Moving hot air from Stove Room

Turn your fan around and blow the cold air into the stove room. Works like a charm for me.

Stax said:

It is.

Click to expand...

I think the dark fan made that less noticeable. You should be fine.

Looks like you have the right idea. I don't know if it helps or not but I don't turn the fan up just keep it on low. I also keep it pointed towards the floor.

Hows it working the way you have it?

Do you have a forced air furnace..if you do try just running the blower to equalize the house temps.
But your idea should help blowing into the room with the stove,
We find our ceiling fan will help a lot..though we hardly use it or the blowers on the stove..I hate hearing fans.

Stax said:

Right now, I'm in the experimental stage. With both floor fans on low blowing into stove room, it cretes a cold stream near your feet. Didn't like that so much. Turned off the hallway floor fan, left the bedroom one on. Seemed to work pretty well, however it took 5+ hrs to bring bedroom temp up 4 degrees. Seems like heat wants to naturally go the other direction, down the hallway (where thermostat is located).

I've got a air-forced heat pump, but was weary of putting it on fan because of a lot of folks on here say there marginal to ineffective at least.

Click to expand...

I have a heat pump also and a back up e-furnace...forced air.
I have used fan only a few times and it worked for me ok.
The fan is pulling air from each cold air return in each room and blowing the result into every room.
Seems like it only took like 10- 15 mins the few times I tried it.
If I had to do it again I would put electric base board in every room with their own thermostats...but I really don't see the need.
If I had gas or propane hot water heat..I would zone a lot of rooms...to me that's the best idea.

Stax, make sure the fans are run on low speed. The one in the hallway would be better served right as the hallway meets the room.

Pictures don't show enough. You may need another fan further from the fire, as well as the one at the edge of the fireroom.
How hot are you running the fire? Starting from a cold house?

I have a trilevel with my stove on the bottom level. To get hot air up to the third level, I used a humidifier on the third level (an evaporative Vornado humidifier that has a fast fan speed). I put the humidifier near the top of the stairs on the third level. The humidifier draws air in from down low and blows the humid air straight up. I've found this works for my home, because I believe the humidifier is creating air flow and drawing warm air up. I think it might also help that the air is humid which aids in convection. There is a noticeable difference between when I run the humidifier and when I don't.

Stax said:

The current setup is interesting. I'm running the fire anywhere between 350-550. Blower, on low to medium. It's too loud on high. I have two ceiling fans on low in the stove room (winter mode). Right now, I can only take one more fan running, and that's the one coming from the master bedroom into the stove room. If I turned the hallway fan on, that would give me 4 fans running plus the stove blower. Too much for a 275 sq. ft. stove room!

And yes, starting from either minimal coals or a cold house.

Click to expand...

If you have ceiling fans running in the stove room they will need to be blowing air up toward the ceiling otherwise the fans are cancelling each other out.
I would think ceiling fans alone blowing down would force the heat into the other rooms.

Sounds like your ceiling fan is in the right direction. I tried to use the ceiling fan in our bedroom as well. It made it colder. I think it just swirled the air in the room and kept the warm air out. I Have had the best luck with natural heat convections, Stove room ceiling fan on low in reverse, and insert fan on. Every house is different. Keep at it.

Tony

Tape some strips of TP at the top of the doorways, so you can see the air moving. I've found that just moving the fan a foot, or less, can make a lot of difference. I also have them pointed slightly toward the floor.

jeff_t said:

Tape some strips of TP at the top of the doorways, so you can see the air moving. I've found that just moving the fan a foot, or less, can make a lot of difference. I also have them pointed slightly toward the floor.

Click to expand...

The TP is a good idea!

My ceiling fan in the stove room makes things worse. My theory is, it is mixing the cold and hot air too much, so the air exiting the stove room is cooler. I do have a fan on the floor blowing up in a non stove room to pull the heat off the ceiling (no cieling fan in that room) and it helps a lot.

Seems like the fan on the floor in the doorway method is a tripping hazard.OK temp but you need a solution thst dont require partially blocking a door way.

Seasoned Oak said:

Seems like the fan on the floor in the doorway method is a tripping hazard.OK temp but you need a solution thst dont require partially blocking a door way.

Click to expand...

Hard to argue with success though.

Stax said:

Right now, I'm in the experimental stage. With both floor fans on low blowing into stove room, it cretes a cold stream near your feet. Didn't like that so much. Turned off the hallway floor fan, left the bedroom one on. Seemed to work pretty well, however it took 5+ hrs to bring bedroom temp up 4 degrees. Seems like heat wants to naturally go the other direction, down the hallway (where thermostat is located).

I've got a air-forced heat pump, but was weary of putting it on fan because of a lot of folks on here say there marginal to ineffective at least.

Click to expand...

I guess you are not reading all the posts.
I also have a air-forced heat pump and have reported that running the fan on low helps to moderate the temps in my house. Many other people in this forum have reported similar results. It really depends on the design of your house and just exactly what you hope to achieve. In my case I'm not trying to get the whole house up to the same temperature as the stove room, in fact I prefer that my bedrooms remain at a lower temp. Also many of the people who report poor results from trying to use their forced air systems cited "duct losses" as the cause, but in further examination they revealed that their ducting runs through uninsulated areas in their attic. Well it doesn't take much brain power to understand that if your ducting runs outside the insulated envelope of the house you are going to lose much of your precious heat in those uninsulated areas. However, not everbody's ducting is installed so cheaply. Thankfully the ducting in my home runs within the insulated envelope of my home and running the fan on low works very well, not only to deliver relatively warmed air to the colder rooms, but also relatively cooler air to the stove room. The constant over all effect is that the total air exchange within the house, by leaving the heat pump fan on low, keeps the whole home at a moderate, comfortable temperature while running the wood stove as the sole heat source. Larger, draftier home will likely have less success, and homes where their ducting though uninsulated attic spaces are probably going to report very poor results, as indeed they have.
Certainly it's worth at least trying in your case, if it ends up working well enough it would sure beat having fans on the floor all over your house.

I tried the furnace fan running to spread heat and it did not work so well. My setup has all of the ducts in conditioned space (well a short run of partially conditioned). But the issue with my set up is the stove is on the main floor, and the basement stays pretty cool. I have 2 returns in the basement and 1 on the main floor. This works well for cooling in the summer, but not so good for heating in the winter. With the stove room up to about 72-74 its still about 64(-) in the basement, and when I turn on the furnace fan it just blows the cold air around. Doesn't really help to heat up the basement any. I had the fan on for about 3 hours, and only saw a minimal change in the basement temp. We have the master bedroom down a hall from the stove room, and it gets fairly cool in there. If we use the small fan (similar size to your pics) pointed out of the master and slightly down, we can move enough cold air to get the warm air in and raise the temp to 68 to 70. That is in an mid level insulation vaulted ceiling with lots of windows master. So it all depends on your house and HVAC system layout. Getting warm air down does work well. I have a AUX air return on the fireplace blower from the basement, and it doesn't really help much either. I want to try the TP idea to see if I can get a better fan position.