Home heating. I'm looking for info on a home heating system that shifts heat from the roof space to the rooms

Question

I've been told that there is home heating system out there that shifts the heat from the roof space (if you've ever been up inside your roof space you'll know it can get quite hot, even in winter) which is then pumped down into the rooms of the house, providing a cheap form of heating. This system may also employ a type of "hot box" to intensify the heat, for example a black metal box with a small volume of air which has direct exposure to sunlight which would heat the air within the box very quickly. This was mentioned on a radio program. If you have any info on this or helpful links or contacts (I live in Melbourne Australia) it would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

The previous answers are on the right track.

Here is a practical suggestion at minimal cost:

You need a low cost heat absorber or reservoir in the roof space, I suggest buying a roll of black PVC pipe, used for irrigation. You can find them cheapest at gardening section of department stores. Should not cost more than $20-$30 for a roll. Diameter of pipe is approx. 20 mm.

Do not open roll, use it as it is. You only need to connect an output to one end.

Buy 2 rolls, using the second one to tap sucked warm air through the ceiling, down to room below - into the radiator. You need to open this one.

Also you require a radiator in the room below. One cheap option is to get a used car radiator. Even if it leaks, it does not matter, because we are not running water through it. If needed leak can be temporarily repaired by some blue tack, and permanently repaired by some 2 pack epoxy glue.

Final component is a strong air pump to suck warm air from roof space, into reservoir (PVC pipe roll), then out through ceiling to rooms below, into the radiator, and finally reaching the air vacuum pump.

The pump can be a vacuum cleaner connected to one end of the radiator (using duct tape).

Note - we exhaust the heat collected via the radiator before reaching the vacuum cleaner and overheating the vacuum cleaner's motor. Also make sure you replace dust bag with a clean bag to minimise old dust leaking into rooms.

Check the operation, if working, run the vacuum cleaner for 15 minutes, monitoring overheating. If so, fit a cheap timer to operate the vacuum cleaner - ON for 15 minutes followed by OFF for 15-30 minutes (pending results).

These are the basic principles and components.

Good luck.

Answer 2

I don't know about all that other stuff, but you could look up attic fans or a reversed attic fan.  

People use to use them when there was no such thing as AC or central heating.

Answer 3

What you are describing is an air to air heat exchanger.

You could imagine one by putting finned tubing in the roof space, connected to the sealed unit of a refrigerator (the finned tubing becomes  your evaporating surface like the freezer of the fridge.

Then you have a heat dissipation coil inside the  house ( the sealed unit goes inside the house too.)

There are commercially designed heat pump units. no need to invent them.

But with most heat pump units  people want to use the same pump, with just a pair of pipes reversed, to do air conditioning too.  To accomplish that one wants to discard heat into the swimming pool, not the roof space.

One consideration, if you pump heat out of the roof space, you do not likely want to cause condensation there, or at least not to have it stay there.

A solar assist heat pump can be set up much the same way. But if you have no freezing weather, you might be best to simply collect warmed water, and forget the high tech stuff.