Need help on Air Circulation in house for a Pellet Stove

Bah. Remove the blocks on the vents and turn on your furnace fan periodically. I heated a ranch all winter and only had to do that a few times.

I was going to put a thermostat in the far back room which is coldest and use that to turn on the furnace fan, but sold the house.

Running the fan is much less expensive than running the furnace.

That is so strange that I am experiencing this. Before I tried what I described, I ran the furnace fan for 5 hours straight and it did not raise the temp in any of the other room in the house ?

My only guess would be that the cold air return you are using is not insulated and the warm air is getting cooled before it can reach the other rooms. Also, maybe crack the covering on all the closed returns so some circulation occurs in each of the rooms you are blowing hot air into. Good Luck!

I Agree that is sounds like your air ducts are not insulated. Although what is the air temp at the inlet of the cold air return in the room with the stove? most likely it is not very warm. The cold air in the house is layering and all of the cold air returns are picking up the coldest air and ciculating it around the house making the entire house feel cold EXCEPT the room with the stove. Try iths Get a 10" stove pipe and stand it up next to a cold air return in the room with the stove. Put in a small fan insde the pipe. You shoudl be able to find one like a clip on fan that just fits inside the pipe near the bottom of the pipe. If your cold return in the room is flat on the floor stand the stove pipe over it with the fan blowing down into it. If you have a wall return, then cut out about 40% of the lower side of the pipe below the fan output. That will put WARMair into your cold return. Now if the ducts are not insulated it may not help much as it may cool too much. but try.

A furnace like this needs to have the heat extracted from the combustion gasses before they are vented. An open fireplace is very inefficient as mosy heay goes up the stack.

So you may need to reduce the amount of heat yu watse up the stack by limiting the air to the furnace. Be warned that this can lead to carbon monoxide production, so you need tight flues

YES I CONCUR, CARBON MONOXIDE IS DANGEROUS. You need to ensure there is enough oxygen for the furnace. A sealed house is not healthy. Monoxide detectors would be a wise investment.

I would add to what has already been said, a factor that has been left out. Air-humidity is an important factor to heating.

Dry air doesn't accept heat as well as humid air, be sure to freshen the air (open a window for at least 5 minutes a day) and keep a minimum of 30 - 35% humidty near the heating source, so to increase the heat exchange.

We have a two-story home, 3000 sq ft, with a pellet stove in the living room. We are able to keep the bottom floor at 74-76 F and the 2nd floor at 70-74 F all winter long. I close all of our vents and use ceiling fans. The fan in the living room blows down then I have one at the top of our stairs that pulls the heat up to the 2nd floor. Then with smaller ceiling fans in each bed room keeps the heat circulating.

What style house, with or without basement, where is stove?

Hot air rises (obviously) is your cold air return at floor level? In my last house (a ranch style with full basement) the wood stove is in a corner of the basement. Using convection the basement room with the stove and the living room, dining room and kitchen would be 85 and the rest of the house in the low 60's. I added fans the basement through the floor into the bedrooms and the temperature was within a few degrees throught the house.

The problem and various answers are all short a bit of detail.

1) Are your intakes at the ground level?

1a) If your intakes in the hot room are at ground level then you do need to see about moving hot air down to the intake.

2) Do the distant rooms have a way to exchange the air?

2a) The key is moving air through the whole house. The air has to leave the room that it is cold and get to the room that it is warm.

3) Ignore the fireplace advice about flu and CO2 as the pellet stove is very efficient and needs little tampering.

Try mounting narrow window fans at the ceiling. Narrow fans might be hard to find this time of year, but moving the top 10 inches of air in a hallway will help. Also place box fans on the floor, blowing the cold air toward the fire. These aren't so classy but they work.

Furnace blowers are engineered to move a high volume of air at low pressure differentials. If the ducting system was properly engineered, and if most of the cold air return ducts are then covered, the blower may then be ineffective at circulating air. Leave all the return air grills open, and see what difference that makes in the air circulation.

It is important to understand how a heater works. It doesn't displace cold air and replace it with hot air; it actually HEATS the cold air.

If you close off the intakes you are only reducing the air pressure in the room in which the intake is open, so less hot air will blow into the other rooms. Furthermore, in those rooms you are mixing hot air with the cold air already in the rooms. This causes the cold air to cool the hot air, thus negating the effect of heating the rooms at all.

So your best heating comes with all intakes completely open.

The location of the intakes and vents can be helpful too. Hot air rises so the coolest air is closest to the floor, therefore the intakes should be on the floor or as close as possible to it. Since the hot air expelled from the heating ducts also rises, it helps to have the outlet vents on the floor as well, but as far as possible from the intakes. It also helps to have the ductwork underneath the house rather than in the attic, so any residual heat which leaks through the insulation of the ducts will contribute to heating the house, rather than heating the attic.

Good Luck!

a corn/pellet furnace has the basic flaw that burned gasses exit and fresh cold air enters to fuel the furnace.

In an ideal world you exchange the hot exhaust heat into the incoming air (preheating the combustion air) and also vent excess heat to the room.

As they sit they waste a lot and only the fact of free/cheap fuel makes them viable/

You need to start with the basics. What is the room temperature in the room with the stove? Whatever you try you need to monitor this temperature of the stove room. The tempurature in the other rooms and the outside tempature are both factors. The stove manufacture should be able to give you data as to the BTU output of the stove. The BTU output of the furnace could be useful also to help know the size of home and the total heat needed to keep you warm (with the assumption that the furnace system was keeping you warm). You have not given us much information about the furnace system or the house layout, this makes any suggestions just a wild guess. The area you live in would suggest that the duct system is insulated. The factor for heating the house is how much heat is available. The movement of this air comes next. Be sure that all of the supply air registers are open in all the rooms. The air flow in the room with the stove is important, you will know if you are moving heat to other parts of your home by the temperature differance, in the stove room, with the air moving and when the air is not moving. The basic factors are Heat Input, House Heat Loss and Tempatures in the rooms.

I INSTALLED A 45000 BTU CORN STOVE THIS YEAR. AND WAS AS DISAPOINTED AS YOU THAT I COULDNT HEAT MY HOUSE THROUGH THE FURNACE FAN. I HAVE AN OLD TWO STORY HOUSE THAT I HAVE BEEN REMOLDELING FOR THE PAST 15 YEARS AND HAVE ABOUT 80 PERCENT OF IT COMPLETLY WEATHER TITE WITH NEW WINDOWS, INSULATION ETC. I THINK THAT YOU JUST LOSE TO MANY BTU'S MOVING THE AIR THROUGH THE FURNACE. IF THE AIR YOU ARE DRAWING FROM THE ROOM WITH THE STOVE IS 85 DEGREES YOU LOSE TO MUCH BY THE TIME IT GETS TO WHERE YOU WANT IT THAT IT WONT OVER COME THE COOLING EFFECT OF WINTER. YOUR FURNACE PRODUCE AIR FROM 95 DEGREES TO 125 DEGREES I AM TOLD AND YOU WOULD HAVE TO BE MOVING AIR THAT HOT TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN A ROOM THAT IS 60 DEGREES. THIS IS WHAT I DID. I MOVED MY THERMOSTAT TO THE AREAS THAT I COULDNT HEAT WITH THE STOVE, IN MY CASE UPSTAIRS WHERE ALL MY BEDROOMS ARE, AND SET IT UP WITH A PROGRAMABLE THERMOSTAT THAT ONLY RUNS THE FURNACE WHEN I WANT HEAT IN THOSE AREAS. IN THE MORNING GETTING UP AND THE EVENING GOING TO BED. BELIEVE ME I DIDNT WANT TO DO THIS BUT FOUND NO OTHER SOLUTION IN MY CASE. ALL THE FANS DIDNT WORK BECAUSE YOU FEEL THE NATURAL COOLING EFFECT OF THE MOVING AIR ACROSS YOUR BODY AND STILL FEEL CHILLED. IM STILL SZAVING A LOT ON MY HEATING. ESTIMATE ABOUT 5 BUCKS A DAY COMPAIRED TO ABOUT 11 BUCKS ADAY LAST WINTER WITH THE HIGH COST OF NATURAL GAS.

Thanks to ALL who have spend time trying to help. I believe Fixitguy hit the nail on the head. I just got off the phone with the furnace guy. He said my furnace is 10 years old and DOES NOT have a variable speed fan. He said the motor is so strong that it immediately cools the warm air coming through the returns before it even gets into the furnace. So I guess it this will not work. I will have to look at getting small fans to move air from one room to another, but the air it moves is still cool. To give those that asked a little more background info on my house. It was built in 1940. Cement block with a stucco exterior. Original windows. All ductwork is exposed, as I can see it from the basement. There is no drop ceiling in the basement. I have 5 room. Livingroom ( where pellet stove is located ) 70 degrees on lowest stove setting if 15 degrees outside. The kitchen is off the living room. Temp is 66 degrees, Bathroom is off the living room and is 66 degrees, the remaining 2 bedrooms are about 5 feet on either side of the bathroom so they have less direct air flow and are both 61 degrees. Basement is 51 degrees. By the way I did try the furnace with no cold air returns blocked, and the result was the same. I left the fan only on for 12 hours and the temp dropped 1 degree in each room and 12 hours laster warmed up to the exact temp I had started out with. I was hoping to replace the existing furnace fan with a variable slow speep fan, or try to incorporated a slow speep fan within the existing ductwork and was told this would not work!! So back to the drawing board. Again...thanks to all and will still continue to read all ideas. Dave

If your duct is in the basement exposed & uninsulated at 51 degrees, this is the problem.

The speed of the fan has no effect on cooling the air. The fan only put a small amount of heat into the air by cooling the electric motor that drives it.

The rooms stop loosing heat when you stop moving the air through the ductwork.

This is why I ask you how many BTU's the furnace & stove had.

Hi Thanks for the help. I am not sure of the furnace BTU. It is basically not being used at this point. The Pellet stove is 60,000 BTU which they said is overkill for 900 square feet.

The furnance size is for the BTU amount - with the assumption that the furnace heated the house. 900 sf seems small but heat loss is heat loss!

Sounds very much like former military housing! Possibly the original heating came from a central plant? If you wanted the very worst for building heat retention it would undoubtedly be masonry block or stucco--not much better than glass--and you have both! This was acceptable in those day's of yore when heating fuel cost was "practically free," but no longer. Unless and untill you add few inches or more of insulation indoors (cheapest) or outdoors, I don't see this house ever being made comfortable at low fuel consumption rates. You might consider a mixed heat supply as the most economic approach...especially in a small dwelling. I would purchase a portable ceramic heater for each room of the house. These were once quite expensive but have become inexpensive. Because they heat 100% of air passing through, and because they use no more electricity than is required to maintain desired room temp, they are very economical to run. They are also very good for heating "cold spots" in a house, thus improving performance, and operating cost of a house furnace. Another advantage is that they will permit you to isolate, and apply less or no heat in, unused spaces in the house. This along with improved insulation seem to be things that should be tended to first.

Also, I see that you are measuring temps (which is good)...but might also be "calibrating by feel," which is not so good. It is a common "fallacy" for people to judge heating plant performance by sensing warm air on their skin. Since body and/or skin temperature is much higher than comfort temperature, properly heated air should always "feel" a little on the cool side. (Put another way, if you are feeling heat output air (or air being "transferred by fans") that feels "nice and warm" then you are also attempting to heat the house to temperatures approaching 90 degrees and above---because body temp is 98 degrees give or take. So, it's best to mount a cheap thermometer in each room for judging the true space heating performance. If you have any fans or outlet registers, make sure the air streams therefrom do not blow where people might "feel" chilled by the properly heated air. In other words, eliminate wind chill factor in order to maximize comfort. Hope these little kernels are helpful to you.

Thanks Guest, I personally think you have hit the nail on the head. This situation is like trying to walk 'up' a 'down' escalator. It may be possible to have a 'Thermal Imaging Survey or Audit, but a surf on the net for suitable digital cameras that work in the infra red may be a DIY solution. I have heard that the cheaper the camera, the more likely it is to give a good I.R. image. some of those old video cameras had a 'zero-lux' setting. The cheap cameras just don't bother to filter IR out.

Those old windows sound like a nightmare for heat conservation. Double glazed replacements, with IR reflecting glass, could be worth consideration. Loft insulation is also where great savings can be made. A solution I adopted upon recommendation from a Norwegian (Spit there in winter and it bounces down the pavement) was also very economical. Go to a catering supplier and obtain Aluminium Cooking foil slightly larger than the gaps between the joists. Take a vacuum up and clean up first. Lay a smooth layer of Aluminium foil, then a layer of slightly scrunched foil, then smooth etc Bubble plastic works between layers as well. Four inches of Aluminium Foil layers is good enough here in UK. Insulated Wallpaper, Layer of Kitchen Foil, then the thin expanded foam lining paper, under the regular wallpaper, could also make a difference. Now is the time to make those winter savings.

Tex: As I am picturing your system, you're drawing the coldest air in each room, near the floor, and routing it through your 51 degree basement where it is cooled further. The fan then distributes it back through your house. Fan speed has nothing to do with it. No warm air ever gets to the fan. You probably have plenty of warm air near the ceiling above the pellet stove. Somehow, you have to get that warm air down to the fan. There are several possibilities, but one easy one might be to cover all return vents except the one nearest the stove. From that vent, run a (temporary?) open ended duct up near the ceiling over the stove, where all of the warm air is. Let the fan draw that warm air down through the vent, through the duct, and distribute it through the house. You might also consider either heating the basement by distributing some of the warm air down there or insulating it from the floor above. Otherwise, your floors will always be cold.

Thanks for your reply. I have 2 heating vents in the living room , and I am thinking about disconnecting the one at the end of the heat run. I would then put a fan in the basement right by that vent that would pull the air from that room into the basement. This might be an idea

Texas -

First, the source air (going into the return duct) is your initial "supply air" for heating. Even an air-air heat pump only puts out roughly 90 deg F air, so if you can get air at about that temp into your furnace, it will distribute it OK...but you do need warmer air than just 'ambient floor temp' to heat other areas.

Second, the return ductwork needs to be either insulated or run through a heated space.

If you have an uninsulated basement, it may be cheaper and more effective for you to simply add a large insulated return duct in the basement directly from the stove room/area to the furnace.Rigid foam-board/foil for ducting is a cheap way to make this yourself.

At the furnace, you will likely have a filter opening into which you slide a filter. If you attach a new duct to the other side of this casing with another new 'filter rack' over a new hole (or remove a panel on the other side) you can slide a solid sheet into the existing filter slot, and put a filter into your new entry point instead, closing off your other summer return ducts and drawing air from only the new return duct during winter (trade them back for summer).

At the furnace room, you'll need to draw air that is as hot as possible. There are black sheet-metal steel 'boxes' that are perforated for air entry and potentially decorative that can be used to 'fill in' a corner behind the stove, or a larger diameter otherwise-decorative round steel duct (like a 10" black 'stove-pipe') can be placed over your flue pipe all the way to just below the ceiling (or to it, if you get perf'd or screen 'back' side), with the bottom connected only downward through the floor to your basement return duct. If the flue goes right into the top of the stove, the bottom of this heat-exchange duct can be a "T" fitting with an elbow-down behind the stove through the floor to the basement. This would allow you to draw from the ceiling and heat the air all the way down along the flue and get this warmest-air to your central furnace.

Lastly, ask around at church for a buddy who is a licensed mechanical contractor who can install a FanHandler for you. It'll keep your existing fan running at a slow speed automatically all the time, and that will help circulate the heat as well as filter the air constantly. You can get all the benefits of that 'replacement' variable-speed unit you wanted, but cheaper. (I can't believe how many times I've recommended one of those recently...I need to call the company and set up a referral deal ;)

My wife is German, and they often keep a metal urn/vase full of smelly stuff like cloves and cinnamon sticks in water on top of their stoves to keep humidity in the house along with the pleasant aroma. Solves that dry-heat issue.

WOW....Tanks for the detailed plan !!

I am already logging on to the websites to get info. I will get back to you to let you know how it all works out. This is a great plan !!

Dave

i didnt know at the time the size of your house. if you are heating a 900 ft2 house with 65000 btu give it time. its going to do the job. 66 degrees in the other rooms is not bad if its 15 degrees out side. it will get better.

I aggree with fixitguy, our pellet stove is 45,000 BTU and the setting is set at 2-3 with the ceilling fanning will keep a 3000 sqft house around 70-74 depending on room. This is with outside air temp anywhere between 20 F to 5 F. So a 65,000 you should easily keep your house warm turn it up to the next setting.

As fas as putting water in something on top of a pellet stove for humitidity, this will not work. Mainly because the stoves lid doesn't get warm. Our stove is in a false insert where we install a pot hanger, with a tea pot and water hang infront of the hot air from the vent.

You mentioned a basement. Is this a crawlspace or a dirt floor unfinished area or could you have put the stove in the basement? If the Stove were in the basement then you could simplify the piping of the air etc. If there is easy access and adequate room the better place may be downstairs.

Maybe dumb questions but: "are the doors open?"

"how about duct/fan sizing?"

You need circulation, and if the returns are closed,

the path through the one open return from the one

'stove heated` room may be inadequate to provide

the required circulation.

This is what I did: My house is 5 years old, 2 story with basement, 2300 sq. ft., bedrooms up (4) and main floor is a family-dining-kitchen area with hall to front door steps upstairs there and a living room off from the front door (thermostat is in living room). I have an EPA rated fireplace insert that burns all outside air and lets no inside air out. All the heat is radiated from the burn box.

My first problem is that the family room would get way too hot and the other rooms too cold (sound familiar). I tried the furnace fan, box fan, ceiling fans, ect,... What I figured out was to cut a 12" x 12" hole in the ceiling (near the hallway, about 15 ft from the fireplace/closer would be better but that wouldn't look good in my home) and using the ceiling joist like an air duct cut a 12" x 12" hole in the floor upstairs in the same joist run. Used a ceiling grate downstairs and a floor grate upstairs. In-between the two grates and between the joists I put a small 8" fan blade on a small thermo protected, continuous duty motor that uses little electricity and moves 400 cfm($28 for everything at Graingers). Grainger figured all that part out for me. I wired it up with a plug into the wall. Around the fan blade I made a shield so the air movement does swirl around the fan and keeps the air one direction. The stairs work as make up air for downstairs. I ran a cord through the grate and plugged it in. The hallway now gets nice and toasty. Leave the bedroom doors open and they get heat spilling over into them. They are cooler than the rest of the house but not bad. When the temp outside is 20 or above I can heat the whole and the furnace only comes on if the fire goes out. When neighbors last year had $300 - $500 gas bills for their homes mine was under $100 and that includes cooking, water tank and clothes dryer for a faimly of five, 3 women! The basement is very cool but it isn't used much anyway. If it's a not too cold outside the family room still gets quite warm so I just crack open some windows to keep it comfortable for sitting and the ceiling is still hot enough that the upstairs is still heated anyway. Hope this gives you some ideas.

They call me the firewood guy.

Burning 'outside air' is a big bonus. Well done firewoodguy. and thanks for sharing your experience with us. BTW, don't forget to give that fan a spring clean, if it looks like it needs attention. It will last longer and is less likely to develop a noise. They say chopping firewood 'warms you twice'. Great exercise.