Blaze King Owners...question

I am almost ready to pull the trigger on a Blaze King Princess Insert. I have a Ranch style home with a walk out basement. I have a fireplace in the basement and on the main level. My question is: If I put this in the basement (approx. 1000 sq ft), will it heat the main level well enough that I don't have to use my other heat source, or should I put it on the main level (approx. 2000 sq ft.) and we would stay out of the basement for the winter months? There is an open staircase that goes down stairs that does not have a door if that helps.

This is always a tough call, it can be tricky getting the heat out of the basement and it's almost always much hotter down there than upstairs. 3000 sq ft is really pushing the limits of the Princess especially with a basement install, you will probably get some heat upstairs but it could be as much as 5-15 degree difference between floors depending on the weather.

My Princess is installed in a 1000sq ft finished walkout basement and it does heat most of my upper 1200sq ft floor but I also have another stove up there to help out when needed. I'd opt to install it where you spend most of your time, prolly the upper main floor.

Unless a basement is insulated it sucks up a lot more heat than you would think it would. I heat from my basement. I was using a wood burning furnace plumed into the heating ducts. Last year I changed to a BK King Ultra. But it just wasn't keeping the house warm enough in cold weather. When it got real cold I hooked the wood furnace back to the chimney but not back up to the ducts. Then I was having trouble moving the heat up stairs. The kitchen where the stairway is was 90+ deg by time the heat got to the living rooms it was down to 70 and the back bedrooms were just cold.

I am going to move this to the BK thread and see if someone can answer over there...sorry didn't see that thread earlier!

I have my stove in the basement and heats my upstairs fine. My basement is 1400 sq ft and is finished an insulated.

My basement is 1400 sq ft as well and is finished and insulated (accept for the many windows I have looking outside). The upstairs which I will be trying to heat is approximately 1400 sq ft also. I am worried about the heat getting back to the rooms on the upper level where we sleep. I guess I can install it in the basement and if it doesn't work, move it to the upper level???

Like others have said its particularly difficult to get all that heat upstairs. You are going to have a 90 degree basement and a much cooler upstairs, especially the furthest rooms.

If you can somehow add some floor registers to allow cold air to go down easier, and some registers with built-in fans to pull hot air up I think it would work great.

I have a fan at the foot of my stairs blowing the cool air from upstairs downstairs, which increases the flow of warm air upstairs.

like others have said, put the space heater in the space to be heated
+1 for upstairs

I actually made a very simple set up to blow the cold air down stairs like you Dave T. I have the fan on an angle the same as the stairs instead of just blowing it though the door way. I did the toilet paper thing and you can actually see it move much further when blowing on an angle. My wife thinks I am nuts, I am!

Yeah, I showed my wife the toilet paper thing and she thought I was crazy.

I have mine in the basement. The basement is mostly insulated. I have probably 2/3 of the basement closed off so I'm not really heating the entire thing. I just leave my basement door open to let the heat come up. My basement does not get hot at all and natural convection draws the cold air down and lets the hot air rise to the second floor... Probably half of the heat comes up through the floors while the other half probably comes up through the open basement door. It works very well in my case, but I'm sure I'd use a little less wood if I were only heating the first floor.

From an efficiency standpoint, putting it on the first floor makes the most sense. In my case I like having the heated finished area in the basement and containing the dirty wood/ash to that area, but that's just me.

We put the BK insert on the main level where you spend most of your time and would enjoy not being cold in the winter.