Here’s our Air Distribution Class Heating Takeaways

by Tom Gelin

Thanks to you, brave souls, for participating in our breakout room and air distribution design challenges in our last class.

Try as we might through several examples, solving for heating at reduced air flow with high ceilings is a problem that’s difficult to solve.

Thanks to the volunteers at our training class who presented their findings. It was harder than expected, right guys?

Why is it hard? Higher temperature discharge air at reduced air flow makes it difficult (or impossible) to get the heated air to the space on any ceiling over ten feet.

What are the options to make the spaces more comfortable, especially in heating?

	1. Higher throw diffusers, such as SMD/AMD and SPDJ do throw further, increasing your chances to get heat to the zone. These can double your throw compared to standard plaque or square cone diffusers.
	2. Fan-powered boxes increase flow in the room without additional primary air from the air handler or rooftop unit. With the additional air and equal flow for heating and cooling, you may have more success designing air distribution.
	3. Add a destratification fan or fans to the space, such as the suspended series model from Airius that’s built for a lay-in ceiling.
	4. Add perimeter heat and don’t count on the heat from the VAV box. Units shown are some low temp fan forced and convection only units from Price.
	5. Yep, you guessed it, a displacement system, also with perimeter heat or destrat fans.