I have a similar issue at my house, I put up a thermal curtain at the bottom of the stairs with an extendable curtain rail that wedges between the walls and that mostly solves it.
this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2026
24 points (96.2% liked)
No Stupid Questions
47127 readers
801 users here now
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here. This includes using AI responses and summaries.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you're looking for a radial fan, as opposed to the normal axial kind.
be warned though, they need to spin faster to move the same amount of air and so tend to be a lot louder.
Are they worth it vs just redirecting the input/output?
Redirecting the input from the designed direction will slow down the airflow and often increase the noise level as it struggles to draw the air in.
Ugh louder. That's not gonna go well with the spouse.
unfortunately as others have said, any redirection of the air flow will cause extra noise.
Centrifugal fans exhaust 90 degrees from intake and are very common. Could also search for blower fan. Not sure if sizes meet your needs though.
Centrifugal! That's a good word for this. Thanks.
try looking up "squirrel cage fan"
it sounds like I'm joking but it is really what they are called.
Or blower fan
I have a home air filter that pulls in through the front and blows out the top. Portable dehumidifiers can do the same on fan mode, blow air upwards.
Any fan from a laptop computer does this. They aren't too noisy nowadays.
The first sentence from OP "I'm trying to circulate air in my house". Your proposal: a laptop fan.
I love comedy.
I'd be sitting down and prototyping conduits with strong cardboard and sticky tape. And my desk fan in the middle.
The fan itself doesn't have to make the angle if it has the right kind of redirection around it.
Another term to search for is "centrifugal fan" - these are the type used where air flow restrictions are significant, as they can compress the air some unlike a traditional box fan. For noise, a larger fan at lower speeds is generally less intrusive.
Where's the return on your air handler? If there's more than one (one upstairs, one down), you may be able to cheat the system by blocking one seasonally.
Also most likely the air handler speed is set too high - installers are kind of lazy (they don't want callbacks) so they typically set the air handler to max speed. Since most instalsl are also well oversized, this means the system will short cycle and move less air during that short cycle. Lowering the air handler speed may help lengthen the cycle, moving more air in total.
You could also try just turning the air handler on (fan mode orn"Always On" on thermostat).
This probably won't solve your problem entirely, just maybe help.
Centrifugal! That's a good word for this. Thanks.
Oh I don't wanna mess with the air handler myself. I'd break it I'm sure. I could call the ac people I use tho.
If you have a central furnace you can close the outlet vents on one floor of the home. Downstairs in the summer and upstairs in the winter. Most air conditioners actually tell you to close the downstairs vents to keep the upstairs cooler, since warm air rises
Get Styrofoam blocks and plug vents seasonally. In summer plug the downstairs ones so AC feeds upstairs and drifts down, opposite in winter to make air heat the lower levels and slowly rise.
If you have a variable speed fan this is fine. If you don't then this can burn up the blower motor, so be careful with balance and flow when you do.
Dude's not going to be burning anything out, his furnace fan motor can't even adequately ventilate his house as it is right
That's not how it works.... But you be you.