what happens in the basement if stove is on 1st floor?

The basement will be cooler unless you take steps to force feed hot air down there. If the walls are uninsulated / unfinished, it will be cold regardless. I don't really have any active heat in my basement - it cools down to maybe 55F in winter - but no one is really down there.

If the basement is heated it is going to be cooler since your heat won't be running as often.

Kemosabe need new Injun

I have nothing to add. I saw Hanko had posted, and just had to check it out.

I was not disappointed :lol:

Cats have a built-in fur coat. They won't be cold.

tonto said:

title says it all..contemplating getting a pellet stove and putting it in the 1st floor of my cape.what happens to the basement?just asking cause i know thats a question my wife will have because her kittys stay in the basemant overnight.thanks in advance

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I'm assuming you have a heating system in the cellar and you plan on almost exclusively heating your 1st floor with the pellet stove.
If so, make sure your pipes adjacent to the outside wall in the cellar are well insulated.
Install a thermometer next to the wall of what you perceive to be the coldest spot and monitor it this December.
I have oil forced hot air and what I did was make a two inch hole in the ductwork next to that coldest wall to let out a small amount of heat to hopefully guarantee the pipes will not freeze on the coldest below zero days.
Only on these days does the heat sometimes kicks on or I trip it to be safe.
You do not want to freeze your pipes obviously.

I had the same concern. I have Hot water baseboard heat and I am worried about the water pipes freezing. Luckily Members of this site directed me to Thermguard which hooks up to the thermostat and kicks on the boiler every few minutes for a very short time to circulate the water and keep it warm. Also of course I put foam pipe insulation on most of the pipes. We will see how it goes this winter. I guess if worse comes to worse I will run the boiler a bit to keep the basement above freezing on the coldest days/nights. Eventually I plan on putting a stove in the basement too but for now the primary living space is the most important.

Hi Tonto,

Just to clarify what RatherbFishin said, ThermGuard (www.bearmountaindesign.com) kicks on the boiler for a few minutes every few hours...not minutes. I had my pipes freeze and burst twice. It flooded my finished basement and caused about $4K in damage. Not anymore. I can crank my woodstove with a 100 degree temperature differential between inside and out, here in Montana and I don't have to worry about my pipes at all.

Cheers,
John

tonto said:

title says it all..contemplating getting a pellet stove and putting it in the 1st floor of my cape.what happens to the basement?just asking cause i know thats a question my wife will have because her kittys stay in the basemant overnight.thanks in advance

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If the basement is cooler the cats come upstairs and you go down stairs!

Zap

If the cat weighs the same as a duck, she's a witch and you build a bridge out of her. Your question was very well answered so this was all I had to add

uninsulated basements take a lot of heat due to the exposed concrete walls and floor. if you intend to get heat up stairs from a pellet stove in the basement go very buig with the pellet stove you will need it, personally i dont like the idea of a pellet stove in an uninsulated basement for taht very reason, wood (log burning)is better in thhis situation due to higher radient output which will warm the walls faster then allow heat up the stairs but pellet stoves are pure convection and will struggle to warm those cold walls which must happen before you start to gain heat upstairs.

Thank you for clarifying the info about Thermguard. Also about your pipes freezing...how far below ground is your basement. I have been told (and time will tell) that if the basement is below ground nothing should freeze unless it is totally BS cold out. In that case I hope the ThermGuard works. I have ordered one but not installed it yet.

I live in NW NJ ..... Burned pellets all last year ...... I use a Oregon Scientific weather station to monitor the temperature in 10 locations in my house with little remote gizmos. My basement never came anywhere near freezing last year..... It was one of my big fears to get frozen pipes in my hho fired hot water system.....

ratherbfishin said:

.....In that case I hope the ThermGuard works. I have ordered one but not installed it yet.

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It DOES work, and works well. I installed one last winter due to a incident I had w/ a frozen pipe in my attic (the lamebrain that did the original plumbing decided it was a good place to run an un-insulated heat pipe). I installed the ThermGuard, set it to come on for 5 minutes every 3 or so hours, and never had a problem.

Great solution to this type of problem, especially us who have wood & pellet stoves.

I'll tell you what happens in an old house when you use a pellet stove upstairs and don't run your central heat at all - Your basement gets really cold. My basement was around 39 degrees on the coldest days last year, and I really worried about my water pipes that are actually touching the outside sill. When I would monitor that area, many times it was as low as 29 degrees. I finally got so scared that I hung an electric heater near those pipes connected to a piggyback plug in thermostat so when the temp. gets below 40 degrees it kicks the heater on. It seemed to work, and no frozen pipes. The Thermogard will not help keep your actual domestic drinking water pipes from freezing. In the case of my pipes, there is no room to even get a heat tape or insulation around them. When I run the central heat, the colder it is outside, the warmer it is in the basement so no worries about the pipes.

what happens? it gets cold!

My basement would get down into the 30's, on the coldest days. (single-digit temps outside). I was actually surprised by this, as I thought that the typical "mid-fifties" temp that was held down there (pre-pellet stove) was simply due to the basement being below ground. it isn't. It was the heat from my FHA furnace that was doing that.
basement is not finished. Its poured concrete, not insulated. there is insulation in the ceiling, but not the concrete walls. one wall is a "knee wall", with a walkout basement, but that part does have 6" of fiberglass insulation, in the stud cavities above the foundation.
Even though the basement isn't "supposed" to be heated by the furnace...it is. (radiant heat, leaks and radiation in the ducts).
I didn't wait to see just how cold it could get; when I saw 38 degrees on the thermometer, I decided it was time to let the furnace run a bit.

I live in Northwestern Wisconsin, my first year burning pellets on first floor of code style house, our basement got down to 34 F, wife was not happy as the washer and dryer are in the basement. To resolve this I took a cold air return form upstairs and put in a in-duct blower and pulled heat from 1rst floor to basement. Last winter temp in basement stayed above 48 F all winter, including our lovely -25 f stretch of cold air.

Ronlat,

What kind of duct blower did you put in? I'm wondering if this could be an answer for me. Also, approximately how expensive are these things?

Thanks

ronlat said:

wife was not happy as the washer and dryer are in the basement.

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same here. I was thinking of getting a quartz heater that I saw at Sam's or Costco last year, that is meant to be ceiling mounted, and turns on/off with a pull-chain. Mount that right over the washer and drier.

ronlat said:

To resolve this I took a cold air return form upstairs and put in a in-duct blower and pulled heat from 1rst floor to basement. Last winter temp in basement stayed above 48 F all winter, including our lovely -25 f stretch of cold air.

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good idea....but I found that most of my "savings" from using pellets was the fact that I wasn't heating this space.

Sawduster said:

Ronlat,

What kind of duct blower did you put in? I'm wondering if this could be an answer for me. Also, approximately how expensive are these things?

Thanks

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I removered the existing duct work from the cold air return from the floor of the room the pellet stove is in. I had a sheetmetal box built to attach to the floor where the cold air return was. I attached a 8 inch inline duct fan (I think @ 500 CFM) and pumped the warm air down in the basement. Did it for less than $80.00. Not alot of heat but enought to keep things from freezing and my wife can still pour the liquid laundry detergent out of the bootle. Like I stated before keeps basement around 48 F. Which is not bad considering I have about 3 feet of exposed block above ground and no insulation on the basement walls.

We have the same setup with a 24'X32' Cape.
Our washer/Dryer are in the basement. I new it was
going to be cooler down there so I fabricated a heater out of an 8ft
section of baseboard. Tied in a thermostat; attached a box fan
and kept the basement at 60F.

This year I plan to open up an old laundry chute install a grate and run 2-3 computer
fans in hopes of pushing enough heat to the basement through the chute.
Our basement is not finished and walls are not insulated.
Stove in in the living room.

I love the pellet stove/heat. This will be our 2nd year and are still learning/tweaking!

what happens in the basement stays in the basement

It stays around 50 degrees in my house.