The Lemon Fool

Does anyone know if there is a building regs etc rule against ducting hot air from a boiler room to another location within a house ?

The situation is that a friend is looking to relocate the oil-fired boiler within her large & draughty property. At present it is in a stud partition room built in to the front hallway. She is looking to move it to an brick-walled old pantry at the rear of the property. Both have an outside wall for a flue etc. and the pipe runs can be accommodated. I have noticed that the boiler room itself is always the warmest room in the house (sometimes the only warm room !). On the floor above the new location is the main bathroom of the property which is always freezing cold even in a heat wave, and has the typical condensation issues you'd expect.

So I am wondering about popping in a vertical duct between the new boiler room and the bathroom with a grille at either end so that natural convection can allow warm air to flow up into the bathroom as a freebie benefit of the relocation project. I can conceive of reasons not to do this (fire chimney effect etc) but I do not know if there is a building regs etc rule against it ?

Does anyone know ?

regards, dspp

Thanks FB.

If I were doing that I'd look into putting an intumescent grille in. Probably at both ends of the duct. No doubt Building Control would have an opinion. And so would your boiler installer.

Thanks for the intumescent grille tip - I'll look for that.

I've used a single-room MHRV in a toilet on the property and frankly been disappointed with the humidistat functionality (VeltAxia LoCarbon range). I am speccing a couple of them (MHRVs) for the other bathrooms but was also looking for a heat source to help warm it up as well. The MHRVs for the other bathrooms will probably have humidistat disabled. The property does not suit a single property MHRV - think old rectory syndrome, nor do funds, hence tackling it all room by room.

regards, dspp