Woodstove effectiveness with vaulted foyer and family room?

Just an FYI, we own a log cabin that's FAIRLY tight. In log cabin terms...very tight. Normal new construction terms...it's okay. The house is 3200-3300 squares. First floor is open except our bedroom and a bathroom at the other end. BIG windows too. Second floor is 18ft vaulted with a hallway and rooms on both sides above the kitchen. I heated last winter with a Dutch West, it came with the house and not a very well maintained one. Early spring we had an Quad IR installed and it seemed to do just fine. The Dutch West did okay but it was real cranky. I think the Quad is going to be a much better heater. IMO you're good to go if you can figure it out.

BrotherBart said:

The same reason he doesn't want a stove in the basement. Looking at a wood furnace is boring.

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Must have read over that. I agree, but it's better than a stove next to your fire place, or a large pipe in front of or behind your large window. And if I had to choose between a stove in the basement or a furnace I'd pick the furnace. And depending on corn prices, I'd pick a corn furnace over a wood furnace.

I have something similar as far as a vaulted living room to an open upstairs with bedrooms. Like fossil and others said that upstairs is going to be 90 while you may struggle for seventies downstairs. Hard to pull that heat back down too.......

Stovefan said:

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.

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Given that heating this house by anything but floor heat could be a trick, I think you can use a wood stove as well as any other, and maybe with some new advantage: radiant heat.

Because of the high ceiling you will always have the dynamic of a lot of heat upstairs. The fan will continue to be important to you. You could also try putting the central heat on "Fan Only" and see if that doesn't circulate the heat as well.

The size of the stove is not too large for the house, nor the space you are planning for it- you're good there. As to closing doors etc. - that's an experiment and you should see what works out for you. You do not want the central heat to not-come on if it gets very cold or if you leave the house and don't feed the wood stove. If the house gets cold enough you'll freeze plumbing!

In fact, something most people never think about, if you keep the area by the thermostat warm from the wood stove, it is conceivable that you will not heat other areas of the house because the central heat never kicks in. Just inconvenient usually, but if you have hot-water-base board heat (less common these days) you could see those pipes freeze. That actually happened to me many years ago, though I'll say in those days I lived in a drafty old farm house with little insulation (basically I was asking for it...) Not something to worry about, but something good to keep in the back of your mind.

I think you'll heat about the same as you did with the gas stove with the new benefit of radiant heat in the room where the stove is.

Enjoy!

Think about the three modes of heat transfer: conduction, convection and radiation.

The best placement for all three and most importantly for your chimney. Is as close to the center of your house as possible.

Conductive heat rarely comes into play, radiative heat within close proximity to the stove and convective throughout open air spaces.

In my opinion never use fans unless that are rooms remote from the modes of heat transfer, especially convection.

A fan will only interrupt natural convection.

Randy Acton said:

In my opinion never use fans unless that are rooms remote from the modes of heat transfer, especially convection.

A fan will only interrupt natural convection.

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Well, in the layout of the OP, that is exactly what we are trying to do. natural convection will put heat where you don't want it and leave the parts where you need it without. This is similar to my house with an insert in a large great room with 18' ceiling. I made the mistake of the Jotul Rockland, it does not radiate much heat. But it was the biggest choice that would fit without modifying the current fireplace/hearth. But being mainly convective the heat goes to the top of the room where spiders and whatnot probably enjoy but not in the people space. Well there is one bedroom and bathroom up there that do get plenty of heat, but even the room the stove is in doesnt get enough heat without the fans on, and practically nothing gets into the next room - the kitchen/dining area. Even with all sorts of fans its a loosing battle, made worse by the poor insulation and draftiness. I can't wait to move and hope to buy or build a house better designed for a stove. These 2-story vaulted rooms are pretty to look at, but thats about it. Complete waste of space not to mention heat.