Hi everyone, haven't posted much lately but have still been reading much. I have been burning my Englander 30nc down in my unfinished basement for about 3 weeks now with pretty good success getting the heat to circulate. Here is the breakdown:
-stove in the basement
-a floor register in each of my 3 1st level rooms open to the basement.
-upstairs (I don't worry about heating the upstairs, we use electric heat for those small rooms.)
Ok so I keep my basement stairwell door (which opens to my kitchen) open and all of my heat come from the stairwell. The floor registers in each room act as cold air returns(I wouldn't have thought this is how it would work, but I went with nature). This seemed to work ok as I could feel the warm air coming up the stairwell and feel the cold air coming down out of the 3 registers, so I had circulation. The basement would heat to about 90 and I could get the 1st floor up to about 71 with no additional heat source. I even aided the cold air returns by hanging ductwork from the registers to the floor to let the cold air filter right to ground level in my basement and thus not having to fight the warm air trying to return to my stove(remember the cold air was already winning so I just helped it out). Everything seemed well, I was mostly pleased that I could at least heat my 1st floor to 70 or so. We even had some nights in the low 30's upper 20's and I was still slowly able to get the house to a good temperature.
Now today, I had a fire overnight and reloaded this morning...have been here with stove top temperatures about 500 avg. all day, basement is 92 degrees...I cannot get the 1st floor above 66 degrees. It is even now 51 degrees outside and sunny which should help. Air still seems to be circulating...not sure what changed???
Anyone know of something I can change or add to try and get a smaller gap in my temperature difference between floors...I mean even on a good day I heat the basement to 90 and the 1st floor won't get much above 71 (except for the kitchen where the heat first comes up, it gets a bit higher. I know quite a few others have a wood stove in the basement to heat the 1st floor...what have you tried that works!! Thanks in advance!
-stove in the basement
-a floor register in each of my 3 1st level rooms open to the basement.
-upstairs (I don't worry about heating the upstairs, we use electric heat for those small rooms.)
Ok so I keep my basement stairwell door (which opens to my kitchen) open and all of my heat come from the stairwell. The floor registers in each room act as cold air returns(I wouldn't have thought this is how it would work, but I went with nature). This seemed to work ok as I could feel the warm air coming up the stairwell and feel the cold air coming down out of the 3 registers, so I had circulation. The basement would heat to about 90 and I could get the 1st floor up to about 71 with no additional heat source. I even aided the cold air returns by hanging ductwork from the registers to the floor to let the cold air filter right to ground level in my basement and thus not having to fight the warm air trying to return to my stove(remember the cold air was already winning so I just helped it out). Everything seemed well, I was mostly pleased that I could at least heat my 1st floor to 70 or so. We even had some nights in the low 30's upper 20's and I was still slowly able to get the house to a good temperature.
Now today, I had a fire overnight and reloaded this morning...have been here with stove top temperatures about 500 avg. all day, basement is 92 degrees...I cannot get the 1st floor above 66 degrees. It is even now 51 degrees outside and sunny which should help. Air still seems to be circulating...not sure what changed???
Anyone know of something I can change or add to try and get a smaller gap in my temperature difference between floors...I mean even on a good day I heat the basement to 90 and the 1st floor won't get much above 71 (except for the kitchen where the heat first comes up, it gets a bit higher. I know quite a few others have a wood stove in the basement to heat the 1st floor...what have you tried that works!! Thanks in advance!