Pellet Furnace horizontal vent run question.

Hello burners. I am new to this forum, and have just purchased a home with a Quadra-fire pellet insert. This is my first experience with wood pellets and I must say its pretty darn cool. I love the idea of renewable energy and not having to cut, split, or store bark shedding wood(like my father did). The problem with the insert is that it only heats the room its in and higher. Which is fine, I just need more power (heat)for the rest of the house. This house is 6 years old, 1800 sq ft main floor, 1000 sp ft basement, and 800 sq ft upstairs bedrooms. It is a story and a half house with basement. The insert is in the 'great room' which we spend most of our time, and the heat will rise upstairs to the bedrooms if we leave their doors open. But here's where I need more oomph. Our bedroom and bath are on the main floor but out of reach of the insert, and so is the basement which is freezing(60 degrees). We have a forced air electric heat furnace on the main floor and basement, and a smaller unit in the upstairs attic for the upstairs bedroom. We don't have a natural gas line run to the house. So we got our first power bill and for Dec it was $550 and then in Jan $620. So I know the house has a lot of sq feet, lots of widows, and 'high ceiling peaks'.

The pellet insert got me interested and I learned about pellet furnaces that I could "add-on" to the existing furnace, but here's my dilemma. And I think I now know the answer but wanted opinions. My furnace room is located in the middle of the basement, so the nearest exit point for the vent is 25 feet away. I would have to vent it up 9ft, then horizontally 25 feet between the floor joists(no way to get that 1/4"/foot) and then exit the home.

Are there pellet furnaces that allow that kind of horizontal run?
Thanks for the help,
Jamo

I found the floor plan of the house which I'm sure will help everyone visual things. The side option exit would look the best(Purple box in photo), but again it's about 25 feet and no rise at all in the floor joist space. I could go out through the garage, but the pipe would exit out the front of the house, and I'm not sure if my wife or even I would like the look. Especially if it would darken the vinyl siding as I wouldn't want a long vertical run there. Maybe only a couple of feet.

Right now I don't want to run a boiler and the associated plumbing, but it definately is an option. I also thought of placing the furnace or maybe now a stove in the "game room" area(where it angles out, it's right below the "breakfest" room). If I did that, then I could use a stove like the Drolet Eco-65 and use the 2 vent runs to blow into the master bed and bathroom, and maybe heat at least that "corner" of the basement. But the laundry room wouldn't get much heat from it. Guess I am really zoning my pellet heat with that option. Oh, the masterbedroom and bath are actually under a 4 foot high crawl space. The basement is only a partial basement and doesn't extend under that part of the house.

Ok guys, let's see what you got!
Jamo

OK, so getting some ideas from posting and getting feedback. I really like the idea of leaving the pellet furnace in the utility room with the existing furnace. But it doesn't have to be next to it. Like Dex said earlier, I could have a longer hot supply line and shorten the vent. If I keep it in the utility room, I can run a 3 or 4 inch PVC pipe to funnel the bagged pellets from the garage into a holding box in the utility room, and open a door and pour them into a 5 gallon bucket, or later auger them into the furnace hopper, right?

So that leaves me with the vent coming out in the front North facing side of the house with the vent.

Hmmmm...so I can built a nice decorative brick freestanding chimney about 5 feet tall in front of the garage window next to the porch and be done with it. I would have four 90 degree bends/clean out tees, and approximately 30 feet total max pipe length, with 10 feet going horizontal(with at least 1/4 per foot rise).

Ideas?

OK, so I did some quick chimney work and photoshopped one in next to the porch in a little cubby area by the garage.

Well the exit point on the house would be the white "trim" board area on the photo, between the concrete grey foundation and where the siding starts. It's a 10" rim joist that I would punch through. I'm not sure if I could eliminate some 90's, I'll check when I get home tonight. But that chimney was a quick photoshop job, and as it looks in the pictue it would be coming up 6 feet from the ground landscaped area. I could probably get away with maybe a 2 foot verticle "chimney" measured from the white trim board which would be 4 feet tall altogether. I gues I could also make it vinyl sided to match the house.

But yeah it does look a bit big in the photo, hehe.

Or I could black vent pipe it and plant an evergreen or two "near" it. There's lots of room to distance buffer in that area. How close can you get an evergreen tree to them??

So I when I got home last night I took a look at the situation. I definately think going out the front of the house is the best "functional" option, not necessarily the most esthetic though.

Going straight up(or relatively) through the roof would put the pipe in the dining room, and I don't like extra holes in the roof that potentially could leak. I also want to be able to "remove" the pellet system if a)it doesn't live up to my expectations and b)if it does and I want to take it with me if we move(10+ years from now). So best best is to go out the sill plate.

Now the basement has 9 ft ceilings, so lets so 9 ft for the verticle run there;

Then 90 degree elbow into the garage through a thimble in the sill plate of the utility room/garage with about 8 ft horizontally(can have a rise of 1/4" per foot);

Then that horizontal run would meet another 90degree to come out the front of the house through a thimble;

Then another horizontal run to get it far enough away from the house to meet code, and 90 degree up vertically however much is needed and terminate with a cap.

So I kept thinking of ways to improve esthetics, and I have so far to:
1)leave the black pipe on the house
2)build a stand-alone brick chimney or vinyl sided chimney(with a hollow back to access/clean the pipe)
3)plant evergreens "close" to the black pipe in the first choice
4)get a bronze chinese dragon and vent it through it's open smoking mouth(my favorite idea ;-) )
5)or a chimnea instead of a dragon:

Forgot the pic of a chimnea

Well, time heals all wounds right? Or at least gives you time to think a little more. So I went to my local fireplace dealer last Friday since I was able to get off work early and they were still open. I asked about a pellet 'furnace' and he kind of looked at me like "your kidding right?". So I showed him my floor plan, and with the way the house is layed out and looking for uncomplicated venting, he suggested a stove. So I was at first dismayed, since I had it in my head I needed to blow hot pellet fueled air into my existing furnace.

In the floor plan photo of the basement is the "game room". There is a square hand drawing of a couch. The dealer said I could put a stove there, exaust it out to the rear of the house eliminating my aesthtic concerns. Since the stove would be there, it would heat soak that part of the basement and heat the main level some. But most importantly, if I were to get a stove that allowed for it's own ducting(Drolet65 or one of the Ecotek's) I could run a duct in the crawl space next to the stove and into the cold master bedroom/bath.

So I am leaning towards that route now. And as fate would have it, I explored my new to me basement a little more and found out it wasn't insulated. The previous homeowner put up wooden siding to give the basement a 'rustic' look, and behind that was a bare basement wall. So now I am going to remove the wood(it's nailed on with little airpowered brads) and it comes off easy. Stud a 2x4 wall(the siding is on 1 1/2thick furring strips) and place a plastice vapor barrier against the concrete wall, and R-19 insulate the spaces between the studs. I figure by leaving an inch and half space to the wall will allow the room for R19.

So any ideas on this way of thinking?

Well, the horizontal run will be at 10 feet, but it will be at a 22 degree angle upwards instead of straight horizontal. So there would be two 90 degree bends, two 22.5's and one 45. With 15 feet total lenght, give or take a foot.

And, the positioning of the stove would still allow me to put in a pellet chute to fill a bucket next to the stove, or into the stove hopper itself from the garage.

I was thinking along the lines of the Drolet 65; $2k for it is half the price of the furnaces I was looking at.

No I just have to tear apart all the walls. Ughhh