The House Organ is a more or less traditional pipe organ, with the heating ducts of the house utilized as the pipe organ resonant chambers. The console would be integrated in one of the walls of the main living or entertaining space. Begin playing by turning on the main furnace fans to generate the 'wind' required for resonance. The keys of the organ control electrically-actuated dampers all over the house, enabling or disabling sections of furnace duct cleverly engineered to produce the various tones.

The effect would be quite unusual; bassier tones would emanate from the basement, the upper registers would come from the bedrooms, kitchen, etc. Melodious pedal-point passages would have notes coming from all around.

Of course, the House Organ would need to be engineered as part of the original house design, and might require some redundant bypass ducting here and there. Some tiny, useless rooms may need to be added, and perhaps an additional floor, or sub-basement.

When the house owner is in a less than gothic mood, the dampers can be automated, and used as a means for specific temperature control.
-- xrayTed, May 31 2004

//furnace duct cleverly engineered

you do realise that the frequency of the sound generated in those ducts depends on air temperature and that the furnace duct is the least appropriate place to have a tube of the organ.. not to mention that even if it worked, no one would be able to listen to it propertly, because it's not a organ, but a house, for crying out loud !
-- sweet, May 31 2004


Nice for waking up the family in the morning (assuming they all need to get up at the same time).
-- kbecker, May 31 2004


[sweet]: I don't think heat from the furnace would make any difference to the pitch of the generated sound. This is my gut feeling, since sound generated near an active heating duct is not noticeably higher, or lower in pitch. I don't know how to express it mathematically, however, it most likely involves a coefficient of transmission. The difference in coefficients between hot and cold air would most likely be negligible compared to the difference between coefficients of air and say, helium.

At any rate, while the furnace burner is not active, the temperature of the air inside the ducts is at exactly room temperature.

You would be able to listen to it properly, because it would be very loud.
-- xrayTed, May 31 2004


The resonant chambers would be the ducts themselves. The bass frequencies would transfer through the structure more readily, and so would be more audible than the trebly ones when coming from the basement. It seems to me that the bassier tones would be more impressive coming from somewhere below.

Yes, it would have a more powerful blower, or more than one.
-- xrayTed, May 31 2004



random, halfbakery