Air Vents in Sitting Room Causing Breeze and Cold Help and information on all topics relating to your central heating, air conditioning and ventilation issues.

[Micky87]

My house is located on top of a hill and is always very windy. Our sitting room vent is getting gusts of wind in it constantly and the room is hard to heat and can always find a breeze on your head when sitting in the couch. Now that the weather is getting colder I would like to sort something out for it. We have a fireplace in the room which we use regularly. Any quick tips on slowing the breeze down?

[ericmark]

This is going to sound silly, but to stop draft stop using the fire.
OK you can't do that, so next is try to find a way to feed combustion air to the fire, if you have a vent very close to base of fire, then combustion air will not be sucked from air vents further away.

My parents had high backed chairs to stop draft in a 1954 house, the older pre-war houses in next street had vents to take air under floor boards to just in front of the fire, and they did not need high backed chairs.

When central heating was fitted, it had a balanced flue, this stopped the draft, and the high backed chairs were no longer required.

Daughter had a balloon type device which sealed the chimney, again to stop draft caused by the chimney effect.

You can squirt expanding foam into the vents which will seal them, but then either the fire will not draw, or it will pull air from somewhere else, there are also heat recovery units that heat incoming air from out going air.

A friend used a computer fan and a duct (drain pipe) to blow air into the house right by the fire, and yes it stopped the drafts, you can today by fires with a sealed flue system, it draws all combustion air from outside, which also means you can use bathroom extractors and tumble driers without worrying about them drawing flue gases into the room.