted:Returning to the topic of my apartment’s hosed up central heating. I'd probably buy a cheap filter and cut it up to fit within the supply vents. It's certainly not ideal way of doing things, but it doesn't sound like you really have a choice. This way you can contain all the crap to the duct work! I can't believe they didn't install a filter... that unit must be disgusting inside.
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Nov 19, 2020 16:48
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devicenull posted:I'd probably buy a cheap filter and cut it up to fit within the supply vents. It's certainly not ideal way of doing things, but it doesn't sound like you really have a choice. This way you can contain all the crap to the duct work! What kind of filter? You mean like one of those lovely fabric-looking ones, or an actual HEPA/one-way thing? quote:I can't believe they didn't install a filter... that unit must be disgusting inside. They call my city Slummerville for a reason. I’m moving in 2021 cuz lmao gently caress this.
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Nov 19, 2020 16:51
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Pollyanna posted:What kind of filter? You mean like one of those lovely fabric-looking ones, or an actual HEPA/one-way thing? Probably something like this: https://www.lowes.com/pd/Filtrete-2...-Filter/3829753 I wouldn't bother with anything too fancy, you just want something to catch the chunks.. If you decide you still want to cover it, they do make magnetic covers: https://www.lowes.com/pd/Accord-3-Pack-8-in-x-15-in-White-Magnetic-Mount-Plastic-Vent-Cover/3260659
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Nov 19, 2020 16:58
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When I had to plug a register in an apartment I lived in, I grabbed some then sheet metal from home depot, cut it the right size, and used self tapping screws to cover the circular vent feed in the back of the register. Then I put hvac foil tape around the side to seal it. Worked a treat and when I moved out I removed the screws and yanked it out. I did install an eye bolt facing outwards on the sheet metal so that yanking it out was easy.
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Nov 19, 2020 17:07
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devicenull posted:Probably something like this: https://www.lowes.com/pd/Filtrete-2...-Filter/3829753 You can cut those???? :o quote:I wouldn't bother with anything too fancy, you just want something to catch the chunks.. I have some of these, and they’re so weak they get blown off immediately Duct tape at that point.
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Nov 19, 2020 17:21
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Pollyanna posted:You can cut those???? :o You can cut anything if you try hard enough.
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Nov 19, 2020 17:25
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Pollyanna posted:You can cut those???? :o I had to cut filters down to a custom size for a weird hvac I once had. If you get the filters with the metal mesh, you'll need tin snips but otherwise it's really easy to cut them down. Just cut it to the size you need, then pull the insides out of the edges you cut off and tape the edge back onto your cut down section.
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Nov 19, 2020 17:27
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Pollyanna posted:Returning to the topic of my apartment’s hosed up central heating. You keep posting about this and the answers remain the same: there is no way to do it without compromising the airflow through your registers. If you want to completely cover a register there are sheet magnets the right size for that. Or you can buy bulk sheet magnet (like they print magnetic signs on) and cut your own.
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Nov 19, 2020 17:30
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Motronic posted:You keep posting about this and the answers remain the same: there is no way to do it without compromising the airflow through your registers. I understand it’ll change the airflow and I accept that change. My goal is to reduce if not eliminate the airflow in the bathroom. This makes no sense from a best practices point of view but this apartment’s system never did anyway, so this is already senile Calvinball.
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Nov 19, 2020 17:35
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Hi all, I have an air balancing question. We recently bought a 6 year old house and are having an issue with too much air in a couple rooms and not enough airflow in one room. The system is all fed in the attic through flexible insulated duct. The runs in question are right next to each other coming off the main branch, which is probably 20" in diameter or so. The one duct that has too much airflow is a 10" run that goes maybe 10' then branches off into a 6" run to a ceiling register, while continuing on for another 8' maybe to a final ceiling register. The 2 registers on that run we have the register dampers almost completely closed and it's still too much flow, its just howling. Just after this 10" is a 6", which makes a short s-turn and drops into a ceiling register in the master bathroom - this run is maybe 3-4' of duct but has virtually no airflow. You can feel some flow but it's nothing compared to any other register. I've checked it and it's clear of obstructions. Immediately across from this 6" is a run that feeds maybe 10' then into a wye feeding the master bedroom and master closet, both of which are perfect in airflow. See the crappy hand diagram below:  Our area is going through a building boom and I can't get any HVAC companies to even be interested in looking at this so I'm kinda headed towards a DIY solution. What I'm thinking of is capping the underperforming 6" line, and inserting a 10x6 wye into the overperforming line, probably going to an adjustable damper, then feeding the underperforming bathroom register from the wye. Like so:  The ductwork is all Thermaflex KP brand - it looks well installed, there's no obvious kinks, there's no leaks from the fittings or anything. I've crawled all over the attic and nothing obvious is coming out at me. The part I can't understand is that the line directly across from the underperforming line gets plenty of flow, so I'm confused why this 3-4' segment is just nothing for flow? I've located a 10x6 wye available online from "The Sheet Metal Kid" and I'm assuming I could obtain an adjustable damper from there or similar as well. I'm comfortable peeling back the insulation and inserting the fittings, I'm just looking for feedback on if I'm missing something else I should be considering? Thanks for your time and any advice. ***ninja edit** After looking at a "how to install flex duct" video at Sheet Metal Kid, I'm wondering if the 2 s-turns in the 4' of crappy performing duct are too tight? Maybe I just take out the 4' run with the s-turns, and stick in like an 8' run with a nice easy bend in it? But that doesn't solve my "too much flow" situation next door? marcopolo fucked around with this message at 17:55 on Nov 23, 2020 |
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Nov 23, 2020 17:36
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You're probably right that the s-turn on that 6" is too tight and cutting off airflow. If you could straighten that out, it may help. It's also light on flow since it's the end of the run, and the 10" duct is obviously taking up all the air. You're other idea of connecting it to the 10" is probably not a bad idea since you know you've got too much flow out of those two registers anyway. Another option is just trying to cut off some of the air in the 10" duct with the hopes that it redirects to the 6" duct. Since it's flex, you could try just pushing on it a little bit to choke off the air and see what happens. Would be a fairly quick test at least.
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Nov 23, 2020 23:09
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Ok thanks. I've got a box of 6" duct and will put in an 8' run with a gentle loop instead of the tight s curves. Thanks for the tips I'll report back soon.
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Nov 24, 2020 05:48
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So I went into the attic with a 10' section of new flex. Peeled back the insulation on the old section at the main to disconnect it, and discovered a damper, and whattaya know it was 90% closed. Opened the damper, airflow much improved. I also cinched a big zip tie around the run with too much flow and snugged it down until the flow wasn't whistling anymore. As far as I can tell the bathroom run was the only one installed with a damper, I have no idea why it had one and certainly no idea why it was closed. It's in a completely inaccessible position on the far side of the attic under the insulation jacket. Oh well, the airflow situation is now "good enough". Thanks for the feedback!
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Nov 27, 2020 23:10
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All my dampers are inaccessible, discovered during demo. There aren't even installed in any consistent or logical way that might let you design access to them. Like, two runs for the same room, start in the same bulkhead. Ones damper is right before the boot, the other right at the take-off. Don't know why they're even there.
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Nov 28, 2020 00:57
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I'm moving into a new house soon, and I'd like to replace the Honeywell thermostats with Nests. I checked the existing wiring at the thermostats and it looks like the Nest thermostats will work in general. My question is that it's a single-system setup with two thermostat locations and a louver to adjust the flow of air for the upstairs vs downstairs. There's a Honeywell piece of equipment up on the attic that looks like this: Would this still work fine with the Nest thermostats?
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Dec 7, 2020 19:37
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Looking at the manual it should work fine. I wouldn't replace your thermostats with Nests though. Not a fan of them at all. There are better smart thermostats out there.
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Dec 7, 2020 21:34
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hooah posted:I'm moving into a new house soon, and I'd like to replace the Honeywell thermostats with Nests. I checked the existing wiring at the thermostats and it looks like the Nest thermostats will work in general. My question is that it's a single-system setup with two thermostat locations and a louver to adjust the flow of air for the upstairs vs downstairs. There's a Honeywell piece of equipment up on the attic that looks like this: That is a zone controller. Providing it is not a WIRELESS zone controller and one or more of your thermostats are wireless it should be fine. Wired zone controllers present as a regular heater to thermostats, and present to a heater as a thermostat. In the middle they are looking at what each thermostat is calling for, relaying the heater to turn on for that, and adjusting damper valves to the right thing goes to the right zone(s) at the right time.
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Dec 7, 2020 22:03
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skipdogg posted:Looking at the manual it should work fine. I wouldn't replace your thermostats with Nests though. Not a fan of them at all. There are better smart thermostats out there. Can you expand on this? I installed a 3rd generation Nest Learning Thermostat in our old house and it worked fine. I particularly like that you don't have to choose heat or cool modes - it can do whichever one is appropriate.
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Dec 7, 2020 22:08
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hooah posted:Can you expand on this? I installed a 3rd generation Nest Learning Thermostat in our old house and it worked fine. I particularly like that you don't have to choose heat or cool modes - it can do whichever one is appropriate. Most decent smart and non-smart thermostats can do that. Without blowing the SSRs in the base all the time like Nests seem to love to do.
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Dec 7, 2020 22:22
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My major factor is the way they're dependent on cloud servers the vendor runs (IIRC) which results in your expensive IoT device not working anymore (or losing features) when the vendor goes out of business, gets acquired, or some mid level manager decides the savings from shitcanning the servers and laying off the techs will save more money than the reputation hit and pissed customers will cost. I want my stuff to keep working, since I loving paid for it. https://support.google.com/googlenest/thread/13439232?hl=en Not that Google has ever shrugged and killed a product people were using just for the gently caress of it, mind you.
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Dec 7, 2020 22:35
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hooah posted:Can you expand on this? I installed a 3rd generation Nest Learning Thermostat in our old house and it worked fine. I particularly like that you don't have to choose heat or cool modes - it can do whichever one is appropriate. I don't like the way they attempt to save you energy. I live in a hot climate, and in my experience with 2 new construction homes, attempts to have the temperatures swing in order to save money end up being less efficient than just leaving the house a single temperature all day. My prior house could maintain 72 degrees on a 100+ degree Texas day no problem, but it didn't have the capacity to cool down from 78 or 80 to 72 in any reasonable amount of time after we'd get home. Some of the learning/presence stuff on the Nest also is less than ideal as sometimes thermostats are stuck in out of the way locations. My prior house had the thermostat in a hallway towards the master bedroom. A Nest would have never known I was home unless I went down the hall to my bedroom. Personally I use Ecobee thermostats. I have 2 of them with 2 remote sensors each and I find that they work great.
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Dec 7, 2020 23:11
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skipdogg posted:I don't like the way they attempt to save you energy. I live in a hot climate, and in my experience with 2 new construction homes, attempts to have the temperatures swing in order to save money end up being less efficient than just leaving the house a single temperature all day. My prior house could maintain 72 degrees on a 100+ degree Texas day no problem, but it didn't have the capacity to cool down from 78 or 80 to 72 in any reasonable amount of time after we'd get home. Same on ecobee. It's great and I've got it setup so it used the temp of my office while I'm working, the temp of my bedroom while I'm sleeping, and the main thermostat temp while I'm away. Plus you can use Beestat and get so much awesome data from it.
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Dec 7, 2020 23:20
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kastein posted:My major factor is the way they're dependent on cloud servers the vendor runs (IIRC) which results in your expensive IoT device not working anymore (or losing features) when the vendor goes out of business, gets acquired, or some mid level manager decides the savings from shitcanning the servers and laying off the techs will save more money than the reputation hit and pissed customers will cost. I want my stuff to keep working, since I loving paid for it. I like Google's commitment to long term support of their IoT devices, that's why I invested in the Revolv smarthome hub.
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Dec 8, 2020 00:20
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Motronic posted:Most decent smart and non-smart thermostats can do that. Without blowing the SSRs in the base all the time like Nests seem to love to do. I don't know what "blowing the SSRs in the base" means. I'll look into ecobee as well, although they're a little more expensive. hooah fucked around with this message at 02:15 on Dec 8, 2020 |
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Dec 8, 2020 01:48
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This is my favorite thermostat because it has quick-recall preset buttons. That's basically all I want out of a thermostat, and it's kinda rare.
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Dec 8, 2020 02:08
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admiraldennis posted:This is my favorite thermostat because it has quick-recall preset buttons. That's basically all I want out of a thermostat, and it's kinda rare. Oooo does this include heat / cool? Because we basically have "summer" of 73f/cool and "winter" of 72f/heat. Or off. Having a button that does that would be neat.
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Dec 8, 2020 02:20
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H110Hawk posted:Oooo does this include heat / cool? Because we basically have "summer" of 73f/cool and "winter" of 72f/heat. Or off. Having a button that does that would be neat. Ah, no, there's a mode switch and presets are per-mode. There are two "save slots" per preset button, one for Heat and one for Cool.
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Dec 8, 2020 02:39
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hooah posted:I don't know what "blowing the SSRs in the base" means. The relays that actually send the signal to heat or cool or turn the fan on like to just spontaneously fail on Nests. I had it happen in an old apartment while I was out on tour and it failed on and burned out the AC compressor. Plus like others have said, the actual smart functionality of Nest thermostats isn't actually all that smart. My current house has a nest and radiators and it was so terrible I turned off all the smart features. It constantly overshoots the set point because it has no understanding of how radiant heating works (which mind you, bimetallic thermostats figured a solution to that out well before any of us were born) and until I made it a dumb thermostat it was constantly adjusting the set point down because nobody walked by it in the past hour which is especially miserable when you have a system that's not forced hot air with its instant response. corgski fucked around with this message at 22:15 on Dec 8, 2020 |
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Dec 8, 2020 03:10
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corgski posted:The relays that actually send the signal to heat or cool or turn the fan on like to just spontaneously fail on Nests. I had it happen in an old apartment while I was out on tour and it failed on and burned out the AC compressor. To add to this, SSR=solid state relay. And they particular way the fail isn't "not working" it's "kinda halfway closed" so they do things like leave the heat pump/compressor running maybe (while burning out the contactor contacts because it's not full voltage/amperage) without the inside unit running which is a great way to destroy things. Then yeah, all the other stuff people mentioned.
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Dec 8, 2020 15:32
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Honestly what's really needed is a standard for communications between thermostats, other sensor devices, indoor units, outdoor units, in duct blowers, surge heaters, dampers, etc. Something like CAN would be a great physical layer for it, then stack standardized packet formats on top of it for each control type and allow full configuration so each indoor unit/booster/damper knows which thermostats tell them to do what, different brands of equipment could be used together more effectively, etc. Unfortunately I'm sure there would be a lot of resistance to such an idea in the industry because everyone's already got their own proprietary ecosystem they want to sell you, and they like that it doesn't work with anyone else's stuff, and love 24vac dumb controls even if a single point of failure can burn up a piece of equipment like motronic described, because it means not having to learn any new tech and being able to sell the replacement unit. Even though that system was designed to work with non modulating 60% efficient oil furnaces in 1955 or whatever and has been poorly extended and added to since then, while still not really adapting well to modern modulating furnaces and chillers, or horror of horrors, both in one system and the user wanting the system to just do what's needed to maintain temp without having to flip a heat/cool switch. E: or if such a thing already exists, maybe people should use it, but that will never happen
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Dec 9, 2020 00:16
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kastein posted:Honestly what's really needed is a standard for communications between thermostats, other sensor devices, indoor units, outdoor units, in duct blowers, surge heaters, dampers, etc. Something like CAN would be a great physical layer for it, then stack standardized packet formats on top of it for each control type and allow full configuration so each indoor unit/booster/damper knows which thermostats tell them to do what, different brands of equipment could be used together more effectively, etc. Unfortunately I'm sure there would be a lot of resistance to such an idea in the industry because everyone's already got their own proprietary ecosystem they want to sell you, and they like that it doesn't work with anyone else's stuff, and love 24vac dumb controls even if a single point of failure can burn up a piece of equipment like motronic described, because it means not having to learn any new tech and being able to sell the replacement unit. Even though that system was designed to work with non modulating 60% efficient oil furnaces in 1955 or whatever and has been poorly extended and added to since then, while still not really adapting well to modern modulating furnaces and chillers, or horror of horrors, both in one system and the user wanting the system to just do what's needed to maintain temp without having to flip a heat/cool switch. Something like that exists for commercial stuff.
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Dec 9, 2020 00:24
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