Heat loss with high ceilings

[brownbear24]

Hi,

 

I hope this is the best place to post this. Please let me know if I'm in the wrong area :)

 

Ok, so I have a room with a very high ceiling (approx 8.5m high), which I need to perform a heat loss calculation on. My understanding is that when convection is taken in to account, we don't have to allow for the entire cubic volume of the room, as people will only be occupying the first ca. 2m from ground to just above head height.

 

I'm on board with the whole idea of heat energy moving from hot to cold, but it just doesn't seem right to have to allow for an almost 3.5x heat loss as we have to assume that the entire cubic volume of the room is heated, as well as the entire surface area of the external walls. It feels like I'm missing a correction factor for convection.

 

Does anyone have any experience with this kind of heat loss?

 

Thank you very much 

 

BB24

[ProDave]

The entire volume WILL be heated and there will be a lot more wall area for heat to escape from, so anything other than using the entire wall area would give a false idea of heat loss.

[Reiver]

I suspect it could be even worse than simply a wall area factor if my workshop (which is about 6m high) is anything to go by. If say for example you want to keep the temperature at normal people level (1.8m) at 18 degrees, with convection being active it'll likely be a good few degrees warmer at the top, hence there will be proportionately more heat loss from the upper surfaces. Adding a fan of some sort to keep the air stirred up and at a uniform temperature could help reduce that of course.

Edited July 28, 2020 by Reiver