Heat Circulation

Hello Guest,

You have not advised your Location.

Refer: http://www.dvs.co.nz/how.htm

Click on the "How it works" and the fly-through Video tabs.

That is the type of air mover you need, they are efficient and cheap to buy and run.

An intake or two may also be made to extract that heated air in the ceiling at both ends of the upstairs level of your home.

Kind Regards....

If you have forced-air heat, you may have an option of using your furnace blower to help circulate the hot air throughout your home (switch the fan from auto to "on"). This is especially true if you have a cold-air return duct near your stove. Ceiling fans are great for moving air up or down, but not that effective on moving air from room to room. You may also try a small box fan near the stairwell to help steer the hot air upward. Through-floor vents open to the cieling downstairs would not be a good idea, as they would be perfect "chimneys" upward if a fire were to ever break out.

Galvanized stove pipes with foil tape and a round duct booster fan with a dimmer switch and two round to rectangle boots with heat register covers--I have done it and will try to get you details. Worked absolutely excellent and install was easy---Time for family right now--Sorry.

Check the web for companies that sell round duct booster fans--everything else is easy to find.

http://www.tjernlund.com/ductboost.htm

The "chimney effect can be eliminated with fire dampers. Your local HVAC supplier can help with the materials for this project. Most fire codes will allow this type of installation. If there is enough heat (fire) at the damper, the lead link wil release and close the damper.

I tried putting a couple of openings to allow heat to move upstairs luckly I did not have to cut into hardwood floors. It did not work anyway!

Eventually after several experts stopped by I ended up using a smoking candle to follow the current heat flow and expanding that route. It was cheaper than trying to force the heat the way I wanted it to go.

We had a similar setup several years ago with a wood stove in the basement of our home (around 5000 ft square counting basement and living area). We cut a small opening in the ceiling of the basement through to the floor of the living space. This was directly above the wood stove and depended on natural convection to move the heat. Not a terribly large hole as I remember it about 1 ft square. Fitted it with a grill to keep things tidy. With this setup we managed to keep the entire house livable in Knoxville Tennessee for years. This was successful even through several really nasty winters where the temps got down to -20 deg F (Yes a record!). I remember walking down to the barn, spitting and watching it freeze before hitting the ground! Note That I said livable not toasty warm and comfy but livable. The only bad part was having to get up a couple times each night to feed the monster. Really earie to head down to the basement in the middle of the night and see the damn thing glowing because someone else had beat you to it... Was it safe? Its still in use after over 30 years. Did it meet fire codes? Hell no see the comment about glowing...

we had similar situation in a small two bedroom raised ranch in Ohio.

Ceiling fan at the top of the stairway and a heatilator on the woodstove kept house more than comfortable and never had to use the silly electric baseboard heaters.

Never put storm windows on the bedroom windows directly above the woodstove either, now that I think about it. No holes cut in floor. Just heatilator and ceiling fan at top of stairs (but not in stairway, over a couple of feet in the room at top of steps.

milo

Live in the basement and rent the rest out to immigrants...

I know exactly what your problem is, you do not have enough air available to allow the stove to burn correctly "leaking" into that downstairs area from badly fitting doors and windows (which is why older houses have no such problems!), so it is sucking air from wherever it can get it!

You need a large diameter (10CM) pipe allowing air from outside, to a point right beside/under the stove, so that it will use this cold air for burning, not your warmed air. Put a ball of wire mesh inside to stop small animals using it to enter your house. You will be amazed just how much air the stove needs to burn cleanly.

This will allow your warm air to move upstairs far better, and will not cool down the stove at all......

In the present situation you could get a buildup of carbon monoxide in the house and one day simply not wake up ever again!!!! Take this seriously please.....

I understand what you are saying and agree to a point. The stove is pulling air from upstairs and not from outside on the lower level. However, this method you have suggested would probably have the effect of further preventing any circulation to the upper level wouldn't it? Vents in the ceiling of the downstairs level seem to be the best solution to me. Carbon monoxide detectors and fire extinguishers are certainly in order as well as a fire alarms and smoke detectors on all floors.

Hi, Guest!

Both good ideas. (I assume you meant to put the vents through the ceiling of the lower level where the stove is located, but the same system works for all floors.) The ceiling fan will also work in the hot summer time in reverse. A quick, no-cost way to check your local fire code for the vents is to call the fire department's local line (not the emergency line, obviously), and ask a fire inspector to come round to your house to advise you. It's part of the normal work they do.

Mark

I had the same problem as my wood burner & chimney is located in the basemetn at one end of my home & I needed to get more heat to the 1st floor. Last year I installed a bathroom type exhaust fan in the suspended ceiling of the basement with a duct to the 1st floor which exited to a vent concealed in a base cabinet in the kitchen. I also mounted an attic thermostat near the fan to automatically turn on when the stove heated the basement (approx. 70 degrees) & turn off respectively when the stove was not heating. It worked very well in heating the central area of the 1st floor living area. Exterior rooms were a bit colder than the central rooms. I have a two story 3,000 sq. ft. home & on days where the outside temperature was 20 degrees F or higher my furnace never started. Bedrooms on the second level were often very cool (60 degrees), but we prefer this for sleeping.

Last year I also experimentally placed a free standing fan at the top of the basement stairs to pull more heat to the fist floor. It seemed to work acceptably so my plans are this Fall to install a second ceil fan with ducting to the 1st floor adjacent to the stairway.

I noticed when the woodburning is burning, the basement ceiling temperature can reach 90 degrees or more. The fans use very little electricity and seem to be a very inexpensive way to move heat from one floor to another. I heat with gas & my budget payment was reduced last year by approx. 40% (assuming the 2007 winter avg. temp. was the mame as the 2008). I hope this is helpful.

I installed a pocket door at the top on my stairs to control how much heat was held for the bedrooms from the basement wood stove.

The pocket door turned out to be a blessing.

Hi, Guest!

That attic thermostat is brilliant! Now that's thinking outside the bowl!

Mark

The ceiling fan at the top of the stairs won't draw from the family room because it is a dead end space. To draw air out of it you have to be able to put air back in.

I have the same situation with a soap stone stove upstairs and a steel Lopi down. I have often thought of putting a register in the ceiling/floor to allow a convection current to be set up. I think it would work quite well, but there is the fire code thing, which would only really be an issue when you sell or if there is a house fire your insurance would have a fit.

Travis

Hi, Guest!

Beg to disagree. The ceiling fan will work. We're not dealing with moving air out with no return. Cold air will return, convection-wise, along the stairs and back down again.

The method, while not being super-efficient, is tried and true.

Mark

The problem is when heat runs up a stairway it hit the ceiling. So the 2nd floor at human level stays cool. I had to put a ceiling fan in the stairway and use one down stairs also to get the heat transfer to make it comfortle upstairs.

Hi, dadw5boys!

Yup. That's why the vents at either end of the ground floor make sense. As to the heated air circulating only along the ceiling and needing a fan to blow it down, that hurries up the process that the cooling air will eventually follow anyway, so it should eventually heat up the entire second floor, not just the ceiling. That said, I'm all for getting warm a.s.a.p. in the cold weather, so the fan idea works for me too.

Mark

Some heating ducts installed in the ceiling of the lower level at far ends of the house that feed to the floor of the upper level above, might be as good as a ceiling fan but without all the moving parts!! In this way you can more directly get to the concept of filling the chamber(home) with heated air from the top , downward..

Is the stove correctly sized to match the square footage of the space it is to heat ??

If, by split-entry, you mean an entry door in the basement and on the main floor, then wouldn't cracking a basement window and a window on the top floor solve the problem? Or dampered ports?

i too have the same problem.