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Eco Fan


mrsmelly

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20 hours ago, mross said:

An Ecofan has, at most, a four-watt (4W) motor.  A cheapo electric fan will use about sixty to one-hundred watts.  Draw your own conclusions as to their relative effectiveness!

Whether it has two, four or five blades will not affect the amount of air moved, only the speed of the fan.  Adding blades or increasing their pitch will cause the speed t drop, nothing else.

As others have said, its only use is decorative and to tell you when to add coal.

That is an interesting view. The one I bought was claiming a much higher air movement ie 265 cubic feet per min rather than the typical 150 ish CFM values quoted. I have no way of testing this but I assume it is partially correct. If so perhaps in the ten years since most of you tried these things, technology has advanced such that you can get a peltier driven fan that increases the air flow. You are totally correct that an electric fan will be a hundred times more powerful but I dont want a noisey computer fan pushing air down the boat. I want a silent fan that just breaks up the stratification and this one fits the bill. You can feel and see the effect 10 -12 ft from the fan. 

Last night we had a temperature differential of circa 1.5deg C between a position 1" off the floor and 1.1M off the floor at 12ft from the fan. For me that seems a lot better than before. SWMBO wouldn't let me take the fan off - she's convinced. Kids have pinched the boat for the weekend so I will try and get some more useful data later next week. Where do you buy Jos sticks these days?

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13 hours ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

I have both a genuine Ecofan and a Stirling engine five-blade fan on my stove.

Between them they are equally effective as my two Smartgauges. 

But are they calibated? :D

39 minutes ago, Machpoint005 said:

 

I don't need to contradict when you do it so well by yourself, Mike!

Poor Mike, he is having an argument with himself and losing :lol:

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Well being the genuinely lovely monkey that I am, I have donated my useless,  sorry err very useful ecofan to BSP because her need is greater than mine.

I can now unfortunately report that despite its obvious benefits to keeping me snug and warm I have actually noticed bugger all difference but I am keeping an emergency jumper nearby just in case.

 

Seriously I am curious to see if it helps on her boat, as mine has a dogleg corridor whilst BSPs boat has a full length straight corridor.

I may report back if I remember

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3 hours ago, rusty69 said:

Interesting

CONCLUSION

Test results shown in the preceding section of this report strongly suggest improvement in fuel saving and occupant thermal comfort when an Ecofan 800 fan is used with wood stoves. In all the tests, a consistent and considerable percentage in fuel saving is reported when the thermo electric fan is used with the wood stove. The fuel saving is from 6% to 28% with an average of 14.1%,<snip>

 

 

Great! So if I use 4 fans I could end up with more wood than I burnt?

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From the Ecofan web site:

"Our time-tested brand brings you over 20 years of Canadian quality and innovation.  Ecofans are built using only quality parts"

I don't understand how it can be 'time tested' and innovative at the same time - is it just that the innovation took place 20 years ago?

It might just be me, but that "quality parts" bit inescapably reminds me of the Jim Hacker line about British Sausages containing "top quality nourishment".

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1 minute ago, Machpoint005 said:

From the Ecofan web site:

"Our time-tested brand brings you over 20 years of Canadian quality and innovation.  Ecofans are built using only quality parts"

I don't understand how it can be 'time tested' and innovative at the same time - is it just that the innovation took place 20 years ago?

It might just be me, but that "quality parts" bit inescapably reminds me of the Jim Hacker line about British Sausages containing "top quality nourishment".

It was innovative 20 years ago, and is now time tested.....perhaps

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I've just done a quick beermat calculation and according to the manufacturer's claim the volume flow rate is 125cfm (for the smaller unit). That means the air speed across the fan is something like 8ft/sec. I may be unfamiliar with the US units but frankly, I do not believe for a moment that it can do anything approaching 2.5m/s. 

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2 minutes ago, Machpoint005 said:

That means the air speed across the fan is something like 8ft/sec. I may be unfamiliar with the US units but frankly, I do not believe for a moment that it can do anything approaching 2.5m/s. 

In that case,you'd be better off strapping a couple of European Swallows atop the woodburner of your choice,which everyone knows has an airspeed velocity of 11m/s

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1 minute ago, Machpoint005 said:

Wot's their cross-sectional area?

Wot? I don't know that!

1 minute ago, tree monkey said:

European swallows, whats wrong with proper British swallows I ask?

 

You'll have to wait til after Brexit for the answer to that one

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3 hours ago, Bargebuilder said:

I bought it because our cabin suffers heavily from thermal stratification, with our heads too hot and our feet too cold and I can confirm that there has certainly been an improvement, however it isn't good enough to make the punkha wala redundant.

This is the key benefit as far as I'm concerned.  Without the fan, all the heat ends up near the ceiling and the floor is cold; with it, it's much more even.

3 hours ago, Dr Bob said:

Last night we had a temperature differential of circa 1.5deg C between a position 1" off the floor and 1.1M off the floor at 12ft from the fan. For me that seems a lot better than before. SWMBO wouldn't let me take the fan off - she's convinced. Kids have pinched the boat for the weekend so I will try and get some more useful data later next week. Where do you buy Jos sticks these days?

Exactly.  (And I like your mix of imperial and metric measurements.)

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4 minutes ago, ianali said:

You know? It's us leaving the European union. Was supposed to save us loads of money but turns out it is actually won't. 

Ian.

Ahh so that's why we cant have European swallows.

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2 minutes ago, rusty69 said:

Do you know any? I've got a shed that needs shifting.

I think that Swallows could be trained Fly around a Boat's Stove, using a System like they do at Airports.they could Fly "Stacked",some just off the Cabin Floor and others at different Heights all the way up to the Ceiling.

It would De Stratify  the Air Temp. around the Cabin far better than an Ecofan?

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