How to circulate air around the house from a woodstove?

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Jaybird

New Member
Dec 14, 2010
4
NW VA/ Shenandoah Valley
Hi to everyone as I am new here!

My home is currently heated with LP Gas and the bills are driving me to the poor house. I have lived the past 25 years of my life with wood heat in my parents home and now live in my own home and am freezing and poor because of high gas bills.

I have a flue with chimney already installed in the basement and would lilke to put a woodstove in the basement to help alleviate with heating. My furnace and all of the duct work are already currently running in the basement. My home is one level and approximately 1,000 sq. ft. and is roughly 40 ft long and 25 ft wide. The basement door is located in the central hallway and almost dead center in the middle of the house.

I was hoping that anyone could tell me about an and all options I would have.

If possible I would like to know about putting cold air returns in the existing duct work and using the furnace fan to circulate air as well as using normal size floor vents on the hot side of the house and the cold side of the house to promote passive airflow.

Any help will be great... Diagrams would be awesome too!
 
Welcome to the forum Jaybird.

Not sure what you mean but I hope you do not intend to use the same chimney that your furnace already uses. But perhaps you have another flue available there? If not, you will have to put up another chimney. If so, put that stove in the house and not the basement and it will serve you much, much better. Running up and down stairs tending to a stove is not easy after a few weeks and besides, the stove is not where you can watch it nor take the most advantage of the heat; it is not easy to move heat from the basement to the top floor. Also, if your basement is not insulated, most of the heat from a wood stove will be soaked up into the walls so you will get even less benefit.

That said, if you can install one upstairs, you can be really happy and moving the heat on one level is really quite simple. You don't try to blow the heat, but you place a small fan, set on low speed in a doorway or a hallway and blow the cool air into the stove room. That will circulate the heat much, much better than trying to move the heat into the cool.

Good luck.
 
Good to hear at least (seperate flue) Backwoods has a knack of covering all the bases, like a sterioded baseball player.

If you have a fireplace on the main floor, have you considered an insert? or if its large enough a hearth mount?
I will agree that you will want it on you main living space, they are radiant heaters. plus they look cool and taking care of it is going to be easier. side note i hope you werent planning on some sort of hood above the stove and duct it into the system, not a good idea, can lead to backdrafting and you have the issue of carbon monoxide..

good luck send some pictures of this fireplace.
 
Welcome! I am new here myself, but for what it's worth we have a ceiling fan in our living room with our woodstove and it circulates the heat pretty well. The only issue we have had is with some of the back bedrooms in the house, but a small fan along with the ceiling fan is an idea I am going to try. Hope that helps we originally were told to use cold air returns but after some strong suggestions we decided to just go with the fan and it has been working pretty well so far.


Good Luck
 
I am struggling to get heat from the woodstove in my basement to the first floor of my house. I would recommend putting an insert in your fireplace on the first floor over the woodstove in the basement. Unless you went with a wood furnace or something like that.
 
I installed a switch with timer on my furnace to run the furnace fan. Circulates wood stove heat evenly to the entire house. If you are going to modify your duct work, suggest talking to a mechanical engineer for recommendations so you do not unbalance the system with too much return vs. supply vents. There are also some code issues about location of return ducts within proximity of a wood stove… Other than that modifing duct work is very simple to do….
 
I'm a big fan of putting the woodstove where you spend the majority of your time . . . especially with the great looking designs and large viewing windows of modern stoves . . . it always seems a shame to me to buy a beautiful stove and then stick it in the basement and not be able to enjoy the view of the fire, the smell of the simmering potpourri and the sound of the fire crackling away . . . and feeling that heat . . . I mean my whole home is heated by the woodstove, but without a doubt the best room in the house to truly get warm after being outside shoveling and plowing the snow with the ATV is in the room with the woodstove.
 
The basement option really depends on your house. If you have a walkout basement like I do then it might make good sense. Plus our walkout is the main entry point to the house. To put a stove on the first floor would mean hauling wood upstairs all the time. So it really depends on home layout.
 
wkpoor said:
The basement option really depends on your house. If you have a walkout basement like I do then it might make good sense. Plus our walkout is the main entry point to the house. To put a stove on the first floor would mean hauling wood upstairs all the time. So it really depends on home layout.
Click to expand...

I like my stove in the basement, the wife sits down reading a book, while I can relax upstairs with a frosty one...
 
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