DIY Doctor UK DIY Forums

Hi first post so hear goes. I live in a late 1960 dorma bungalow that is red hot in the summer and freezing in the winter our bedroom gets the sun on the window on the in the morning and on the roof at the back after about dinner. Now for the question.
If i put a vent in the soffit at the front of the house and have an inline reversable fan could i plumb it to a vent on the landing and bedrooms to suck out the heat in the morning and draw cooler air from downstairs and in the afternoon suck the cool air in from outside the outside vent will be in the shade and its nice and cool there once the sun has moved round. And if it sounds doable what fan would you recomend obviously if would need to be quiet and have the flow and hopfully i can get some sleep in the summer im on days and nights haha

There are heat recovery units, but the problem is most fans will not reverse, many are actually 3 phase, the electronics turn the single phase to three phase, but no option to reverse.

Only fan I can think of that can reverse is a car heater fan, and not seen them for years.

Be it a caravan or room I have found best option is not to allow room to warm up, I had a fan for the fridge in caravan to blow hot air out so it did not warm caravan, once hot near impossible to cool again.

So my house is the same, close curtains, and vent early before day warms up is my method, but if I fail I have a AC unit designed to blow hot air out of the window, which means leaving the window open, so what I have done is made an adaptor for the fire, so the AC exhaust goes up the chimney. This works well as no security issues.

However the AC is only 750 watt and is really too small for the room, so has to be put on as soon as it starts to warm up.

So in the main it is a fan blowing air from dinning room doors through the house and out of living room doors, around a 18 inch fan, we have tried with windows and not enough air is moved, has to be doors opened.

With that in mind I don't think a bathroom type fan would move enough air, I have one fan we got on holiday in Spain, it has rotating veins to direct air around the room the fan does not oscillate, as a result it can sit on the windowsill next to open window, but most fans have curved blades, so they will only really work in one direction, so you would need non curved blades to reverse fan, and don't think you will find one.

Thanks for the reply. If i can't reverse the fan can you get a quiet high flow inline fan i could use it to suck in the cool air from outside at the front of the house and blow it into the upstairs. The problem is even if you have all fhe windows open on a hot night we get no airflow upstairs so even a strong fan might help a bit

I have patio doors and next to them a pedestal fan, I will get up at 4 am in warm weather to turn it on blowing air through the house, with bedroom window also open, however it takes around an hour to cool the house.

So there are two problems, one is security although where I live not too much of a problem, and two is wild life, be it flies or bats, I don't want them in my house, so an extractor fan blows out, so not really a problem with insects or other wild life, clearly out needs to be up stairs, but the problem is the air into the house, some fly screen or other way to stop unwanted visitors.

Years ago my parents had louvred windows in the kitchen, but can't really get louvred double glazed windows, so best option seems to be secondary double glazing which are normally sliding windows behind the main ones, these allow either replaced with fly screens in summer, or a chicane so air can enter but not easy for bats or flies.

However as it gets more complex, one starts to wonder is it worth it? When we get warm weather outside can get hotter than inside, so ventilating the house gets it hotter not cooler, so we in the main just use a AC and vent it up the flue.