HVAC energy saver - DIY Chatroom

Sappronie · 09-04-2007, 03:39 PM

Put this under general... maybe best here.
New to form but thought it was an interesting place to mention a new product I have stumbled upon. Houseneeds.com is caring a product called Activent which is a wirelessly controled air register.

Appears Activent also has a website but they direct people to Houseneeds.com Anyone heard of this or used it? Looks interesting.

Robert

dmaceld · 09-04-2007, 06:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sappronie

Put this under general... maybe best here.
New to form but thought it was an interesting place to mention a new product I have stumbled upon. Houseneeds.com is caring a product called Activent which is a wirelessly controled air register.

Appears Activent also has a website but they direct people to Houseneeds.com Anyone heard of this or used it? Looks interesting.

Robert

Similar type registers were installed in the offices in the building where I used to work. Worked OK as I recall. I would say they would be useful only if you have an issue of a constantly changing temperature in some room. If you have a room that say, during the cooling season is always cold in the morning and hot in the afternoon, then the Activent may work for you. But you need to have capacity in the a/c system to supply more or less air to a given room as needed. In the building where I worked the variable air vents were installed the same time a variable speed drive was added to the air handler. The Activent needs to be a part of a total system design, not just an add-on. Otherwise save the $ and adjust the registers manually.

Sappronie · 09-05-2007, 11:51 AM

Not sure I understand the variable temperature swing you mention... I think the Activent is designed to control over heated or over cooled rooms. Probably not practical to think someone could manually keep changing the register when this could do it for you.

I think it looks like it is worth the money for those type of problem rooms.

dmaceld · 09-05-2007, 02:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sappronie

Not sure I understand the variable temperature swing you mention... I think the Activent is designed to control over heated or over cooled rooms. Probably not practical to think someone could manually keep changing the register when this could do it for you.

I think it looks like it is worth the money for those type of problem rooms.

In the rented house we live in the bedroom I use for my office area is on the west side. In the morning and early afternoon after the a/c has kicked on for the day it is comfortable and close to the same temperature as the rest of the house. Toward evening with the sun shining through the window and the computer running all day it gets fairly warm. In this case the Activent might work by clamping down on air flow in the morning and opening up wide in the evening. If a room is always over or under cooled or heated then there is a basic problem in the system design. By that I mean the air flow isn't balanced correctly because of improper duct size or improper register size. That kind of problem isn't what Activent is aimed at. If your heat/cool system is designed correctly, then at any given time you should be able to balance the air flow and have the desired temperature throughout the house. That air flow balance should not change much as the outside air heats and cools. The heating and cooling load can change throughout the day in an individual room, mostly because of windows. That is the type of variation you would want to control with something like Activent.

Any clearer now?

Sappronie · 09-06-2007, 01:34 PM

Yes, clearer.

Problem is in most residential homes, built in bulk, I think balance is not tuned to each individual home. So then the Activent would be a benifit.

I too have the perverbial office that heats up with computer, etc. that could use this kind of help.