Heating 1800 sq ft farm house

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xandrew4507x

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Oct 3, 2014
51
South Central PA
Hello, I recently purchased a harman p43 for my 1200 sq ft ranch house, and it has been doing awesome so far! However, due to a few reason, we have decided to move, and one house with have found is a beautifully renovated 1900 farm house. They have installed brand new insulated windows through out the house, but from the attic, I don't believe they did any insulation work, at least they didn't insulate the attic from what I could see.

The stove would be centrally located in this house in the dining room, where the stairs go up to the second story, the dining room would be in between the living room and kitchen, the family room would be on the opposite side of the stairs. Upstairs all the rooms are centrally located around the stairwell.

My question is do you think it is doable to keep the house heated with the pellet stove, I don't need the upstairs to be 70 degrees, but 65-70 would be great. Let me know what you think, its a pretty big deciding factor on which house we choose. Thanks!
 
i have a farmhouse built in 1895 old plank construction. i have double pane windows and as much insulation as i could possibly stuff into these walls (they arent very deep). i also have newer doors. i have a harman P61 manual lighting stove and last year with temps down to -20 degrees consistently and un-usually cold the stove was running flat out. the stove was able to do the job but if it was any smaller i would have been in trouble, it was a cold, nasty, costly winter. i would have doubts that a P43 would be enough. personally i would sell it and buy a P68 if you wanted to stick with pellets OR buy a good stoker coal stove (More then enough heat, allot of them burn hot really hot, also you will burn less coal then pellets).

the P43 is a good stove but i think its too small for an old farmhouse even one with upgrades. an old home is never as air-tight as a new home, i dont think. you can improve it but only to a certain extent. you can also look for a used P68.
 
Well I know temps aren't going to get to -20, last year the coldest we got was in the teens, If we move into this house this winter I will probably just use my p43 and space heaters upstairs to help out. I do like coal stoves, and in the kitchen there is a closed off chimeny that looks like it was built maybe 20 years ago. So there would be the perfect place to add in a coal stove, I wouldn't even mind a hand fired coal stove honestly. I would probably keep the p43 to use maybe upstairs or something.
 
just wanted to add, we viewed the house today, and last night it was below freezing easily, and today it was only in the high 30s, the house has 1 space heater on the main floor and one on the second and it was 55 degrees in the furthest room from the space heater, so it doesn't seem to be to bad on holding heat.
 
Sounds like a nice old house with updated insulation. As far as using your P43 in the dining room and hoping that it heats the place, a lot depends upon the door openings. Modern homes tend to have open layouts making it easier to heat more of the space, while older homes, like yours, typically only have doorways separating rooms, making it difficult, but not impossible to heat other rooms. You'd have to use floor fans and a ceiling fan above the stairway, reversed, would help. A 5 degree differential between upstairs and downstairs would be an ideal setup, but 10 degrees might be the reality.
 
My house was built in 1880-1890 and was drafty as hell, I have a ps50 and ran it non stop 24hrs a day and it kept the house warm, but was eating 2 bags a day. I have since air sealed the house but still have the horse hair and paper insulation. Since i removed the drafts, the ps50 keeps the house at 75 (68-70 upstairs) no problem on low. If your older home was insulated and tightened up, you should be fine with the p43, thats 43k btu's
 
Were having a real fun time with this house, its literally the exact house we were looking for with the land we wanted, but the stupid township has ordinances in place that won't allow animals unless you have 5 acres and the lot is only 3.5 acres, its pretty ridiculous how controlling townships can be. /end rant.
 
Abit silly on the land size requirement for animals, I have abit less and im zoned for live stock (was my grandparents house and they owned race horses, pepe was a sulky cart driver )
 
Our entire reason of moving is so we could raise some livestock, we already have chickens but we want some cows as well. The sellers currently have a lawyer involved and are fighting it. Its pretty ridiculous because its located in an agricultural community .
 
Sounds like our lay out in our 1870 farm house. We use our pellet stove exclusively and it heats our whole house wonderful

Ours is in the dining room too
 
My house is 2500 square foot built in 1856. It has r60 in the attic and an average of r19 in the walls. I have all new windows and most rooms have been gutted. I can heat the entire house with a single Glowboy pellet insert.
 
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