Planning / Design of a Controlled Residential Ventilation System - Maximum Pipe Lengths

Somewhere the device has to be installed; it can be lying down or hanging. However, this takes up a lot of space with your pipes running to the outer wall. Then a separate duct leads into each room; these can have a rectangular cross-section, about 5cm x 10cm. If you chisel up the ceilings in the central hallway so that there is space for 4 ducts, then you could hang the device from the ceiling in the basement. At least I don’t see the problem with the 15 meters. Otherwise decentralized, but I’m not familiar with that.

Attached are the floor plans. Dashed lines are usually remnants of the "demolition lines," I quickly tried to delete them for clarity.

On the ground floor, there is a suspended ceiling in the kitchen area and a large built-in piece of furniture in the installation shaft area, so these would be ideal places to install the valves.

The marked positions have not yet been assigned by any specialist planner (don't stone me!), but I tried to distribute them based on the number / branch plan.

We are now considering whether it is really worth the effort, or if we should just install a few targeted fans in the bathroom/toilet and leave the rest "old-fashioned"... It will be a KfW70 house, meaning energetically we can easily "afford" this without encountering any funding issues.

From top (attic) to bottom (ground floor)

Each room gets a separate line! Each line originates from the device. The routes should be kept short! As few bends as possible. It doesn’t work the way you imagine it.

If I counted correctly, you need 15 strands. If you take the room upstairs, you have to bring 11 into the installation shaft. Each strand is laid into its room, supply air preferably also next to the room door. You would then have to suspend the ceiling in the hallway.

Without having thought this through all too long now:

You could create a shaft planned below the chimney and run 2 thick risers through the floors there.

Ground floor: Hallway in front of the staircase, drop the ceiling down to the kitchen, vent the exhaust air there. Simply blow fresh air planned left into the living room.

Upper floor: Hallway in the staircase, drop the ceiling, vent the exhaust air planned left into the bathroom, fresh air in the hallway in a small distributor, from there planned below into children's room 2 and further through the wall into child 1. In child 2, create a boxed-in section under the ceiling in the corner. For example, this could be pulled over the entire wall height and an inset shelf made below the covered pipe, then it looks intentional ;-)

Edit: Of course, you could also simply blow the fresh air from the hallway over the doors into the rooms...

Attic: Drop the ceiling in the hallway area. Exhaust air planned below into the bathroom, fresh air distributor under the hallway ceiling and from there respectively over the doors into the 3 rooms.

Total effort: 6 core drillings through the ceilings, drop the ceiling in the hallway 3 times, clad the riser shaft in the hallway 2 times, all pipelines <5m

Without having thought it through too much:

One could create a shaft below the chimney on the plan and run 2 thick risers through the floors there.

Thank you very much for the post, it might go in that direction. Unfortunately, the problem here is a large concrete beam that cuts through the hallway on the ground floor (the plan is oriented to the north, by the way, I forgot to indicate that). This means it would be more difficult to get the pipes from the chimney in the north toward the kitchen without reducing the ceiling height in the hallway to about 2.1 m (in the area of the lintel). If I come to the structural engineer with a request to drill holes, I’ll probably be locked up for a crime against structural integrity ;-)

We will now discuss this again with all parties involved and might possibly do without the system. Or we might find a variant similar to the one suggested by Dr Hix. I’ll hopefully update here then (if I remember) for the googling future.

Thanks!