Woodstove effectiveness with vaulted foyer and family room?

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Stovefan

Stovefan

Member
Jan 7, 2014
12
Northern Virginia
We are interested in heating our home with wood and already have 6 cords split/stacked in the backyard. The home is about 3,600 sq ft with a vaulted family room and foyer. The main level floor plan is pretty open as well. Home is about 20 years old and has average insulation for the area (Northern VA). The stove would go in the corner where the TV is currently located. The TV would then move to the area occupied by the gas fireplace after we remove the mantel/bricks and shut down the gas.

Our main concern is too much heat on the second level. We ran the gas fireplace a few times in the winter and it does a decent job heating the second floor but not the first. I think it puts out around 20K BTUs. Reversing the family room fan seemed to even out the temperatures a bit.

Do you guys/gals think a woodstove is feasible for this space? Could we shut the bedroom doors to keep them cool while simultaneously reversing the family room fan to distribute the heat? Hopefully the attached pictures give you a better idea of the space. Thanks for your help.

Family Room.JPG Foyer.jpg Second Floor.jpg
 
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My brother has a house similar to yours. I am trying to talk him into buying a BK king or another stove as big. I think I would put the stove where the chair is across and right of the tv. I think that with the fun on sucking air up you will be fine.
 
When I first saw the size of your house, I thought you'd need two stoves.

But with it as open as the photos show, you might actually find one stove works fine. With a big enough stove and ceiling fans keeping it from stratifying, and being in VA (assuming you're not high in the mountains), it doesn't sound impossible.

Would figure most stoves have a significant amount of radiant heat, so anyone in the stoves-side half of that big room would be toasty when it's up to temperature, even if the air temp was a bit cool downstairs.

Good luck!
 
+Seems a bit odd to have a stove installed alongside a fireplace. Why not put an insert in the fireplace, is is gas? Are there any other location options? A lot of the heat from that room is going to want to go straight up and stratify near the ceiling. The ceiling fan could help if this is the only option.
 
begreen said:
+Seems a bit odd to have a stove installed alongside a fireplace. Why not put an insert in the fireplace, is is gas? Are there any other location options? A lot of the heat from that room is going to want to go straight up and stratify near the ceiling. The ceiling fan could help if this is the only option.
Click to expand...
We wouldn't mind an insert where the current gas fireplace is located. However, there is a bay window above the gas fireplace and the family consensus is that class A chimney on the other side of the window would look odd.
 
As long as you don't mind the bedrooms a little cooler I think a very large stove would do well in your setup. The ceiling fan blowing down is certainly going to help keep an even heat distribution. A second ceiling fan on the other side as well would be a great boon as well, but there is that amazing chandelier there currently and probably no plans to change that area I would assume.

I used to live in Northern VA. It definitely isn't a freezing climate. A blaze king king size would probably be amazing in that setup.

You would probably want one of the few select 4.0 cubic foot stoves installed.

On the other hand you live in NOVA so this is more aesthetic purposes no? I assume you have natural gas and that is pretty darn cheap in NOVA.
 
BruceNorEast said:
When I first saw the size of your house, I thought you'd need two stoves.

But with it as open as the photos show, you might actually find one stove works fine. With a big enough stove and ceiling fans keeping it from stratifying, and being in VA (assuming you're not high in the mountains), it doesn't sound impossible.
Click to expand...
We are near DC so the temps aren't extreme.
 
Charles1981 said:
On the other hand you live in NOVA so this is more aesthetic purposes no? I assume you have natural gas and that is pretty darn cheap in NOVA.
Click to expand...
Aesthetics are important but we'd also like to save money. To keep the house at 64F last year, we averaged $400/month between upstairs heat pump and main floor NG furnace. Those costs don't even include the basement which we left unconditioned during the winter.
 
I would also think about house resale value. Is there another location where the a stove could be effective but look more correctly placed? Maybe in the room below the bedrooms?
 
If you have the money, I'd also look at a Hearthstone or another soapstone stove. They will give off plenty of heat but it should feel more gentle and they retain the heat much longer. Personally, I would not remove the gas fireplace. It's always good to have a back-up for the occasional cool night like we are having these days and in case you get lazy and don't want to load the wood.
 
$400/month to heat 3,600 sf- crap I gotta move to Northern Virginia! I'm with BeGreen on this. Although that location may make sense in a practical heating sense, it's kind of an odd location for a stove. What are some other possible locations in that big house of yours? Also, nice job getting the wood before the stove.
 
I don't think that location will be so odd after the fireplace is removed.

What's outside, above your proposed location? For chimney installation purposes.
 
Does this house have a finished walk-out basement?
 
Stovefan said:
We wouldn't mind an insert where the current gas fireplace is located. However, there is a bay window above the gas fireplace and the family consensus is that class A chimney on the other side of the window would look odd.
Click to expand...
Is the fireplace going to be removed? What about improving the btu output of the gas fireplace? If this is natural gas it could be an effective solution. This is a big place with high ceilings and a lot of glass exposure. It's going to be expensive to heat, even with wood if the wood is being purchased. Though $400 a month may seem a bit high, how many months was this for? If just for Dec/Jan then it is not to bad for a 3600 sq ft house. If buying wood, before starting its ould be best to check what wood costs locally and note that it is almost impossible to get fully seasoned wood, especially at this time of year. So expect to buy at least twice what you think you will need. I would guess that would be 6-8 cords total.

BB, are you thinking a wood add-on furnace to the nat. gas unit?
 
According to where he could place it, a wood stove in the basement would provide the balancing heat to the first floor. If it could be located close to the stairway. And wood burning would play hell with the beautiful carpet in the family room.
 
BrotherBart said:
According to where he could place it, a wood stove in the basement would provide the balancing heat to the first floor. If it could be located close to the stairway. And wood burning would play hell with the beautiful carpet in the family room.
Click to expand...
We are replacing the 20 year old carpet with hardwood before the wood stove goes in. The basement is well walk out so we've considered putting the stove in the basement. The downside is that we'd really like to hang out near the wood stove and the basement just isn't a place we spend time in.
 
begreen said:
Is the fireplace going to be removed? What about improving the btu output of the gas fireplace? If this is natural gas it could be an effective solution. This is a big place with high ceilings and a lot of glass exposure. It's going to be expensive to heat, even with wood if the wood is being purchased. Though $400 a month may seem a bit high, how many months was this for? If just for Dec/Jan then it is not to bad for a 3600 sq ft house. If buying wood, before starting its ould be best to check what wood costs locally and note that it is almost impossible to get fully seasoned wood, especially at this time of year. So expect to buy at least twice what you think you will need. I would guess that would be 6-8 cords total.

BB, are you thinking a wood add-on furnace to the nat. gas unit?
Click to expand...
The gas fireplace is a 25K BTU unit. With the fireplace fan running the unit can keep the family room and upstairs hallway at 62-64F with outside temps down to around freezing. The downside is that I have to pay for gas but wood is free. I was able to scrounge 6 cords of white/red oak in a few months; all free.

$400/month was the average for about 4 months and the house was never warm enough to be comfortable. I'd like to get the house up to 68F.
 
jeff_t said:
I don't think that location will be so odd after the fireplace is removed.

What's outside, above your proposed location? For chimney installation purposes.
Click to expand...
We'd like to run double wall black pipe straight up to the ceiling and then class A beyond the roof. There is no second floor above the vaulted area in the family room. Here's a mockup we made of a Lopi Cape Cod with corner install clearances and double wall pipe
 

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If I was going to do it at all in that room, there's no way I'd install it in that corner between the windows. I'd put it pretty much smack in the middle of the wall just to the left, so the flue pipe could run straight up to just left (or right) of center of the peak of the vault and on up through to daylight. Heating that big house comfortably with a woodstove (space heater) is gonna be a real challenge in a lot of ways. Trying to get the downstairs comfortable is going to broil the upstairs, ceiling fan or not. You're going to need a lot of firewood each season, and get used to storing it, moving it, maybe processing (re-splitting) some of it, and toting it into the house pretty much every day. When you think about locating a stove in a new installation, you also need to think about the hearth dimensions, and where the stove tools will be, and where the ready-service firewood will be. The stove footprint is just a part of the package. In any case, that's a big, beautiful home, and what you're contemplating here is bound to have a big impact on it in a number of ways. I'd sit back and really think about all the ramifications before leaping ahead into unknown territory. You've found a good forum here to explore all that this entails. Rick (lived in Fairfax 1995-2007)
 
I can understand your conundrum. However, another real problem of that corner install is that you will loose quite a bit of heat that will be radiated straight out the windows. If anything I would move the stove over to the sidewall at a minimum although totally different location would probably be better. Would it be possible to put a "fake" divider in the center of that bay window behind which you could "hide" the pipe?
 
I just noticed that I never hit "reply" when I typed the same suggestion earlier that Rick just made about putting it on that wall to the left. If there aren't rooms on the other side an "out and up" chimney config would work also.
 
Looks pretty good to me. I think the floor plan will work great with the stove. I've got the Cape Cod and am happy with it. Throws a ton of heat and couldn't be easier to operate. One poster had some issues, which, singlehandedly, sunk the stove on this site and seems to have steered everything towards BK.

I'm heating about 2300 sq ft with it and it has reduced my electric bill by 2/3. Of course I work my a** off cutting, splitting and stacking from my woods, but it's worth it come this time of year when I enjoy being an old man and tending to the fire.
 
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I should say that I've got a cathedral ceiling in my stove room as well. To make it worse, my home is an "L" that consists of a 125 yr old farm house and a 15 yr old new addition. Moving the heat can be an issue, but playing with the fans can also be a fun "old man" job.
 
What about an indoor wood furnace? And just tie in to the return trunk?
 
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