Moving Heat around the house

If you don't mind seeing fans on your walls. You could add some walls fans to help move the air around.

We have similar issues, but we pretty much just accept that there is going to be about a 5-7 degree difference between the upstairs and downstairs.
On the very coldest nights we do use an electric space heater in the upstairs bedroom...but generally we have learned to like sleeping in cooler temps. (63-65)

Sounds like you are trying the right stuff, but it is just extremely challenging to keep a uniform temp in the house with a pellet stove. By the nature of it, you are kind of super-heating one area with a huge space heater. We move the air around with a few fans, but we still have variation from one area to the next.

What if your pellet stove is near your furnace return? Since I have forced air, would it make sense to run the fan on my furnace throughout the day to try and distribute the heat evenly? Or would the heat be lost by the time it made it through the return and back out the vents upstairs?

I have not heard any first hand accounts of people successfully distributing the heat through their furnace duct work, but it is worth a shot.
It is a balance when you're trying to move the air around for sure. If you have too many fans with too high cfm you will wind up cooling the air down and causing more harm than good. I use one fairly low cfm cpu fan to move heat from our stove room into our large living room, then I have a small fan on the floor on low that pushes the colder air out the another doorway, but generally back towards the stove. This seems to be pretty effective as I am managing to heat a 20-25 living room this way....but I have not done any serious testing to see what the true benefit of the fans are.

It is going to be neat to hear stories from all the new members this fall. I expect that many of the new folks will come up with all sorts of innovations to get more out of their stoves. After 4 years of pellet burning I still seem learn a lot every winter.

I will be experimenting with a few fans, on the floor, to move cold air from a room towards the stove. This, from what I have read here, provides a current of cold air which is heavier then warm. Drawing the warm air from the stove, which rises to the ceiling, to the target area. In that area a ceiling fan can be used to curculate the warm air. Scientifically it makes sence, we shall see this winter.

mkmh said:

I have not heard any first hand accounts of people successfully distributing the heat through their furnace duct work, but it is worth a shot.
It is a balance when you're trying to move the air around for sure. If you have too many fans with too high cfm you will wind up cooling the air down and causing more harm than good. I use one fairly low cfm cpu fan to move heat from our stove room into our large living room, then I have a small fan on the floor on low that pushes the colder air out the another doorway, but generally back towards the stove. This seems to be pretty effective as I am managing to heat a 20-25 living room this way....but I have not done any serious testing to see what the true benefit of the fans are.

It is going to be neat to hear stories from all the new members this fall. I expect that many of the new folks will come up with all sorts of innovations to get more out of their stoves. After 4 years of pellet burning I still seem learn a lot every winter.

Click to expand...

Our house is a ranch with a unfinished basement where the stove is, the basement ceiling is insulated, also have gas forced hot air furnace / AC .

In the basement what I did last year was to cut into the return of the duct work which is located on the ceiling I put a small fan in one part and further down almost above the pellet stove I cut an opening. When the basement gets nice an warm on the thermostat for the AC I turn the fan on and that seems to work pretty well with controlling cool spots in the house as it moves quite a bit of air. The little fan stays on most of the time which seems to help the natural draft of air from upstairs to the basement through the basement door as it is pulling cool air from upstairs.

What I am thinking about doing is adding another thermostat in the basement and setting it in AC mode with only the fan running not the AC unit of course. What I am hoping this will do is when it gets hot in the basement the AC fan will turn on for a bit until it cools down a few degrees then turn off. This will prevent the mass movement of air that would create a cooling effect and move air into the cooler spots like the manual method I used above, last year. From looking at the wiring diagram for the thermostat I am pretty sure I can do this, but I am thinking I may have to add a couple of diodes in line for the thermostat upstairs that controls the Heat/AC. Also need to at least get the outside basement walls finished and insulated for better efficiency as those blocks are a big heat sink... which is on my "to do list"

Hello, I to will have these same issues of moving air around. We have a englander 1500 sqft stove in our basement. the install upstairs would have been alot more costly. The stove is located just across from our stairway, no insulation in basement ceiling so it should warm the floors nicely. But it is only a half basement, possible problem???
Good luck with the ac/furnace blower idea, keep us informed as I was thinking the same. Can't wait for winter here in VA want to burn our new stove. Good luck to all

in-control said:

I will be experimenting with a few fans, on the floor, to move cold air from a room towards the stove. This, from what I have read here, provides a current of cold air which is heavier then warm. Drawing the warm air from the stove, which rises to the ceiling, to the target area. In that area a ceiling fan can be used to curculate the warm air. Scientifically it makes sence, we shall see this winter.

Click to expand...

I have also read that blowing the cold air back to the stove is the best idea.
Does anyone ever complain about feeling a draft along the floor?
I too will be testing this come Winter. It sure will be interesting to hear how everyone makes out.
We can collect everyones' experiences and put out a book "Pellet Stoves for Dummies" next Spring!!

lessoil said:

I have also read that blowing the cold air back to the stove is the best idea.
Does anyone ever complain about feeling a draft along the floor?
I too will be testing this come Winter. It sure will be interesting to hear how everyone makes out.
We can collect everyones' experiences and put out a book "Pellet Stoves for Dummies" next Spring!!

Click to expand...

LOL could have used that book last year But you will find a lot of help and info on this site as I did last year.

bobswworld - I would think that a 1/2 basement would be more efficient being that it would be a smaller area, but the other side of that is the smaller area will be much warmer I would think... remember the pellet stove is somewhat of a space heater.

I think I may try one or 2 of these...

http://www.broan.com/display/router.asp?ProductID=695

Hello cncpro

i have also been looking into these thru the wall fans. here is the one i was looking into it has 2 speeds.
http://www.iaqsource.com/product.php?p=suncourt_tw108&product=111135

Thanks for the additional info Troutman. It looks like your link would be preferable for somebody who wants a plug-in appliance where mine seems to be wired inside the wall. Depending on how my price inquiry works out I may end up with the one you posted. Time will tell.

Troutman said:

Hello cncpro

i have also been looking into these thru the wall fans. here is the one i was looking into it has 2 speeds.
http://www.iaqsource.com/product.php?p=suncourt_tw108&product=111135

Click to expand...

Thanks for the links guys ... Checked out the one above and paste below is part of the description from their site


"In other applications:
-Move heated or cooled air into a garage from the house."



Wow I would think this is not only a fire hazard but also a health hazard to suggest this!

I heard back from my pricing inquiry in case anybody is interested...

I think I am going to buy the Model 510.

Thank you for your inquiry. Both fans are in stock at the factory and
available for shipping.
Your cost is as follows: Broan 510 $119.00 each
Broan 511 $95.00 each

Click to expand...

Ok I have a Dutchwest 224ccl and the blower" STB" I need to move the heat around in my house. I'm in a single level ranch. The stove is on the north side. Should I just use a box fan? Any sources for an affordable blower for my stove?
Thanks,
ML

Troutman said:

Hello cncpro

i have also been looking into these thru the wall fans. here is the one i was looking into it has 2 speeds.
http://www.iaqsource.com/product.php?p=suncourt_tw108&product=111135

Click to expand...

Home Depot also carries the same fan: http://www.homedepot.com/webapp/wcs...og.beans.EndecaDataBean@760a3dd9&ddkey=Search

Online only... and backordered I see.

I was looking at this idea also.

I am also going to play with another idea. I have one duct that empties into two of the three rooms upstairs. This one duct runs up inside a closet that is in the same room as the pellet stove. I plan to cut a vent hole in the wall near the ceiling in the downstairs room, and build a box that ties that vent into the ductwork. Then I will put an inline duct fan so that it sucks air from the vent in the downstairs room to the upstairs. I will have a way to cut that duct off from the central furnace so that when I am just using the pellet stove, I can stop air from being sucked from the basement duct. In addition to the ceiling fan over the pellet stove, I think this is going to give me just enough heat upstairs and still keep the downstairs heated nicely.

This may sound crazy but it can work in some homes.

Open a window,a lot of times the cold air block can be overcome by opening a window,just a little-maybe a inch at the top on the second (or highest floor).it helps allow and escape for the cold air as the warm air moves up.

bobswworld said:

Hello, I to will have these same issues of moving air around. We have a englander 1500 sqft stove in our basement. the install upstairs would have been alot more costly. The stove is located just across from our stairway, no insulation in basement ceiling so it should warm the floors nicely. But it is only a half basement, possible problem???
Good luck with the ac/furnace blower idea, keep us informed as I was thinking the same. Can't wait for winter here in VA want to burn our new stove. Good luck to all

Click to expand...

How's the winter in VA so far? ;-)

OK an update on my setup. Finally got it connected and have been testing it for a bit now.

What I did was to add another thermostat to our AC/Furnace.

I place the thermostat on a beam about 8" from the ceiling in the basement, wired it up normally. But I did removed/disconnect the one wire, the AC wire, from the upstairs thermostat on the furnace that would normally turn the AC on. (Not 100% sure if that was necessary though). and turned the breaker off for the AC condenser unit outside so it would not come on.

I then cut an opening in the intake/return side of the duct work, which was easy since it's a fiberglass square duct system that hangs on the ceiling.

So now we have three thermostats in our home, one in the living room the main one that controls the heating and AC, one in the hall way (upstairs) that is connected to the pellet stove, and then new one in the basement.

What I do is set the main one on Heat at 65* just in case the pellets run out or if the pellet stove for some reason or the other doesn't keep up. The one connected to the pellet stove is set to heat like it should be to about 68*. The basement thermostat is set to AC at 72*.

So here's how it works, when the pellet stove heats the basement to 72 or above the basement thermostat calls for AC, kicks in the fan and the hot air is drawn in through the opening I cut in the return and circulates the air through the house.

So far it has worked well, the tricky part has been the setting on the basement thermostat to keep the fan from running too long, and then that all depends on the pellets I am using since the various brands vary in output temperature and then I have to adjust the low temp feed rate accordingly to be able to keep the pellet stove on the 1 - low setting.

The one thing I wonder about is the extra cost of electric from running the AC fan pays for the 4*-6* difference in comfort upstairs. But the house is nice and more evenly heated now it seems.

Going to be testing this a bit more and if it seems feasible I will get one of those firetrap vent things to put in the duct work for sure.