Help me heat my house better

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cstamm81

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Nov 5, 2011
27
Leesport, PA
I have a basement installed Napoleon 1900. The basement is not insulated and the front third is above grade. It is concrete block and I know I am losing a ton of heat this way. All that aside, I want to try and come up with the best way to heat my house with wood effectively.
Last year I had an old smoke dragon with a heat reclaimer on the stove pipe. This heated pretty well but murdered wood and created a lot of creosote. I now have an EPA stove and it seems to heat well, but I fear with colder weather coming I will not be able to heat with wood alone. The house is one story, about 1900 sq ft. I have tried pulling hot air off a plenum above the stove with an inline duct fan to feed into my living room. This works decently but only heats 1 room well and is also not up to code. I also tried forcing my oil burner fan to run, and running a cold air return line with one end open near the stove. This circulates air through the ducts, but the air is not warm at all. I am thinking that until it goes through the returns, back across the house to get pulled through the furnace, there is no heat left.
Please see my rudimentary drawing. Red lines are supply lines, blue are returns. If anyone has any good ideas I am all ears. I am considering getting an Englander Add on furnace and running it into my existing ductwork. But, I am not sure how this would work as the wood furnace would be on the other end of the oil furnace. The blower from the wood furnace would need to solely supply heated air to all of the ducts. Or else I could install new ducts to key rooms and only feed those with the wood furnace. Ideas?

34pmc6f.jpg
 
Insulate is the trick,but if you don't have the money to do it all do what you can and use tarps to block off half the basement don't sound like much but will make a big difference I now use less wood and my upstairs is around 70 all winter
 
Not the same construction but the same trouble. Heat loss because I lack insulation. As others have posted, insulation and I would add to look at your windows and doors too
 
As someone who installed an EPA stove in the basement last year, I typically saw basement temps of ~64-68 degrees. 68 when the stove was giving it's best. Basement had very little insulation, R-5 on about half of the walls. Now I have it completely insulated to R-5 and in the process of insulating to R-10. More importantly, I used 2-inch XPS cut and placed in the rim joist, sealed in place with Great Stuff can foam. Since I closed up a lot of those air leaks, I installed an OAK (running up the wall through the rim joist) and that helped a ton to reduce air infiltration.

My basement is typically 68-72 degrees now, and I think it'll get better as I get the insulation completely up to R-10. Based on the dimensions in your drawing, 2 inch XPS foam board (R-10) would be ~$1,125 based on ~$25/ 4'x8' sheet (45 sheets) plus your local tax & foam adhesive. Just a thought to compare to the cost of an add on furnace.

One last thing, XPS should be covered with a fire-retardant material per code (I think IRC) so eventually you would need to cover it with 1/2" drywall or something similar.
 
thanks for all of the replies so far. I understand where everyone is coming from but... my thought was with a furnace I could duct the heat to my living floor which is insulated. This in theory would allow me to not insulate the basement, and would mean I would not have to heat the basement AND the living floor. In my perfect world I would be heating half the square footage this way.

If I go with insulating the basement, what would be the most bang for my buck? Stud the walls and roll bats? Or just slap up furring strips and put XPS to it?
 
If you're thinking the add-on furnace ducted to heat exclusively the upstairs, then would you not use the stove in the basement? Is that what you mean by heating half the square footage?

The fiberglass batts are definitely less expensive, but I really would not recommend them in a basement. For one, fiberglass batts are not an air barrier and therefore would need to be enclosed (on all 6 sides, left, right, front, back, top & bottom) so no air passes through them. If air is passing through them, the R-value is reduced and can become essentially R-0. Not a problem if you frame, insulate with batts then cover with an air barrier (like drywall), but now the cost is going up...along with time and effort. IN other words, you won't get that R-value until your basement is finished. They also will most likely end up with mold growth in a basement, especially more likely in a warm basement with a wood stove. Here is a good link that describes it. That is why I think the 2" XPS will give the most bang in the short-term and long-term.

http://www.buildingscience.com/documents/reports/rr-0202-basement-insulation-systems
 
I may be able to do one better. Attached is a pic of what I did. I used 2-inch because it has the highest R-value and because you need at least 1.5 inches of XPS for a moisture barrier (to reduce the likelihood of mold formation). Again, this is why I felt I needed to do the OAK. I really eliminated a lot of air infiltration and since my stove is in the basement, I was afraid it might starve for combustion air. Since that air is not coming in through those cracks anymore, the basement has MUCH less of a "chill" factor. In fact, my wife just headed down to the basement to hang up laundry and said "I'm going downstairs where it's warm." Keep in mind it is not finished, just insulated to R-5 at the moment.

I'm not sure if this will do much to help your situation for heating the upstairs, but keep this in mind. Your upstairs needs to get a certain amount of BTUH's from that stove to get you where you want to be. The more BTUH's that are lost through the walls and rim joist, the harder this is going to be. If it better meets your needs to stop using the stove downstairs and install an add on furnace ducted to the upstairs, then insulating is somewhat of a moot point.

BTW, what are your upstairs temps compared to your basement temps (with the stove running)?

An OAK is an Outside Air Kit. Lots of great info on this forum, pros/cons, etc. Lots of debate about them, too.
 

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