MOVING AIR, need HELP

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padfitz

New Member
Oct 16, 2011
26
NEPA
Installed a P43 in a raised ranch home, bottom floor. Living area is in the upper level and having a hard time getting the temps above 65. The downstairs is 78 or so. Have a man door opening without the door, from the downstair to the upstairs kitchen area. Installed floor vents in all rooms with grates in the lower ceiling to allow warm air to rise. In one, installed a 6" inline fan to create a small return from upstairs to the downstairs with the hopes that it will get warmer.

trouble is nothing seems to work and the wife unit has about had it with the 5500 investment and wants the electric on, full time.

Figured I would ask on here, seems like the best place to get some advise.....

Thanks for your help.

Dan
 
Have you tried to turn your furance fan to on at the thermostat? If you have a cold air return downstairs that will help.
I have my stove in the basement & it is 73 & 71 upstairs. When outside temp gets below 32, I turn on the furance fan
to circulate the air. If you do this, make sure you check your filter monthly. Hope this helps
 
What controls the temperature down stairs where the unit is?
 
Is the stove blowing air towards the door? Is the heat rising up the stairs and then comming back through the vents? There are quite a few questions about your layout that could affect your ability to circulate the heat.

One of the things to consider is that your house has a natural covection of air. To move hot air up you need to move cold air down. Cold air is actually easier to affect so I would figure out what the natural movement is and then augment it with a fan blowing cold air to the stove (Down).
 
Trickyrick said:
Is the stove blowing air towards the door? Is the heat rising up the stairs and then comming back through the vents? There are quite a few questions about your layout that could affect your ability to circulate the heat.

One of the things to consider is that your house has a natural covection of air. To move hot air up you need to move cold air down. Cold air is actually easier to affect so I would figure out what the natural movement is and then augment it with a fan blowing cold air to the stove (Down).

X2

Yes down low and slow towards the stove. You must work with the normal air flow in your house and the stove.

There are some other things to consider as well as just moving the air but you haven't provided enough information.

If you went through the trouble of cutting holes in the house I hope you checked with the code enforcement folks first.
 
Some of the discussion on this thread got me thinking about our own set up. We are new to pellet heating and placed our stove in an alcove at the bottom of the stairs and just off the double wide entry to the main room on the first floor. In an effort to assist/encourage heat distribution we also installed a ceiling fan in the hallway at the top of the stairs. So far we are warm throughout the house.

We have been operating the fan in the direction which draws air up. Is that correct or should we be pushing the air down to move cold air down the stairs?
 
If you put vents in the floor. I hope they are fire safe fusible links? Otherwise it may be a code violation. In the event of a fire (god forbid) your Ins Co. might not pay...

Moving air is hard. But pushing cold air to the warm air with small fans and running ceiling fans on low and in reverse works well. In most cases (Most) if you use your furnace to circulate the warm air. It will only cool the warm room. The ducts are cold and only circulating 75* air is not going to be very efficient. The stove room will cool off, but it will not help the upstairs much. Evening out the temps. Yes... Helping to raise the temps.. No....

Try a small fan at the top of the stairs. Blowing Down the steps. Cold air finds warm air easier than warm to cold...

I use through the wall fans and ceiling fans. 2,180 sq ft and the whole house is within 1*-2* of the 75*-76* we keep it at.




Also are you running the stove constantly? Running Stove temp or Room temp?

I have found by running 24/7 I can heat my area running on a lower setting. But running it all the time. Ran all night last night. Woke up it was 75*. .

Running the stove longer and lower keeps not just the air warm. But all the items in your home warm. Keeping a better "Soak" temp. Thats my experience anyways. Everyones house, stove, insulation, windows are different. Results will vary.
 
WELL SAID DexterDay!!
I fight with the same thing how to move air!!
 
OK, no furnace system in the house. Just a ventless propane heater in the lower section and electric in the upper.

Thanks everyone for the reply's, think we have this figured out.

With the door opening from the lower to the upper, this is roughly 21 sqft. So, if you want to move are then you have to have the same amount of return. I opened up vents, 4X10 on the perimiters, under the windows and installed 6" duct fans to help draw the air. With the stove on manual, that is were we run it 99% of the time, the air is moving up the stairs.....

Just had to think about it.
 
I am with oldmtV - new to pellets and feeling my way on air movement and other issues.

I reversed my upstairs hallway ceiling fan for a trial and the heat upstairs IS better. That is counter-intuitive, but it works.

We have also kept the stove running 24/7 through this coldish snap/October snow (31 degrees outside this morning) and the house is completely toasty - even the bathrooms which I was worried about because of location around corners, etc. I set the room temp control to about 63/65 overnight, fan on low and pellet feed on 2, and woke up to 68 on the old thermostat and a comfortable feeling throughout. I kicked it up to 70 so my teen daughter's early morning shower would not leave her cold.

So far so good.
 
this is only rated for 1000sq feet (perfect for our house) but i read on the forum that properly humidified air feels warmer.
and this vornado unit is supposed to draw air down from the ceiling and distribute it throughout the house.
http://www.vornado.com/product.aspx?CategoryId=6f6a8667-abcd-45ab-b7c4-9afd00945565

i haven't received it yet. but in our 925 sq. foot house, i'm hoping to kill two birds with one stone (we are both getting kind of dried out in the 5 days we've had the stove.)

as i said, our house is amall and the living room gets quite warm on the way to getting the back bedroom up to heat.
by spreading the heat out from the upper part of the living room, i hope to balance things out a bit.
 
oldmountvernon said:
DexterDay said:
If you put vents in the floor. I hope they are fire safe fusible links? Otherwise it may be a code violation. In the event of a fire (god forbid) your Ins Co. might not pay...

Moving air is hard. But pushing cold air to the warm air with small fans and running ceiling fans on low and in reverse works well. In most cases (Most) if you use your furnace to circulate the warm air. It will only cool the warm room. The ducts are cold and only circulating 75* air is not going to be very efficient. The stove room will cool off, but it will not help the upstairs much. Evening out the temps. Yes... Helping to raise the temps.. No....

Try a small fan at the top of the stairs. Blowing Down the steps. Cold air finds warm air easier than warm to cold...

I use through the wall fans and ceiling fans. 2,180 sq ft and the whole house is within 1*-2* of the 75*-76* we keep it at.




Also are you running the stove constantly? Running Stove temp or Room temp?

I have found by running 24/7 I can heat my area running on a lower setting. But running it all the time. Ran all night last night. Woke up it was 75*. .

Running the stove longer and lower keeps not just the air warm. But all the items in your home warm. Keeping a better "Soak" temp. Thats my experience anyways. Everyones house, stove, insulation, windows are different. Results will vary.

you make some interesting points Dexter my bedroom upstairs above the garage is cold its big about 30x30 my thermostat ( for the regular furnace ) for upstairs is in the hallway just before entering my bedroom and i get in within a couple degrees to downstairs so i am happy about that so the heat is reaching there just not enough to warm it or go thru the doorway i was going to put a fan at the top of the stairs blowing the warm air in,to blow down the hall into my bedroom but if i read correctly i should be blowing the cold air out ?

another theory im debating i have a ceiling fan in there i was thinking if i set the fan to draw upwards i would be trying to pull the warm air into the room now im thinking maybe i should reverse it and push it in the down direction. your thoughts ?

btw im running on low setting and letting it run all it wants if i need a little more ill bump it up accordingly for a bit

i am pretty impressed what these pellet stoves are capable of so far

one more thought, what about closing the returns on the duct work so the heat dont escape thru it ? do people do that ?

Not sure what you mean on return ducts? In the years past before my Fahrenheit, I have sealed off the ducts completely (registers in house) I put the magnets over top of them. So no cold air from the basement was drawn up.

And yes to the ceiling fans in reverse. Thats drawing the cold air up to the warm air. Same as the fan blowing cold air down your steps. Works much better this way. Laws of thermodynamics.
 
You have to remember that your warm air vents are simply allowing the 80 degree air that it's in the basement to rise. You have to exchange a huge volume of air when your temperature difference between the two mediums is so small.

It's pretty much impossible to heat an upstairs the way you are trying to do it. This is well-known in the pellet/wood stove heating community.

The only way to get that heat upstairs is run a duct almost straight off the stove itself so you capturing the hot 200-300 degree air directly off the stove and putting it upstairs.
 
Checkthisout said:
You have to remember that your warm air vents are simply allowing the 80 degree air that it's in the basement to rise. You have to exchange a huge volume of air when your temperature difference between the two mediums is so small.

It's pretty much impossible to heat an upstairs the way you are trying to do it. This is well-known in the pellet/wood stove heating community.

The only way to get that heat upstairs is run a duct almost straight off the stove itself so you capturing the hot 200-300 degree air directly off the stove and putting it upstairs.

Opening up vents in the perimeter of the house has had the opposite effect. The vents are acting like returns, cool air is flowwing down, not the warm air up. This is due to the door opening from the basement. A picture would make this easier to understand but, do not have one. I am assuming this but, used wind smoke to actually see this.

Yesterday I installed 6" duct fans in two outer locations, furthest from the door opening and the temp increased some. Running it on manual, 78 degress, room temp high setting so the dist. blower runs.

It is fun trying differnt things and seeing what works and what does not. Just expensive........ lol
 
I also live in a raised ranch and the upstairs is always within 1-2 degrees of the downstairs, where the stove is.

In my opinion, you will not get much air circulating through the house with a single door opening. The downstairs in my home was set up the same way when I bought it so what I did was cut the wall to the downstairs in half and installed a railing. It is now wide open and the warm air flows freely. If you stand in the stairwell you can actually feel the warm air rising.
 

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Not sure if this helps but I know a guy who swears by cracking a window upstairs furthest away and it alows the hot air to move up. He is a wood stove burner and this is how he gets heat to his second floor from the basement.
 
Checkthisout said:
Yesterday I installed 6" duct fans in two outer locations, furthest from the door opening and the temp increased some. Running it on manual, 78 degress, room temp high setting so the dist. blower runs.
l

Are you using these fans to blow cold air down or warm air up?

My 2 cents - from my own trial and error - is that you seem to have a natural flow problem. Sounds like maybe its the doorway / house setup from the pellet stove room to the rest of the house. Ducts and fans may help a bit but but they probably won't get you what you are looking for. Heating the upstairs from the downstairs is always a problem if the air doesn't flow that way on it's own.

The pic above is a good example of the opening size needed to really solve this. That much opening allows the warm air to flow up on it's own - it just works. If your on that stairway you can probably also feel cold air rushing down along the treads. Maybe 6 inches of cold air running under several feet of warm air going in the opposite direction above it.

If you can't do that all you can do is force cold air down (maybe you already are) and hope the warm air comes up through the stairway.

Good luck.
 
staplebox said:
Checkthisout said:
Yesterday I installed 6" duct fans in two outer locations, furthest from the door opening and the temp increased some. Running it on manual, 78 degress, room temp high setting so the dist. blower runs.
l

Are you using these fans to blow cold air down or warm air up?

My 2 cents - from my own trial and error - is that you seem to have a natural flow problem. Sounds like maybe its the doorway / house setup from the pellet stove room to the rest of the house. Ducts and fans may help a bit but but they probably won't get you what you are looking for. Heating the upstairs from the downstairs is always a problem if the air doesn't flow that way on it's own.

The pic above is a good example of the opening size needed to really solve this. That much opening allows the warm air to flow up on it's own - it just works. If your on that stairway you can probably also feel cold air rushing down along the treads. Maybe 6 inches of cold air running under several feet of warm air going in the opposite direction above it.

If you can't do that all you can do is force cold air down (maybe you already are) and hope the warm air comes up through the stairway.

Good luck.

Well said Staplebox. The stair treads are always cool because the cold air flows down the stairs while the warm air rises over the top of it.

When i first had the stove put in I was worried that the downstairs living area would become too warm while the stove was burning but that is not the case at all. Most of the heat from the stove flows directly upstairs and just enough is left behind to make that room very comfortable to be in.
 
well. this could not have worked out better.
of course my house is much smaller. but this is how i just solved some air flow problems and really increased my usable heat while dialing back my thermostat.

the pics show how the stove is pointed to blow into the kitchen and on to the back bedroom. but it also hits the living room corner by the trunk. and that is the hot spot where a lot of the heat collects.
also shown are the two doorways out of the living room (side rooms and the aforementioned back of the house)

the vornado humidifier/circulator i just got today sits in the hot spot. draws the air through inlets at it's bottom. and shoots the heated humidified air straight to the ceiling.
i can feel the warm air roll out under the lintels of both doorways so all the other rooms are warmer and the living room doesn't get/stay so hot. basically a nice balance w/o wasting all the air that used to remain in the too hot living room.

i'm sofa king pleased i could spit.

(hey, bigruckus. it's not impossible that you could recognize our house.
we hear the man who lived here was a really good guy. help anybody. name of harry briggs.)




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JBiBBs5 said:
I also live in a raised ranch and the upstairs is always within 1-2 degrees of the downstairs, where the stove is.

In my opinion, you will not get much air circulating through the house with a single door opening. The downstairs in my home was set up the same way when I bought it so what I did was cut the wall to the downstairs in half and installed a railing. It is now wide open and the warm air flows freely. If you stand in the stairwell you can actually feel the warm air rising.

Yes, yes and yes !!

Just before I read this, we decided to cut the wall in half and remove the door opening, never had a door there anyway, just did not do it becuase the kids were small. Had visions of them throwing each other down the steps..... :)

So, the fans are acting as returns and blowing air back down stairs. You can feel the draft coming down the stairs as stated above. It is warmer but, removing half the wall and door opening will give the air a more natural movement flow and should solve the issue. The stairs coming up are open in design so that is not a factor.

The boss thinks this is going to happen in the spring, she does not handle work in the house very well so I just figured that when she goes to work Saturday, so will I...

Will post before and after photos, just need batteries and the kids Macbook to resize.

Thanks for all your help !
 
Good luck with the project. I look forward to seeing pics.

Like I said, I did the same thing just last winter so if you have any questions feel free to ask.
 
update on progress.

Finished removing the full wall in the stairwell and installed/built a half wall. Had to sink the end into the subfloor and tie into the joist for strength. The warm air is moving and helped greatly, and you do not feel the cold rush as much down the stairs. I purchased a Oregon multi reading thermometer and the reads are, 76 lower level, 70 at the top of the stairs, 68 in room around corner and 68 in farthest room. What I did do was to close all the registers that I installed. The lower level had the ceiling insulated so I removed it, installed two, 2x4 grates in the drop ceiling above the stove and now heat the ceiling/upper level floor and get the radiant heat. Thanks to a friend who pointed this out to me.

Before I did this, I purchased a "level to level" fan for $175.00, spent $250.00 at HD on insulated duct and duct fans and another $300.00 for Ductstats and speed controls to install 6 supplies and returns for the rooms. I was stuck on moving air. So, long story short, 76 down and 70 up is pretty good for me and works. I will post pictures of everything when I get back to the Mac, not a big PC fan but that is what I use at work.

Anyone intrested in a L2L fan, $125.00 takes it, never installed....... Returned the rest to HD and they were really nice about it...

Thanks Dan
 
Wow it sounds like you're quite handy. I had some help with cutting my wall and finishing my basement. I installed a hard ceiling and it is insulated as well but I wanted it that way because I installed a 7 channel surround sound system and my sons room is right above. Two of the speakers are in the ceiling and I really packed those in with insulation.

Even with the hard, insulated ceiling my upper floor is always warmer than the lower room with the stove in it. If its 72 downstairs it's usually about a degree or two higher upstairs.
 
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