We have a Harman P61 (great stove) that we installed new in Oct. After almost 3 months of steady use, we finally figured out how to heat our house with the stove! I guess we're a little slow.....we trialed many different settings and air movement options (hanging fans in doorways, running our ceiling fan, running furnace fan, etc., etc., etc. Because our stove sits on one end of our house we were having trouble getting the warm air to the farthest reaches. My husband set the fan on the floor in the room adjacent to the room with the stove and turned it so the cool floor air was blowing into the stove room and voila! Our entire downstairs is now at a steady temp. using stove temp. We couldn't be happier! Just thought I'd share in case others are having a similar problem.
Finally figured it out!
- Thread starter jeanjo
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LIpelletpig
Feeling the Heat
Just curious b/c I've been experimenting as well, approx. how far away is the fan from the stove room. I probably have a similar set up but I put the box fan on the floor and set on high and it really didn't work for me. Maybe I should put the fan on low or move the fan closer to the stove room to move the air better. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks
pegdot
New Member
The goal is simply to blow cool air into the stove room so that the incoming air will force warm air out of the stove room at ceiling height. Being able to point the fan directly at the stove is a plus but not strictly necessary. The distance from the fan to the stove isn't as important as the speed at which you move the cold air. If you move air to fast it creates a pretty uncomfortable draft at floor level. Slow and steady, small fan on low, seems to work best. Experiment with your fan placement by checking the air movement with a candle at each doorway. You want the flame pulled away from the stove room near the top and pulled towards the stove room near the floor. Once you've found a fan placement that accomplishes that you are golden. :coolsmile:
Any suggestions on how to use ceiling fans to accomplish this? I have a ceiling fan in the room with the stove and one in the next room over, with the opening to the rooms 6'wide. So far I have been running the one in the room with the stove blowing down on a slow speed, and leaving the one in the adjacent room off. I also have ceiling fans in three of the bedrooms upstairs which also remain off. My stove heats most of the first floor, but not the farthest side away from the stove, and none of the heats gets upstairs. I've tried having the ceiling fan in the adjacent room on low blowing up, which didn't seem to do much.
Questions: Should the fans blow up or down? Which ones on/off?
JB
Questions: Should the fans blow up or down? Which ones on/off?
JB
I'm not sure on the ceiling fans, when we ran ours (in the room with the stove) it actually made the rest of the house cooler. If we could reverse our fan to suck air up from the floor it may have worked better?
We have an old farmhouse with a fairly closed floor plan except that we have a couple of large open doorways that are in line with the rest of the rooms. We started out with our fan in the large doorway directly going into our stove room. When we discovered how much warmer the adjacent room got, we decided to move the fan back one more doorway. Now the fan is approximately in the middle of our house facing the doorway to the stove room. We just set it on low and within minutes the temp in the rest of the house (downstairs only) goes up. Our downstairs is approx. 1800 sq. ft. of space and with this method it is now a pretty steady 68 - 72 degrees, depending of course on outside temps., etc.
Peggy's explanation makes perfect sense and what we thought was probably happening. I wish we would have thought of it a lot earlier!
We have an old farmhouse with a fairly closed floor plan except that we have a couple of large open doorways that are in line with the rest of the rooms. We started out with our fan in the large doorway directly going into our stove room. When we discovered how much warmer the adjacent room got, we decided to move the fan back one more doorway. Now the fan is approximately in the middle of our house facing the doorway to the stove room. We just set it on low and within minutes the temp in the rest of the house (downstairs only) goes up. Our downstairs is approx. 1800 sq. ft. of space and with this method it is now a pretty steady 68 - 72 degrees, depending of course on outside temps., etc.
Peggy's explanation makes perfect sense and what we thought was probably happening. I wish we would have thought of it a lot earlier!
lessoil
Minister of Fire
I just posted this in the poll but thought it would fit in here as well.
Well, in our case fans made things worse.
We have a small Cape with the stove in the living room.
I tried running ceiling fans (Both ways), I installed fans to push the
warm air up the stairs and installed fans in the upstairs bedroom doorway.
For some reason, the fans prevented the natural flow of heat to the 2nd floor.
I used some smoke from a burned out match upstairs to see what was happening
after all of the fans were shut off. The warm air was moving just fine
into the bedrooms. A ranch style house would work different.
Everybody has a different setup. In our case the fans did not work.
When it was -24 we kept the upstairs between 65 and 70.(No fans)
Downstairs was around 78.
Well, in our case fans made things worse.
We have a small Cape with the stove in the living room.
I tried running ceiling fans (Both ways), I installed fans to push the
warm air up the stairs and installed fans in the upstairs bedroom doorway.
For some reason, the fans prevented the natural flow of heat to the 2nd floor.
I used some smoke from a burned out match upstairs to see what was happening
after all of the fans were shut off. The warm air was moving just fine
into the bedrooms. A ranch style house would work different.
Everybody has a different setup. In our case the fans did not work.
When it was -24 we kept the upstairs between 65 and 70.(No fans)
Downstairs was around 78.
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