how do i get warm upstairs?

I still havent mastered this yet, but I have a fan in the hallway that feeds the upstairs and all the bedrooms, the fan in that hallway is blowing back at my stove. The temp in the main living area is anywhere from 71-76, and the hallway and bedrooms are anywhere from 62-68(One bedroom is downstairs off the hallway, its 67-68) right now. I do have one register/vent in the room with the pellet stove, about 6 feet in front of it on the ceiling, it feeds the hallway upstairs, my next project is to try putting in a register booster fan in place of the vent. But having the fan in the hallway helped a lot, otherwise it would be 5 degrees cooler. This is running in "Room Temp" mode on my Harman set at about 78 degrees or so.

You may not like this but is easy to at least see the difference.....we have an upstairs room that is not used all the time,so we close the door on it. A big difference and so then I started closing the doors on the others....a bedroom and a bathroom and they sure did get cold,but during the day, I find we just pop in and pop out of those places anyways. It made a big change in heating the central floor(and our stove is in the basement but the air is piped thru the floor). A change in habit,thats all. It might be helpful to you or someone else to at least try...the worst part is getting the other family members to not complain....you may need trickery to accomplish that.

Just ran into this yesterday. Our upstairs bedroom where our daughter sleeps was getting down to about 60-61 at night when it's been about 25-30 outside. I knew it was supposed to get really cold last night and tonight, so I did two things;

1) I put up the plastic sheeting over her windows. I'd been putting that off too long. Her windows are about 20yrs old, and not horrible, but there is a little draft from them.

2) I put a fan at the bottom of the stairs, in the hallway feeding the stairs, blowing towards the pellet stove.

Now the hallway is about 12 feet long on one end it goes to the stairs, on the other end goes toward the kitchen. Now our stove is in the dining room, which is open to the kitchen, so there is probably a run of about 30-35 feet between the stove and the stairs.

Anyway, last night when the temp got to 15 deg, her room was around 65; much more comfortable. That means that we'll only really need her electric heat during the absolute worst days, sub 10 deg or so.

I'm not sure how much effect the plastic sheeting had, but I'm sure the fan in the hallway made a big difference too.

kofkorn said:

Just ran into this yesterday. Our upstairs bedroom where our daughter sleeps was getting down to about 60-61 at night when it's been about 25-30 outside. I knew it was supposed to get really cold last night and tonight, so I did two things;

1) I put up the plastic sheeting over her windows. I'd been putting that off too long. Her windows are about 20yrs old, and not horrible, but there is a little draft from them.

2) I put a fan at the bottom of the stairs, in the hallway feeding the stairs, blowing towards the pellet stove.

Now the hallway is about 12 feet long on one end it goes to the stairs, on the other end goes toward the kitchen. Now our stove is in the dining room, which is open to the kitchen, so there is probably a run of about 30-35 feet between the stove and the stairs.

Anyway, last night when the temp got to 15 deg, her room was around 65; much more comfortable. That means that we'll only really need her electric heat during the absolute worst days, sub 10 deg or so.

I'm not sure how much effect the plastic sheeting had, but I'm sure the fan in the hallway made a big difference too.

Click to expand...

We use plastic shrink film every year and buy it by the roll. There is a premium grade.It is worth it. We have re-used ours for a couple of seasons and DO NOT shrink it. Sometimes I have to use new tape but at least all the film is precut, which is a huge chore to install. Yes it works and keeps condensation from rotting your windows(if they are wood). The premium stuff is real thick and 10 bucks more a roll,but you will see how much smarter it is to use.

box fans help but the best way is a second stove upstairs . had same situation with non open floor plan stairwell etc Victorian home . second stove solved the problem . up stairs no comfy warm on the coldest day . haven't ran furnace in 2years not at all since adding stove upstairs.also when not downstairs at night set thermostat down on pellet stove downstairs .turn up upstairs stove good to go zone heating at its best. good luck

box fans help but the best way is a second stove upstairs . had same situation with non open floor plan stairwell etc Victorian home . second stove solved the problem . up stairs no comfy warm on the coldest day . haven't ran furnace in 2years not at all since adding stove upstairs.also when not downstairs at night set thermostat down on pellet stove downstairs .turn up upstairs stove good to go zone heating at its best. good luck

My hope is to get around to replacing windows next year so that I won't have to do plastic. But that is unlikely I've actually used a plastic tracking system in the past. It's kind of like a "U" channel that has another part that snaps in place. It prevents you from having to redo the tape each year, but they look awful ugly.

I'll look into the heavier film.

thanks!

I'm in the same boat. Too cool for my liking upstairs. Our stove is in the mail living area and faces the stairs but the cold air from upstairs and the warm from down meet in the middle at the landing where the stairs switch back. I'm still looking for a placement on fans that will get the warm air up the stairs. In the summer our upstairs is scorching so this is frustrating.

rehabbingisgreen said:

I'm in the same boat. Too cool for my liking upstairs. Our stove is in the mail living area and faces the stairs but the cold air from upstairs and the warm from down meet in the middle at the landing where the stairs switch back. I'm still looking for a placement on fans that will get the warm air up the stairs. In the summer our upstairs is scorching so this is frustrating.

Click to expand...

Have you tried a fan on the floor of the middle landing pointed towards the lower section of the stairs? Move the cold air down low not the hot.

I have the same problem with my house. I tried the fans, I tried the ceiling fans upstairs. Bottom line I think is the lack of BTU's coming from the pellet stove.
I probably need double the BTU's in order for it to heat up the 2nd floor.
I think that this an extremely common problem with pellet stove users. My buddy has a similar sized wood burning stove with no blowers on it and it puts out double the BTU's that my pellet stove does. His 2nd floor is so hot they have to open the windows sometimes.
I think its all about BTU's. Period.

There was a post last year that had a link to a product that was a vent from the 1st floor to the 2nd (or room to room on the same floor... worked either way) that seemed very easy to install. I've actually been thinking about it for my bedroom (which is right above the stove), but I can't find the link.

If anyone remembers or is able to find it, please post. Thanks!

abrucerd said:

There was a post last year that had a link to a product that was a vent from the 1st floor to the 2nd (or room to room on the same floor... worked either way) that seemed very easy to install. I've actually been thinking about it for my bedroom (which is right above the stove), but I can't find the link.

If anyone remembers or is able to find it, please post. Thanks!

Click to expand...

They sell them online. Many companies carry them. Just make sure that its ok to do within your local fire code. I don't think it is in many areas.
Just think about how fast one of those fan vents would spread a fire or smoke throughout your house. I think they are actually designed for a forced air ducting system.

SmokeyTheBear said:

rehabbingisgreen said:

I'm in the same boat. Too cool for my liking upstairs. Our stove is in the mail living area and faces the stairs but the cold air from upstairs and the warm from down meet in the middle at the landing where the stairs switch back. I'm still looking for a placement on fans that will get the warm air up the stairs. In the summer our upstairs is scorching so this is frustrating.

Click to expand...

Have you tried a fan on the floor of the middle landing pointed towards the lower section of the stairs? Move the cold air down low not the hot.

Click to expand...

I have but it doesn't seem to do much. I've also tried the fan at the top of the stairs but it still feels like it hits a wall. I don't know. Last night I went the other way and put two fans in a row to try to get the warm air to go up the stairs and no good either.

Unfortunately, I think that the biggest determining factor in getting heat to move around your house is the layout itself. Without an open layout, it will be difficult to move much air. The best advice that I can give is from my firefighting years:

When we were trying to vent smoke out of a house, we used to put a fan blowing into an open door and a fan blowing out an open door. The key was, the fan was about 6-8 feet away from the door. If you put it in the door way, you could feel the air blowing in the reverse direction flowing out of the top of the door. The take away is, keep the fan in a hallway or other enclosed space where you can generate a directional flow. Best ideal is to be able to drive it all in one direction if possible, similar to a ducted heating system.

The corner doorway fans don't really move much air at all as compared with small desktop fan properly placed in a hallway or doorway mostly due to location.

Another suggestion is to tape some strips of TP in various locations to see if you can determine where the air is going. You can play with fan locations and easily see what works best for you.

Good Luck!

I actually have the opposite problem, I need to get the heat downstairs. We replaced our fireplace with an insert after it almost burned our house down. Clearly it would have been better to put a stove downstairs but it is what it is. Anyway, my brother and I tackled it somewhat by cutting a hole in the floor next to the stove See register left of stove.



Here it is from the top view:



Here it is with the vent removed (yeah time to dust it lol):



There is an 8" fan inside the vent. This pulls warm air downstairs and also forces air up the stair creating convection. It heats the downstairs to about 69 degrees and then electric baseboards finish the job from there. You could do this over course the other way around and pull air up.

My old house already had the radiant floor registers i just put small fans inside them plus i have forced air heat and i put a t-stat on my furnace that has a timer for the fan and it runs the fan for a few minute every hour to help circulate the air.

Jafo,
Hey that fan in a vent is pretty great! Do you have it hooked up to power somewhere?

We have a vent system from the old furnace. One of the ducts comes from the basement, has a vent into the main floor in the living area and goes straight up and opens up with two vents into two of the bedrooms upstairs. What we hope to try next is to plug off the duct just below the opening on the main floor and use some sort of a fan to circulate the air between the upper and lower floors through that duct. I'm just not sure if it's going to work or if we can get a fan the right size with enough power to move the air through the duct. In theory it sounds great though.

emmittjames said:

jgcable said:

I have the same problem with my house. I tried the fans, I tried the ceiling fans upstairs. Bottom line I think is the lack of BTU's coming from the pellet stove.
I probably need double the BTU's in order for it to heat up the 2nd floor.
I think that this an extremely common problem with pellet stove users. My buddy has a similar sized wood burning stove with no blowers on it and it puts out double the BTU's that my pellet stove does. His 2nd floor is so hot they have to open the windows sometimes.
I think its all about BTU's. Period.

Click to expand...

you may be right. my problem is that i have no real fall back -- we don't have separate zones for the oil boiler, and the thermostat is about 20 feet from the pellet stove. We are super super lucky and have 1 year old windows, so that's great. We also have ceiling fans upstairs -- do you put them in reverse to suck warm air up? I guess i need to get the hottest pellets i can get and see how that helps. We are mainly downstairs, but i have a 4yo, a 2yo and a baby, and aside from naps, there are times that i would LOVE to send them their rooms! 'cept the baby, cause he's still sweet...

Click to expand...

Warm air goes to cool. In order to warm up an area, the cool air has to be removed. That's what a furnace cold air return does. It's powerful motor will PULL cool air and PUSH warm air at the same time. Your stove is NOT a furnace. It's blower fan is not powerful enough to PULL the house's cool air. One suggestion is to have a fan by the downstairs so that the cool air has a PUSH/PULL to the basement. Then the warm air has a chance to go UP because, again, warm air goes to cool. It now has a place to go.

I'm very new to this, but this is what we did.

We have the pellet stove in the basement. It's only place we could put it, as we have a 3 yr old modular ranch with no chimney. So trying to get the hot air upstairs, we put in a floor vent in each room. They're like $7 like at Home Depot. I then got small electric fans, like 6" size and put them right under the vent. They're basically personal fans (all that i could find this time of year) I got them at k Mart and they were $7.50 each.

We originally had just the basement door open.

Just a thought is all

My home is over 100 years old. The pellet stove for the past 2 years have had the downstairs in the upper 70's to the lower 80's. The upstairs would be in the lower 50's to the upper 40's depending on the outdoor temperature. I tried the fan blowing warm air upstairs, that didn't work. This summer I researched about floor grates with louvres. I looked in many places. I ended up buying two on Ebay. They are 14 x 16 with working louvres. The grates themselves were made in 1888. They are made of solid steel and look wonderful.
This week has been cool here in Portland,Maine. Last night the temperature went down to 8 degrees in my back yard. The temperature upstairs was a balmy 64 degrees. I am quite pleased with these floor grates.

Need some more better insulation. Asking too much from the pellet stove for too much house. Stove possibly installed in the wrong place. Maybe a combo of several.

rehabbingisgreen said:

SmokeyTheBear said:

rehabbingisgreen said:

I'm in the same boat. Too cool for my liking upstairs. Our stove is in the mail living area and faces the stairs but the cold air from upstairs and the warm from down meet in the middle at the landing where the stairs switch back. I'm still looking for a placement on fans that will get the warm air up the stairs. In the summer our upstairs is scorching so this is frustrating.

Click to expand...

Have you tried a fan on the floor of the middle landing pointed towards the lower section of the stairs? Move the cold air down low not the hot.

Click to expand...

I have but it doesn't seem to do much. I've also tried the fan at the top of the stairs but it still feels like it hits a wall. I don't know. Last night I went the other way and put two fans in a row to try to get the warm air to go up the stairs and no good either.

Click to expand...

Move the cold air, depending upon the distance you may need another fan, always take the cold air towards the stove.