do you have a wood stove in an insulated basement

I would recommend it as it worked for us.

We installed one in the Fall of 2009 after heating with baseboards for 10 years. Our house is a bungalow without a walkout (window well windows). The basement is fully insulated (walls and floor) with a drop ceiling. The stove is located at the north end of the house in a 12x20 room and it has an outside chimney. The stairwell is opposite to the stove on the south side. We didn't expect a dramatic benefit but by burning evenings and weekends we've managed to cut our electricity bill in half. Warming the house up with baseboards for 10 minutes, using the fan trick that I learned on this site along with an Ecofan, we've been really pleased with the natural convection that the stove creates. A blower may improve things even more but we're not there yet.

We're up in New Brunswick Canada and have had quite a mild winter (other than 3 weeks in January) so the bills may be a bit higher next year.

The only drawbacks are controlling cold start smoke spillage (basement install and is solved by the fire starting gel and cracking a window) and the fact that the stove is that it is in the room where our TV is located. It sometimes it gets quite hot in there (like 90 degrees!) but this heat eventually rises upstairs to make it a comfortable upstairs with about 75 on the south end and and around 65 upstairs on the north end (bedrooms). We haven't cut any vents and but are considering adding an interior operable stained glass window in the stairwell (to act as a vent) so we can control the heat coming upstairs. We're going to increase the attic insulation this summer to bring it up to R50 (from R42).

Oh, a couple of other things. We have an OAK (house came with it) and we insulated a 12x12 space right over the stove with noise reducing insulation so the benefit of the heat rising upstairs may be a bit lower.

Yes, it will help heat the house.

We have a wood stove in the basement, in which the half that the wood stove is in has very well insulated walls, none between the floors. Heats that side of basement too well at times. I have an office there, and it gets too hot. Other half of basement, the walls are not insulated well, and the wall between the halves is insulated (originally a garage). Heat does not travel between the two areas well. Heat does get upstairs, and does help keep the gas bill down, but I am not happy with heat distribution. 80* in basement room with stove, 72* in basement room opposite stove, and 72* upstairs (to me it is hot downstairs and too cool upstairs). Wood stove was installed originally for emergency use, and with high fuel prices we got more serious about burning wood, and we did not plan the spaces for good air movement.

There is no way we could afford to heat our basement well enough in the coldest of winter to enjoy it down here without the wood stove. When my office was upstairs, and we didn't spend much time in the basement, I could run the stove room to 80* or higher and was more comfortable upstairs, but we did burn a lot of wood. I don't mind the gas furnace kicking on in the morning as we get up, and the heat pump running some during the shoulder season. We found out even when gas was cheap that if we could run our wood stove at least the 3-5 coldest weeks of the winter we saved very significantly on our gas bill.

If you want to heat the whole house evenly, consider a wood furnace or boiler, or possibly a high efficient fireplace with ducting options. If you are just interested in supplementing your current heating system, and will be in the basement a significant portion of time the stove is burning, it should work well for you. If you don't mind cutting the wood and you aren't in the basement much, get a big stove, fill it twice a day, you can run it pretty hot down there, and it will be comfortable upstairs, but you will run through a lot of wood.

Hope this helps.

Edit: In re-reading your title about an insulated basement, is your ceiling insulated also? Reason I asked, in our (former) garage in the basement the ceiling was insulated, and you could stand upstairs in the livingroom and tell exactly where the wall that divided them was with your feet. If there is insulation in the floor/ceiling, you may have problems getting the heat upstairs.

In our situation we've been burning since October and have gone through almost 2 cords of yellow birch/beech. During the week we burn from mid afternoon until the last load of the night at 11. On very cold mornings I'll load again before leaving for work just to keep the house up to temperature. We burn 24/7 on the weekends.

The house is around 2600 sqft (including the basement). I agree with the other poster, we use all of our house now. I would never go back to baseboard heat as now ALL of our house is warmer than it used to be before the stove.

convertingtowood said:

Thanks so much for your reply. How many cords do you go through per year?

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We have 1344 sq ft on each level, and burn 2-4 cord depending on the winter and gas price using a pre-epa airtight stove.

Yes, I've been using a stove in the insulated basement of our smallish home for almost 20 years. Centrally located two-flue chimney (one is for the fireplace in the living room) encased in cement block in the basement allows for a massive amount of heat storage. I do absolutely nothing to move air upstairs. Nothing ever seems to work better than natural convection and conduction of heat through the floor upstairs. Takes about a week for everything to get up to stable temps, but after that it's 72ºF day and night except for the coldest nights of the season.

Go with a stove rated for the entire square footage of the heated area, including the basement. My total square footage is about 2000' calculated that way. The stove I use to have never quite cut it in the coldest weather. Now, with the proper size stove, we's toasty!

I forgot to add that we are 24/7 burners 5 months of the year, using about 5 cord of hardwood in a pre-EPA stove. We use $0 for other heat, since I turn the thermostats for the electric heat all the way down. Dec. electric bill was $108, Jan was $96 - mostly lights, hot water and fridge (we use propane for the kitchen range). Using the electric baseboards last Dec. when I was taking my dad to his cancer treatments every day and my stove was broke, we amassed a bill of almost $600 in the same time period, only this year was colder so it would have been more. We would have been a lot colder and the basement would have been like ice.

I have a basement that is insulated, but poorly. Have some moisture control issues to sort out and then I'll insulate the walls more. Uninsulated floor...that will stay uninsulated for the foreseeable future.

Total basement and upstairs of ranch house is approx 3400ft2. Basement stays 75-80 and upstairs is about 69. No vents...yet. Will probably add some next year to even it out.

Generally load 2x/day. Furnace doesn't run much anymore.

Well I have only had my stove installed for not even 2 weeks yet, and it hasnt been super cold, but from what I can tell it has been doing its fair share at heating the entire house. The house is a small cape with a centrally located stairwells and 2 small through floor cut outs in the basement ceiling.

entire basement has 2 inches of rigid insulation on it and the ceiling is insulated and has a gyp ceiling. half the basement is fully finished and we use as a living room. there seams to be good circulation in the stairwell, cold air running down and hot air running up. Finished basement side is usually around 80 degrees, first floor is usually around 70 and third floor (bedrooms manages to get up to about 64ish degrees all with just the stove going and the electric heat turned off.

i am still curious to know if i can keep those temps up during a -20 degree night.

My stove is in a finished insulated walkout basement, total sq ft including main floor is 1800 sq ft. The stove is located on north wall about 15' from an open stairwell so the heat travels well throughout the whole house. Also have a 10"x14" floor vent over stove with fan to help move some air when it really gets cold but most of the time the fan is not on. The basement walls all have 1" foam insulation on the inside and this year I had foam insulation blown into the exposed concrete block on the walk out side which seemed to help out pretty good. The basement stays 75-80 and main floor 70-75. Now that both of my kids joined the Navy I can keep their bedroom doors shut which makes a huge difference in the upstairs temps. NG furnace hasn't turned on yet this year and I have it set at 68.

Last year was the 1st year of wood burning for me. My house has a centrally located masonry fireplace with 3 flues. One flue for the oil-heater and a separate oil hot-water heater (yes, both share a flue from 2 different clay thimbles). The center flue is for the fireplace on the 1st floor, the other flue is where I have the wood stove connected; basement. When we started using the stove last year the basement was not insulated nor divided. Since then I have completed the framing (with a door closing off half the basement) and insulated in the half that contains the stove and where the stairs are located. This house has no doors on the stairwell all the way to the 2nd floor. The size of the house (1st and 2nd floor) is appx. 2400sqft. The area in the basement is appx. 270sqft. Added together we are on the high end spec of what the Mansfield can heat. I use a small fan the nudge the hot air towards the open stairwell. Also I have the stove connected to an OAK.

Completing the basement framing (dividing the basement) and insulating made a BIG difference. The heat rises through the stairwell fairly well. Still have get it distributed a bit more evenly yet.

So far I still need the oil-heater to get the 2nd floor heated. My scheme right now is that I leave the oil thermostat at 68 in the day, set back to 62 at night. The heater comes on around 6am to bring the temp up to 68. From my early morning adventures I haven't seen the thermostat below 67. After 9a the heat is off till the next day. Yes we are burning 24/7, still not sure if and where I have to put floor vents in. I don't want to screw up because we have hardwood 1/4 of the 1st floor the rest of the flooring is ceramic tile.

As of today my current experience is a whopping 5 days old and so far so good. We have approximately 1400 square feet in our basement and on the main level. Our home's main heat is a forced air electric furnace. The stove is a small drolet rated for up to 1200 square feet. The temps the last two nights have dropped to -29 celsius and the stove has made a noticeable difference but has not caused the furnace to not engage.

If I were to tend to the stove every 3-4 hours and run it wide open I could have kept the furnace elements from clicking in.

We are running the furnace fan on circulate and the one cold air return in the basement is high and opposite the woodstove in the largest room in the basement. The return, along with an open stairwell, is drawing the warm air to the rest of the house.

Our basement is entirely insulated inside and out as it is an ICF basement. We are planning on a stove upgrade down the road to further assist in heating the entire home but prior to that our intention is to install a wood insert in our existing main floor open throat fireplace.

convertingtowood said:

How much does it help to heat your house? Looking for any experience.

Thanks

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We have a Lopi Liberty in 1 corner (installed April 09) a Yankee Pellet Stove in the opposite corner(insatlled 2006).

We have not bought any oil since January of 09 when they took us off automatic delivery. We bought 2 ton of pellets last year also we have burned 10 face cord of wood.

Zap

We have a Napoleon 1450 in our insulated finished 1800 sqft basement. It does a good job of heating roughly 1/2 of our 1800 sqft main floor, the other rooms are about 8-10 degrees less on average. I think the best things I did was to a) have a fan at the base of our stairs sucking cold air down, b) remove the insulation between the basement cieling joists (main floor floor joists) and c) cut a register into my LR and use a small fan sucking hot air up (removed a bunch of dropped ceiling tiles around it to eliminate any kind of "concealed space"). I may be trying to heat too much area with the stove, but overall it is great in the LR, DR, Kitchen, and a little cool in the BRs.

We're getting an insert in the LR soon, but this is as much because I hated using the gas insert as anything else. I expect it to be seriously toasty in here soon...

Our house is built into a steep hill, so we have a daylight basement (front cement wall, side is cement half of width, and the
rest is framed in). The house is 2100 square feet. The furnace thermostat is set to go on at 60. The furnace doesn't
run unless we're gone overnight. The family room (where the stove is located) tends to be 5-10 degrees warmer than the
rest of the house. The stairway is open. We're satisfied with our wood heat. We burn 4-5 cords per year.

Next month, we're moving to a house with a similar configuration ( a little more cement wall in the walkout configuration) and
plan to install a similar-sized wood stove in the basement. I'm anticipating using a bit more wood because we'll be on the north side
of the hill instead of the south side of the hill. The new house has less insulation also.

Unless I missed it, no one has mentioned the change in temperature required before the stove starts heating the house if not heating 24/7. We only use our stoves for nights and weekends, and we keep our basement at 60 normally. SO, when we were running the basement stove only (last year), it would have to get to 70+ downstairs before starting to heat upstairs and that took some time. Once it was up to temp (about 2-3 hours when real cold out), it heated the house nicely (though the basement was always 10 degrees warmer than the upstairs).

S