Raking Ceilings - How to heat/cool

Hi, has anyone faced this challenge before. We will be building a homestead/ranch style home and unfortunately no pics so I will describe it........we have kids wing on one end and parents wing on the other. The middle part is living, dining and kitchen..... this is the part which is raked. So obviously our dilemma is we cannot put ducting from one end of the house to the other. We did know we were going to be faced with this challenge but absolutely love this design.

We will have a wood fire heater in the living area and ceiling fans. We will probably install a couple of splits in there. Would the only other option be to install 2 r/c units at each end of house. Im thinking this is going to cost us big time.

Any ideas appreciated

Underfloor...? Or like you say 2 x ducted units at either end in the ceiling space blowing through multiple grilles into the living area... Just done the very thing to a house on Ocean Road, Palm Beach...

Do those grilles work well. We will have about 69m2 to heat/cool as well as the ceilings being 5.8m high in the raked area.

As far as cooling goes they'll be fine... but as they'll be situated in the ceiling space of each wing they'll be high up and I wouldn't recommend that as a heating solution for that space... You could have a look at the Daikin Altherma system, which is under floor heating and water heating...

Hi we have the same predicament with the house we’re building and the only solution that our builders could come up with was a bulkhead.

Thanks Iceman. We are having hardwood flooring so not sure that this will be an option. May have to go with other option (2 rc units) and make use of the lovely wood fire we will be installing Thanks for the info. Very much appreciate it

Kayles, did you end up going with the bulkhead option. How did it look. I could talk to my builder about it but I think it would look odd for us.

As far as bulkheads go, talk to your AC company first... they'll make sure it'll work then you can see what the builder says about building it...

Yes we're going ahead with the bulk head. We'll have to wait and see how it looks. We are putting it along one wall and adding slimline vents so that it looks like it has a purpose not just a protuding bit of plaster that would look out of place. It will really depend on your floorplan whether you can make it work for your house.

We have a similar style house, which is a pain in the bum to heat and cool! We installed a reverse cycle system under the floor, only option for us, and it's fantastic! It heats the whole house very effectively. We do need to improve the insulation in the roof though.

Good luck!

What kind of floor coverings did you have in your main area? Could you tell me what company you went through. We may have to reconsider the floor boards (don't really want to but) and put tiles in. Beats freezing in winter

Well a different opinion, your house sounds exactly like our house wouldn't be Country Builders would it?

I've found the raking ceilings (since it's insulated between the ceiling and roof) seems to hold the heat pretty well and probably retains more warmth, albeit it's warmer up the top (your ceiling fans will come into play there, we didn't install any when building we thought we'd see how it went and do it later if need be).
I find the heat from the wood fire seems to warm the whole house well enough, sure it never gets over warm but it gets to a max of 25deg in the main area and cooler in the bedrooms probably 17 or 18 I guess.
At the moment we're not using the "adults" wing, the kids are young so we're sleeping in the kids wing. I've fitted a curtain across the home theatre entry which blocks off that wing of the house and even thought the curtain is just a thin bed sheet I've noticed it stops a significant amount of heat from going through!

Our floors are tiles and just the bedrooms and office have carpets. In summer the place seemed to stay cool enough not to need air conditioning, apart from maybe a couple of the hottest days we had, but keep in mind that we didn't have any curtains or blinds back then either, I think it will help come next summer. The same for the heating, wooden venetians we have now help retain more heat although I imagine we would still loose a fair bit through the kitchen window and the big glass doors which are as is.

I think that was my biggest worry building such a big house, weather it would heat up well enough, and yes I'm very happy with the result. I guess we could always shut off both wings and just keep the main area heated if we were desperate. Lol the bathroom is the coldest place because I keep the door shut and the window a bit open for ventilation, ad a fan when the light is on and it's not the warmest place to shower, but after a nice hot shower it's not that bad! Lol I don't want all the heat sucked out of my house by the exhaust fan!

Anything like this?

Hi Pebble, Thanks for all that info. Did you get that awesome fireplace from jetmaster. We are going to look into it this week. They are designed to heat up areas with high ceilings. We have 5 acres so not going to be too short on firewood. I think we will be like you for a while and only use one end of the house as we don't have children........yet and when we do we will make office into baby room. Just wanted to look at options before we do the big sign

We will have wraparound verandahs so the summer sun wont be soooooo bad. I think it will be suck and see for the first winter/summer then make a decision. But if we go for floor heating $$$, we have to make decision soon

Sorry, didnt see pic before but yes very similar to that

Even though it's not WACB it certainly sounds very very similar. I'm not having any more children but I thought of the office the same way, it would have been a nice potential baby room!
The heater is a "Ned Kelly" brand, we actually got it shipped from BBQ's Galore in Victoria believe it or not, it wasn't hugely expensive either. My Husband really liked the style (supposed to look like Ned's helmet thingo). We took the back shield off so more heat radiates out. The others I liked for the style were Scandia or something like that and hugely expensive.

Sounds like we've both got very similar ideas, we scrapped the car garage and that pretty much paid for a nice alfresco type area out back and verandah's all the way around. The front faces North and does get the morning sun in the winter but not so much in the summer.
We didn't change a lot other than that apart from the windows and doors.

I can testify that Pebble is not exaggerating when she said even a thin "curtain" locks in quite a bit of the heat into the main living area. We visited just a couple of weeks ago and it was one thing hubby and I both remarked on when we got home. It was amazing the difference between the two areas.

The house across from us with raked ceilings has just had handover and I notice they've got for reverse cycle aircon but I also notice they've had a hearth installed. So I'm assuming they'll be having a woodfire as well. Those reverse ceiling fans work well for keeping the heat closer to the floor.

Pebble, same builder as yours but the Perth company.........u did guess right. Can't find too much about them on here except you and kexkez. Don't know how much different ours will be here in Perth as far as the build goes but will find out soon enough. We are going in for another appointment tomorrow to clarify on a few things.

Anyhow, about the heat/cool thing.....You have made me feel more optimistic that it wont be so bad once wood fire is in. We will definitely be getting blinds and maybe some pelmets.


Kexkez, have your neighbours got raked from the front to the back (if u know what I mean) and if they do, did they just put 1 rc aircon in on one side. And yes, will have to look at those ceiling fans..............just another one to add to the list.

Gosh, this building is hard work and we haven't even started yet

thirsty they've gone for the full on ducted dailken type not a little unit thingy. The raked ceiling is just in their main living area

They haven't moved in yet as their having wood flooring installed atm

Since our house has gone up I know that particular building company has built probably at least 3 or 4 more homes around this town, unfortunately I don't know any of those people personally so can't say how good or bad their experiences might have been compared to ours.

Kex, in the week after you visited I experimented a bit and left the curtain open during the day, it did help in heating this end of the house and to me didn't seem that detrimental to how warm the lounge was. I guess the main reason for the curtain is to get more of the heat to go towards the other bedrooms instead, well that's the theory anyway.

thirsty, JayW often posts on here. He's the JayW associated with the Rural end of the company.

Don't think there are many others on here building with them or at least who are willing to say they are/did.

Our first appointment was with him. He really is a nice bloke.....Well.. he won us over. We signed up for PPA yesterday. Thats probably why Im awake at this time of the morning. Very scary stuff. We talked to our sales consultant about the aircon too, and he said there were other options that others have done with raking ceilings (hopefully hubby remembers cos I cant) We will need to see aircon dudes pretty soon about it.

Well, wish us luck. Hopefully I sleep between now and prestart