Hot Air Plenum Kit for Drolet Eco-65

Hello all, I'm pretty new to pellet stoves, so pardon my ignorance. I recently installed a Drolet Eco-65, and am looking to install the Hot Air Plenum to push the heat upstairs. I installed this in the basement of very old brick farmhouse, so my vertical clearances are restricted. I installed heat shielding to the floor joist becouse I had less than the required height (70something inches) But now i'm getting ready to install the plenum, and it's telling me I need at least 15" for the plenum, before even installing my 90s (I uploaded a PDF from the manual). Is there a way to do this safely???

Thanks for any help you guys can offer.

hyfire said:

Can you put more shielding above your outlet pipes from the plenum?

Click to expand...

I already put heat shielding on the ceiling, so I'm good there. But because of my height restrictions I only have 19.5" from the top of my stove to the TOP of my 90's (1" shy of the shielding). I made sure that the volume of air inside the plenum was the same as if I did the 3.5x10x15" plenum. The Drolet tech support couldn't completely condone this because it is not as it was tested, but didn't see any safety issues with doing so.

I still don't have my fresh air intake installed so I know that's not helping, but it just doesn't seem to be putting out the kind of heat I was expecting. I'm only reading 85 degrees on the register that is 20' away with it set to 4 out of 6 heat setting and fan on max. Getting a bit frustrated, hoping my short basement isn't going to ruin the efficiency of the stove.