Using Firelight600 as primary heat source?

The majority opinion over the past few yrs is no, using your furnace/ac air handler does not payoff. A very few argue otherwise. I would add, if your ducting is in an unconditioned space, ie attic/cellar, you are wasting your dollars. Low wattage ceiling fans would be advantageous.

If you add pictures, drawings, and description of your home and ducting you will get better advice.

IMHO the hood would be a definite no no.

First off, I suspect you'll notice a big difference going from the old DW stove to the Firelight . . . this is a serious stove that produces some serious heat.

Second, nix the idea on the ductwork . . . the hood system is against code . . . and folks who have gone the way of ductwork have had mixed results.

The layout of your house helps . . . I'm heating a similar sized home (a bit smaller, a little different lay-out, but also a Cape) . . . you might try positioning a fan (regular old floor fan) in the living room doorway with the fan pointed toward the woodstove as this would most likely allow heat to circulate a bit better through the entire home (including the second floor by the way) . . . it may be a challenge getting the warm arm to curl around and enter the master bedroom though as I suspect the heat would still want to rise and go up the staircase to the second floor.

While I like our bedroom a bit cool I can understand not wanting to be sleeping in an ice box . . . I would try the fan idea and see if that and the new stove makes any change to how the house is heated . . . as a last resort you could perhaps cut a vent hole in the wall going from the living room to the bedroom . . . an idea that I know my wife would not like and your spouse may not like it any better . . . but I do know of at least one member who has done something similar with positive results.

Curious what you are planning for a chimney, as the picture shows just the chase for the direct vent fireplace? Is there another chimney not shown in the pictures?

I have a whole house air filter that helps to even the temps out in my house.

http://www.farreys.com/ventilation/broan_nutone_house_air_purifier/guardian_plus_GSFH1K.html

I have the intake in the second floor loft and blow the filtered air into the bedrooms. After I installed it the temps in the house are much more even.

jdrab9er said:

Please forgive me for my skepticism, I just find it hard to believe that a box fan in the door opening is more efficient than using the air handler. But I'm carpenter by trade NOT a "tin banger."

And you guys know way more about this than I do, last season was my first experience with an indoor stove. For two years my wife and I used an outdoor wood boiler ... Natures Comfort ... Not a good choice, that thing is a wood hog. If I didn't keep an eye on it every hour it would burn it up. I tried EVERYTHING, my local dealer was no help at all either. Very inefficient.

Also it was used to heat the slab, I have radiant heat. But with the economy the way it is I can't afford another $5,000+ heating system,
hence the indoor stove.

The picture of the house is an older one, I didn't have the chase complete at that point. The floor plan isn't exact, very similar though I'll try to find a jpeg of my actual floor plan. BTW thanks to everyone for your time and advice for a noob like me!



- Jon

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Most folks who have tried using their air handler have not reported great results. IMHO, it's probably because the ductwork runs through uninsulated space in the basement and the ductwork itself is uninsulated, as well as the body of the air handler itself. So the heat gets moved around (where else can it go?) but they ended up moving much of it into an undesired location. The arrangement of registers and returns also plays a big role in how well it will work, since you need the system to pull air from the hotter rooms and dump it into the cooler ones, or vice versa.

The air handler approach works well in our house. 2/3 of our basement is finished and needs the heat anyway. The short runs of ductwork in the unfinished side are well insulated. The only place that's not insulated is the air handler body, so we lose a bit of heat into the unfinished space. With our open floor plan, the heat from the stove naturally rises into the second floor, so what we need is for the handler to pull some of that back down and deposit it into the far side of the first floor (the dining room), which is the coldest spot in the house. It's all just simple physics. As long as the air handler route is only recirculating air throughout the house, it HAS to move the heat around, and it HAS to keep it within the house. Energy is conserved! The question is whether it does a good job moving it from where you have too much to where you want more. You might need to play with the registers to get the air to go where you need it, and you might even need to obstruct a return in order to get the system to pull more from the hotter areas. Depending on your duct arrangement, you may need to have the reverse strategy of pulling air from the colder places and directing it into the warmer ones to force the natural counterflows to carry the heat where you want it.

While I can see that master bedroom on the first floor being cooler than the rest of the first the floor I just can't think anything else other than the F600 would heat the you know what out of that home. Yeah, cooler upstairs, but man, I run an Oslo F500 and know what kind of heater it is. My bet is if you crank up an F600 in that living room you ain't gonna be cold next winter.

I agree with those here, ductwork, return vents, fans, and blowers have been talked about to death on this site. Some of the arrangements I've seen are clearly fire hazards, many are clearly against code.

I bet a small vent cut between the living room and that bedroom wall, near the floor by the front door may help create a natural air circulation in the home, but still, with a load of 2 foot splits in the F600 you're gonna be crankin some serious heat.

If I were you I wouldn't do anything other than get that stove hooked up, have plenty of good, seasoned, dry, firewood on hand, fire up that F600 this coming winter and THEN decide if ya need to do any modifications.

that's my .02 cents worth.

The F600 and a couple of strategically placed fans will easily heat that floorplan, so long as all the inside doors are left open to allow for the colder air to be "pushed" toward the living room; you should have no problem keeping a pretty level heat throughout the floor. The woodstove room will always be a bit hotter, no getting around that.

jdrab9er said:

Here is a much better representation of my floor plan. Keep in mind the actual building size is 36x36. You would think w/ the location of the entrance to the master bedroom would make it easier to heat. But I tell you it was so cold back there, my wife and I slept on our mattress out in the living room.

Can you please explain the difference between the Dutchwest and the Firelight? Is the burn process that makes the difference in heat output? Or is it simply the fact that the Firelight's burn time is longer therefor putting out more BTU's per hour?

- Jon

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Oh ho ho . . . this new floor plan changes things. Like BG and FWWarden I think I can safely say adding a fan on the floor of the hallway near the masterbedroom with the fan on the low setting and pointing towards the stove should make a difference in how warm the bedroom is this winter. As BG mentioned this is a simple and easy thing to try . . . if it works you can tell us later how smart we are . . . and if it doesn't you can feel free to berate us or try cutting some vent holes in the walls or hook up to your heating system.

I suspect this will work though since many of us are able to heat our entire homes in this way . . . myself included . . . and incidentally I was wrong . . . I believe I may be heating my home (1970s vintage with 2 x 4 walls, insulated with fiberglass insulation . . . about 1,200 square feet on the ground floor) with an Oslo . . . which is as you may know the smaller brother to the Firelight.

So . . . differences between the DW and Jotul? Well, first of all . . . size does matter. There is a pretty big difference in stoves when you're talking 30,000 or so BTUs . . . not to mention that by going to the larger stove you've got a larger firebox which means the fire should in theory stay going longer. It would be surprising if you were not able to do a final reload of your stove around 9 or 10 at night and still have a warm firebox in the morning with enough coals to get the fire started around 5 or 6 in the morning. In fact, just thinking about the size . . . I'm heating my home in Maine and staying warm with the smaller Oslo . . . if anything you may find yourself to be too warm . . . although I suspect after sleeping in the living room and freezing last year you're willing to put up with it being too hot vs. freezing again this winter.

As to why the fan trick will work . . . yeah, it sounds ridiculously simple . . . and it is . . . but it works because you're taking a stove that primary heats an area through radiational heating (think of the heat as coming out from the stove in straight, direct lines and hitting objects in the room and heating them up) and introducing a convectional way of heating (i.e. using the fan to set up an artificial wind current) which will take the heat "trapped" in the room and slowly circulate it to other areas of the house.

And why didn't the DW work last year? It could be that it was too small for the job . . . or it could be that without a means to move the heat throughout the home the heat was either "trapped" in the living room . . . or the heat moved along until it reached the stairwell and then did what heat likes to do . . . it rose and heated the second floor . . . and bypassed the master bedroom. By setting up the air current you should be able to push the cooler air towards the stove . . . the air will be heated and then flow in to the area vacated by the cool air . . . setting up a loop. Incidentally, don't light a fire and expect the bedroom to be warmer within a few minutes . . . in my own case it takes a while to get the outer areas warm . . . and as FW mentioned the room with the stove is almost always the warmest room.

Finally, make sure you have good, well-seasoned wood . . . this is crucial for getting the most heat out of each load of wood . . . and be sure you know how to properly operate the stove -- secondary burning will result in a lot more heat than "free burning" (air lever left all the way open) . . . free burning looks pretty impressive with lots of flames, but a lot of the heat is simply escaping up the chimney and you're not getting secondary burns.

That's a very similar layout as my old house.
Bedroom was always cold.
I cut a 16 inch hole in the wall at the floor at the foot of the stairs and a vent hole above the bedroom door (a triangle due to the stairs) and in all but the coldest weather didn't need a fan in the opening at the foot of the stairs .

We did have trouble with all the screening methods on the vent at the floor . Kids even busted up some fancy louver doors I made.

Had to get in the habit of keeping the bedroom door open as much as possible.





I also put a bathroom fan in the ceiling in the corner of the living room to the bedroom upstairs above the living room and blowing air down rather than up worked better. (When ever clothes and crap wasn't on top of the openiing in the bedroom and the fan wasn't turned off)