Stove Room Temps

You are very welcome Dave.

I heat 1536 sqft from a 600 sqft stove room. Temps at far rooms are 4-6 cooler than stove room without any fans. Far rooms stay closed often.

Stove room is one of the only insulated rooms in house. Its 450 sqft. We get cold if its below about 75f in winter. It stays about 76 to 90 f in the stove room in the winter. Bedroom will be upper 60 s to low 70 s and its the coldest point in the 2000 or so sqft we heat. Often times we crack a bedroom window.

begreen said:

Somehow I don't think the OP wanted examples of the extremes.

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Where's BrowningBAR? He gets all flustered when it drops below 85F in his house, mid-January.

begreen said:

I don't think so. Soapstone is nice, but not magical. Heat is convecting, with help. It might be that remodeling insulation/sealing/new windows has improved heat retention and someone has discovered the fan blowing cool air toward the stove trick?

https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/thru-wall-fans.110061/#post-1455081

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What would be a good idea to move air from the upstairs? Our very back bedroom on the second floor is always a bit chilly - could I place a fan in that room or out in the hallway to try and draw the air or does it need to be on the same floor as the stove? I'm starting to see myself hanging string from the ceiling and figuring out where my air moves to.

tomahawk said:

What would be a good idea to move air from the upstairs? Our very back bedroom on the second floor is always a bit chilly - could I place a fan in that room or out in the hallway to try and draw the air or does it need to be on the same floor as the stove? I'm starting to see myself hanging string from the ceiling and figuring out where my air moves to.

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Experimentation will be required, but the basic concept is to create a loop. You want to move cold air out of the room, and warm air into the room. If only one doorway connects the room to the rest of the house, then you know the entire exchange must happen thru that doorway, but it won't be efficient without some help. Enter: the fan.

So, any one of Foxworthy's 5th graders can tell you that warm air hangs near the ceiling, and cold air near the floor. The warm air coming into this isolated room is going to pass thru the upper part of the doorway. The cold air it's displacing must then travel thru the lower part of the doorway. All so simple.

Now, you can move warm air, or cold air. Force one into the room, and an equal volume of the opposite will be displaced out, or vice versa. Many have found it easier to put a fan on the floor, and move the cold air out of the room, rather than trying to blow warm air into the room. They say it is more effective, and enough have claimed this, that there must be some truth to it.

However, I believe the reason sometimes cited for this being more effective is wrong. Some have suggested that cold air is denser, and this is why it is more effective to move the cold air than the warm air. This theory states that you're moving a fixed CFM with the fan, but there are more pounds per cubic foot of air in the cooler air than the warmer air. While this is theoretically true, the numbers don't really support it as being a measurable difference. A full 10 degree differential (much greater than what you're going to see on two sides of the same doorway in a home) around room temperature works out to only 1% difference in the density of the air, hardly enough to be the reason why this technique is supposed to work so well. There must be something else to it...

I'm thinking of putting a fan on the floor in the doorway to the back bedroom upstairs and see if it works. If nothing else it can't hurt to try and play with it to see where I can get the air to move to. I see strings in my future - my wife is going to hate you guys.

My insert is in the living room which is usually between 72*-78*. The heat moves really easily because it's central to the house and has three doorways leading to the rest of the rooms. My house is drafty, but most of the other rooms range from 68*-72*. The colder the temps the larger the difference in temps. We have electric heaters in each of the bedrooms that helps to even out temps when it's super cold, or if we just want to have heat and keep the door shut.

One thing I really like about having an insert is if it gets too hot I just turn the fan off. Heat still pours in, but at a much slower rate. Also cranking the fan up to high dumps a ton of heat really quickly. Fan on high brings house temps up very quickly. Hope this is helpful.

Joful,
Don't know about the difference in the density between the cold and warm air, but no question the warm air is enough lighter, even if it is only 1 %, to rise. Hence the cold air is in the lower portion of the room. The coldest is closest to the floor. Put a fan on the floor, and it is going to move the air at the level it is at much more than any other air in the room. (Just try aiming a fan on you today, then move the fan a foot higher or lower - it moves the air at its level best.) SO, it pulls the cold air at floor level out, and warmer air enters at the top. AS more and more air is moved, the overall temp in the room comes closer and closer to being the temp in the stove room. Usually doesn't take very long to make a perceptible difference, in my experience. In a three story home, I find each floor eventually is a few degrees cooler than the floor below.

tomahawk said:

I'm thinking of putting a fan on the floor in the doorway to the back bedroom upstairs and see if it works. If nothing else it can't hurt to try and play with it to see where I can get the air to move to. I see strings in my future - my wife is going to hate you guys.

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You want to make sure that air gets back to stove room and your not just equalizing out the temperature on that floor. Fan at stairs, but I have read here few have had success with this. Also have heard about thru floor registers. Maybe that would work.?

Joful said:

There must be something else to it...

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Well, it's certainly easier to move the cool air along the flat floor than to try to move warm air through doorways, the tops of which are lower than the ceiling....

Keeping temps in your house even is all about getting a good convection loop running, Cold air back to the stove warm air away from the stove, You can do this with fans but it will work out bet if you can encourage a loop to run naturally. In my house I can turn on the celing fan in the Master bedroom, furthest room from stove, for 30min to get things started on a reload and then I leave shut the fan off and the natural currents just keep going.

This is a great example of how to do it, you need to cool the air furthest from the stove. it will naturally fall to the floor and be replaced with warmer air from the ceiling coming from the stove. The cold air will then move along the floor to replace the warm air rising near the stove. Here is a pic for a radiator in a single room, now just expand this concept to the whole house and there you are.

tomahawk said:

What would be a good idea to move air from the upstairs? Our very back bedroom on the second floor is always a bit chilly - could I place a fan in that room or out in the hallway to try and draw the air or does it need to be on the same floor as the stove? I'm starting to see myself hanging string from the ceiling and figuring out where my air moves to.

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If you have central A/C, you can try just turning on the circulating fan--that moves a lot of air throughout the house.

Living room where my liberty is, is usually mid 80s to low 90s and that keeps the rest of my 2400 sqft house around 80. Even last year when it got down around zero at night and low 20s for highs the living room was still mid 80s to low 90s. And yes believe it or not I have gotten very close to 100 once

lopiliberty said:

believe it or not I have gotten very close to 100 once

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Yeah, but it's a dry heat.

Woody Stover said:

Yeah, but it's a dry heat.

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Exactly

I have a wife, and therefore, it is always either too hot or too cold in this house. I'm not sure the temperature has ever been right.

Last week, she had me reprogram the thermostats for AC from 75F in the morning to 76F in the morning, "because it's freezing in here every morning." I had to remind her that last year, she had me change them to 75F, because it was, "too friggin' hot in here every day."

Me? I'm fine anywhere between 55F and 85F. Just adjust clothing and beverage to suit.

Mine is has slowly been reprogrammed from 74 to then 72 and now like 71. She wakes a bit before me. I am freezing in bed and when I get up. I have to get my clothes and socks on fast cause I'm cold. Can't stand in bathroom at sink to long as that's where the vent is, under the vanity, it freezes my feet!

Augie said:

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The radiator is normally near or under the window. As with most heating ducts or baseboard is normally placed on the coldest or outside wall.

Yes, that picture screams "cold feet!"