Need your Professional help with heat distribution- \w diagrams

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RegencyNS

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Feb 13, 2008
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Atlantic Canada
As seen in the attached diagram, I have a Regency F2400M wood stove connected to an exterior masonery, stainless steel lined chimney. The stove is located in the basement in a future family room. The house is a 2 storey with basement just built. The stove is used for 24 hour heating and so far has been keeping up to the cold temps pretty well. However, after walking downstairs into a wall of heat last night, I need to figure out a better way of getting that hot air upstairs. I also have a Venmar Hvac system that distributes heat throughout the house when it is in recirculation mode. The vents for this system are marked in the diagram. This works, but it is not enough. There is too much heat in the basement. So, I installed two floor vents, one on either side of the house to try to circulate the air. This worked marginally but not that well.
I know the stove really should be in the main living space of the house, but I feel that this would be too much heat and would also be too much mess in the living room. Besides that, my wife would kill me if I had them puck a hole in the wall there.
My plan was to use an inline duct fan in a duct assembly connected to the floor vent right next to the stove. This fan would then blow hot air from the stove to the upstairs. I have tried this with a Suncourt 260 inline fan but I was very disappointed with the noise and cfm. I am going to to return this fan and buy a Fantech FR series fan as recommended by someone on this site. I have read that it is better to have a fan on a vent blowing air to the hot air room so as to push the heat upstairs but because the other vent is on the other side of the house, I thought it was too far away to do that. Should I?
Also, should I be leaving the basment door open or closed with this floor vent running? With it open, will it disturb the circulation path?
Any help would be greatly appreciated. What would you do?
 

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Hate to be bearer of bad news but stoves are SPACE heaters, not whole house heaters. Try blowing the cooler air down the steps and getting a natural flow going. Without pushing/allowing cold air to go down the hot air will have a hard time rising. Some people have better success than others trying to heat from a basement. Oh and open the door at the top of the stairs.
 
Your house will have a natural convection, some homes are better than others. Its counter intuative but you are by far better blowing cold air down and let the warm air replace it then the other way around. Fans make noise, you need to decide if you can tolerate the noise for the heat. Sounds like you are getting it just need to tweak it. Good luck!
 
Yes - push cold air toward the stove and give that warmed air someplace to go. You need a convection loop. It sounds like you are trying to do things a little too backwards or inefficiently - i hope i'm not misreading your notes/sketch.

One thought would be to drive a fan DOWN on the floor vent near the stove and UP on the vent far across the room. Draw the heated air across the whole basement, so you'll get some warming of the floor spread across the whole house. Plus then that warm air will go up on the far side of the house, travel across the house the other way, and then down again. Nice big loop. Esp if you have big enough floor vents, tho i reckon something in the 12x18 range would be plenty big, and maybe you could tuck a pair of very quiet little muffin fans into each vent to force the convection. I'd actually keep the basement door CLOSED in this scenario - you don't want the up-fan to be drawing from anywhere but the down-fan.

Edit: A box fan or pedestal fan might help move the heated air around the basement - I'd put it on the top, facing to the right, in your sketch. again, push cold air toward the stove. you want your upfeeds to be drawing warmed air.

You might also try putting two more vents into the opposite corners of the house - downvents on the right, upvents on the left. Some folks here hate floor vents so be prepared to hear lots of thermal / fusible link damper talk about them (i.e. a springloaded trap door to shut the vent off in the event of an actual fire, to avoid giving it breathing air)
 
Think of it like breathing in a paper bag, it will only hold so much air, if you add vents between the 1st and 2nd floor for cold air returns it is alowing the air to mix
 
shawnmd

Focus on moving cold air out of the cold spaces upstairs, and the warm air will fill in behind. Leaving that door open, and taking your air vents you installed and ducting them down to the floor and adding a fan in each will help to cool the basement, and then the warm air must rise to replace it in the next floor up. Do some reading on Stack Effect here on the site, and you will get a better idea of what is happening in the house naturally, and then you can help it along.

Be careful when you start sucking air out of your basement - I once filled my house with smoke when I ran a fan to pull hot air out, 'cause I reversed the chimney flow. Read that story here https://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/forums/viewthread/26324/ . So far, looks like I am the only one who does dumb things... - only my story in the thread.
 
oconnor said:
shawnmd

Be careful when you start sucking air out of your basement...
Click to expand...

Indeed - you need to balance it carefully. Move air for a long time slowly, vs trying to cycle the entire house over every 30 seconds. I think the muffin fan idea works here because a) you can match up & down flows, so no pressure difference across the floors, and b) even if you do draw out exclusively, the fan don't likely have enough cfm to backflow your chimney.

If you're worried about drawing out at some point when the stove is cold (i.e. not drafting) but the fans are still running, then a simple thermal switch located near the stove would work.
 
I think a little box fan blowing down on each of the floor vents would cause warm air to come up the stairwell, and in that situation you are actually pressurizing the basement. Leave the door basement door open. let that go for 24 and see what happens. you also want slow moving heat as moving air feels cooler than it is (think about what 100 degrees with no breeze feels like... now does a breeze feel cooler even tho it is still 100 degrees?)
 
It's not a good idea to cut holes in your floors/ceilings.

Floors/ceilings are fire stops. Cutting a hole in them gives smoke, carbon monoxide, and fire an easy route between floors. It might not seem like a big deal, but remember that not just minutes but seconds can make the difference between life and death getting out of the house.

It is a violation of fire code that could come back to bite you later.

Try setting a box fan on low at the top of the stairs, blowing down the stairs. It is just enough to get the denser cooler air rolling down the stairs, which will displace warmer air back up the stairs to replace it.

Also remember that the heat transfer with wood heat is slower than it is with forced air. It may take some time get your house up to temperature. Your house, and everything in it is a lot of mass to heat up.

-SF
 
SlyFerret said:
It's not a good idea to cut holes in your floors/ceilings.
Click to expand...

While debatable / not-untrue / etc. - the fact remains he already did it. If he's going to leave the basement door open, that's a WAY larger "hole" between the floors than a couple vents (and he can put fusible switch / dampers on them, as noted...)
 
Maybe it would help to build a chase for the vent nearest the stove to draw cold air right down to the floor helping to set up that air flow the guys are talking about. If the vent is too close to the stove, it may be easier to draw down from the far vent.
good luck
Ken
 
I'd consider opening up the wall on the side of the stairs facing the stove.
Try to picture the heat rolling off the ceiling and spilling up like an upside down waterfall.
 
Thanks so much for your help guys and gals. Last night I removed the fan from the vent next to the stove and installed it on the vent on the other side. I also switched its direction so that it is pulling cold air down. After that, I can now feel the hot air coming up through the vent in the living room much more than before. However, with the basement door closed, I am not getting the heat I used to get. I am going to leave the fan on blowing air down, and leave the door open to see if that works.
 
We have vents on our floors as well. It can become into a heated discussion pretty quick over that. Our basement stair case does not have a door. What I do is put a stanley squirrel cage fan at the top of the stairs and run it on low speed to push the cold air down the stair case and heat comes out every else upstairs. It works for us but after reading many threads on this some people are more successful than others based on house design.

In a perfect world I would just like a stove on the main floor. OUr house is a ranch and we are the second owners of it so what is in place will stay that way for now.
 
You need a cold air return path just like a furnace. If not, you may create negative pressure in the room with the stove. You may only need to cycle the fan intermittently when you get a comfortable temp upstairs. Once that loop of air flow gets going it will continue to some degree unassisted.

The comment about wood stoves being space heaters is incorrect. They can be if desired but a stove the correct size with a heat distribution system will heat an entire dwelling. I heat 1700sqft with a Napoleon. One distribution trunk servicing the bedrooms, and one serving sun room, family room, and foyer. Continental Inline Duct Fans pushing 1000+ CFM when both are running at the same time.

You can also consider installing a thermostat and associated electronics to run the fan as needed.
 
Just a quick update.... Before I posted this thread, I was consistently able to get the main floor to 76 degrees and the 2nd floor to around 72 degrees. This with only wood heat, oil furnace off. Now tonight with temps above 52 degrees outside, the main floor is 80 degrees and 2nd floor is 75 degrees. Am I asking for too much if I want it hotter than this upstairs?

I will update the diagram tomorrow, but after trying different arrangments, I think the best is blowing cold air down at the other side of the house, blow the air to rear of house, past wood stove and up the stairs.
 
I don't think you are asking to much . I heat 3000+ sg feet with my stove . We like the bed room on the snd floor colder for sleeping any way . I just burn the stove in the center of the house and run the ceiling fan on low . I don't care much about heat i work out side all winter and where shorts in the house .
 
shawnmd said:
Just a quick update.... Before I posted this thread, I was consistently able to get the main floor to 76 degrees and the 2nd floor to around 72 degrees. This with only wood heat, oil furnace off. Now tonight with temps above 52 degrees outside, the main floor is 80 degrees and 2nd floor is 75 degrees. Am I asking for too much if I want it hotter than this upstairs?

I will update the diagram tomorrow, but after trying different arrangments, I think the best is blowing cold air down at the other side of the house, blow the air to rear of house, past wood stove and up the stairs.
Click to expand...

Why have it warmer than 72 in the bedroom area? Is there an elderly person there? If so, is it possible to move him/her downstairs?
 
Have you tried using a fan on both floor vents blowing cool air down and let all of the heat come up the stairwell? I would think, if you do that, you would be at the optimum performance for your layout.
 
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