Moving hot air out from ceiling above Europa 75 stove

I am entering my 4th year of use on my Europa 75, and love it.

One thing I've noticed with my Europa, which is located in the kitchen of my Victorian home, is that heat collects on the 11 ft ceiling. I use 2 ceiling fans to push the heat down and into a wall fan that is located in the old butler's pantry pass through. That pushes the air through the pantry to the dining room at about 3 ft off of the floor. This works pretty well.

I've been thinking of getting a second Europa to heat some of the second floor, which is 2000 sq ft. with 11 ft ceilings. Because of walls, it would probably only heat the main hall, which is huge, and 2 bedrooms. The unit would be on one side of the main hall at about the divider wall between two bedrooms. There are two bedroom closets on the other side of the wall. I thought I would put two wall intake vents above the Europa at about 10ft up. One intake would go into each closet. These would have to have some kind of fan to suck the heated air into flexible HVAC ductwork. Then I'd run the ductwork down the side of each closet to a register on the wall in each bedroom. Don't know if I would need another fan at the register to push the air out though. I would only be about 15 ft from the ceiling intake vent.

Does anyone have any comments about the potential effectiveness of this plan, or an alternative approach to get the Europa heat to the bedrooms? Each bedroom does have a ceiling fan already. I've thought of skipping the ductwork and just sending the heated air into the bedroom at the 10 ft level. (This would bypass the closet and run directly into the bedrooms.) But, the place it would come in would be 8 ft from the ceiling fans so I am not sure they would pick up the heat properly. Or, maybe the solution is to pump the air in high and low in order to get as much in there as possible.

Gloria

Thanks for the replies guys.
Blade050: Thanks for reminding me about moving the cold air out so it could be replaced with hot. I had totally forgotten about that part of the problem.

Smokey:
>Could you post a diagram of each floor of your house and indicate on it where your current stove is?
I’ll look for the drawings of the 1st and 2nd floor and post them shortly. At this point the 3rd floor is not relevant.

>The usual heat paths are stairways and fans can be used to move the cold air towards the stove down low.
There is currently no central heat in the house so there is no heat to move up the stairs in the winter. The old (1920s?) oil-steam furnace died two years ago and it will cost too much to replace it or to install a hot water boiler. And the cost of operating with oil is outrageous. When oil was $1.75 a gallon I tried heating both floors with oil. It took one 275 gallon tank of oil each week. After we insulated ½ of the walls and the attic, I ran another test. It dropped to a little over 2 tanks a month which was still bad.

I thought about putting in a direct vent gas furnace on the second floor, but there is no place I can reach an external wall that isn’t in a bedroom or bathroom. That would involve a plumber too, so in addition to the stove it would cost $1500-$2000 to move the gas line to the second floor, in addition the furnace installation cost. Pellet or corn stoves seem to be the only option. With them I don’t need a plumber to do gas and water pipes. The vent line can run across the closets to the exterior wall, so the 50 ft high chimney doesn’t need to be re-lined. And, the oil tank, which accumulated water because the vent cover was left off by an oil company employee, does not need to be pumped out.

>Some of those houses had floor grates that were closed in the summer but opened in the winter. They allowed the heated air near the first floor ceilings to enter the second floor.

Yes there are two ceiling grates in the kitchen, but no floor grates in the 2nd floor hall or bedrooms.

First Floor - Existing Europa in the kitchen against an outside wall: In the kitchen, to the left and to the right of the existing Europa, there are ceiling vents that go to the upstairs laundry room and to the bathroom. These have no power assists, but do put some heat into those rooms. I'm thinking about putting power assists on the vents, but am concerned about the amount of heat this will remove from the kitchen. I don't run the Europa on high, so increasing the Europa’s output might solve this issue.

Second floor - Proposed Europa or other stove in main hall against wall with two bedrooms: In the two bedrooms and hall that I want to heat, there are no floor vents from the rooms below. Pushing cold air down into the heated 1st floor room, might not be a good thing either. Also, the two bedrooms will be occupied by future roommates. I doubt that they would appreciate vents in their floors that would allow folks on the first floor to hear every sound that comes from their rooms.

>You also need to remember that your stove does have an upper limit on the amount of heat it can provide and that along with how well your house is insulated and sealed will determine how much space you can reasonably heat with it.

One pellet stove on the 2nd floor probably won’t be enough, but it will do for this year. Also, I will put one portable electric oil radiator in each bedroom to supplement the pellet heat. The windows are drafty so we usually cover them with plastic. There is no wall insulation on that side of the house, and installing any before winter is probably not doable.

Gloria