Help Please - Having Trouble Moving Air From Basement...

[solotripper]

Nope, can't go upstairs either. All my plumbing goes through the basement so i have to keep the basement heated all winter and I've just put a hole in my masonry block wall...

Perhaps in an ideal world i could have a stove on in both the basement and main floor but that's not likely to happen

 

[bubba3228]

solotripper- I think the main thing to do and think of would be to do what wkpoor and tscassavaugh say, it takes time and consistincy to keep the structure warm, you are not necessarly losing the heat through the basement walls it is storing the energy in my opinion. When it gets to be -20 it is still 40-50 below grade, frost line...it may be 50-60 with what you are doing Check with a local insulation contractor and have them give you an estimate to button things up for the 3 feet exposed to the outside. Do not look at it as a cost to you, but an investment that will pay for itself in time. Keep your stick on the ice. ( my favorite red - green quote ). :coolsmile

Let the cold air returns bring the cool air into the basement, it will push the hot air out and up.

 

[BrowningBAR]

Nope, can't go upstairs either. All my plumbing goes through the basement so i have to keep the basement heated all winter and I've just put a hole in my masonry block wall...

Perhaps in an ideal world i could have a stove on in both the basement and main floor but that's not likely to happen

Then you're going to need a bigger stove, because if you are having problems heating the upstairs in relatively mild weather, you're going to be really disappointed in January when the temperatures really drop.

 

[Loco Gringo]

How tight is the house solo?

 

[Rob From Wisconsin]

Try cracking open a basement window and a window upstairs.
You'd be shocked how much heat that moves from the basement
to the upstairs. It works very well for our basement unit.

 

[whit]

One way to get heat out of the basement is to get a cheap fan intended for a bathroom ceiling vent operation, mount it on the ceiling over your wood stove, then get some flexible 4" duct (or whatever fits the fan outlet) and run it from the outlet of the fan to one of your holes in the floor. Or put a grate in the floor that has a fitting on the bottom to accept the duct.

Now, the fan might quit on you after a year or so. They have on me. But you can get that sort of fan $10-20 in a big-box store (Home Depot lists on at $14 that looks to be about the sort I've used), and the flexible duct is cheap too. A nice floor grill with a fitting to receive it is probably going to be the most expensive part of this setup.

 

[pen]

One way to get heat out of the basement is to get a cheap fan intended for a bathroom ceiling vent operation, mount it on the ceiling over your wood stove, then get some flexible 4" duct (or whatever fits the fan outlet) and run it from the outlet of the fan to one of your holes in the floor. Or put a grate in the floor that has a fitting on the bottom to accept the duct.

Now, the fan might quit on you after a year or so. They have on me. But you can get that sort of fan $10-20 in a big-box store (Home Depot lists on at $14 that looks to be about the sort I've used), and the flexible duct is cheap too. A nice floor grill with a fitting to receive it is probably going to be the most expensive part of this setup.

If there are codes in your area, this is not a code compliant recommendation.

pen

 

[solotripper]

My issue is that I just purchased the house in the spring, and as the frost began to thaw, i had water coming in through the foundation. There is no blueskin or weeping tile and very poor drainage where I live. If I insulate now, it's going to get wet in the spring and mold will surely follow.

We gutted the house on the main level so it's fairly tight now, but it's definately not super tight.

 

[Loco Gringo]

Try cracking open a basement window and a window upstairs.
You'd be shocked how much heat that moves from the basement
to the upstairs. It works very well for our basement unit.

This is why I asked how tight your house is. If its that tight, its like your oven, the heat/air cant move. Esp up!

 

[whit]

If there are codes in your area, this is not a code compliant recommendation.

pen

Possibly not. But can you see any danger in it? For a cooking stove exhaust, you'd want a fan rated for that and capable of moving more cubic feet of air faster, than for a bathroom exhaust. But we're not using it for exhaust here. It's just to move air internally. Installed at the ceiling, this isn't in any danger from the heat of the stove. The ceiling itself would catch fire first if it were. Where I live you can do anything you want to the insides of your house if you own it, while a contractor would have incentive to follow national suggested codes for liability reasons, but there's no inspection. I wired much of my own house and generally followed code, and parts of it are now much safer than it was left by the licensed contractor hired by the prior owner. But I didn't look up code for putting a simple fan in the ceiling over the basement stove. It may well be "wrong."

Now, you could always put it on a plug-in line and hang it temporarily by something, and code wouldn't play at all, any more than it does when you plug in any other fan in a temporary location. Still, where's the danger here? If there were a fire in the basement this could draw smoke up into the house. But that would merely warn you sooner, since it's wood smoke that anyone with a working nose can smell quickly. And a kitchen-stove-rated fan would merely move more smoke quicker. On the other hand, if you also have a forced-air furnace down there, a fire started at the wood stove would also send smoke up through that too.

There may be a potential problem. I'm no expert. Hopefully if it is against code someone can explain to us whether it's also any real risk. Then again, much of the code as written is highly ambiguous, and depends mostly on the interpretation of local inspectors, for those areas graced by them. So what's allowed in one town may be disallowed in another, where they've both included the same model code in the local ordinances, because the inspectors read it differently.

 

[pen]

I'm not saying I can agree with all codes either. However, it's generally code that there be 10 feet between a vent and a wood burning appliance and even that requires a fire damper (closes at a certain temp) for floor penetrations.

What one decides is appropriate for their own home is their business. When giving advice, I don't want to give out advice that they simply assume is safe or meets code when they don't know otherwise. If they go to sell the house they could find out their error, worst case is they have a fire and innocently didn't know the danger.

I don't understand why the floor to floor passages are as they are considering the stairwell is huge in comparison, but I just want to be sure that folks know you can't just put cuts in the floor where you want or forced air appliance drafts where they want until educated on the risks.

pen

 

[whit]

I'm not saying I can agree with all codes either. However, it's generally code that there be 10 feet between a vent and a wood burning appliance and even that requires a fire damper (closes at a certain temp) for floor penetrations.

Worth knowing. Makes sense in terms of a fire wall, and a vent that goes up directly to the next level. Flame shoots up, fire spreads up faster. Now in my case I have an exhaust fan mounted to the ceiling over the basement wood stove that's connected to about 15 feet of aluminum tubing that in turn connects to the bottom of a floor vent. This is where there might be ambiguity of interpretation. Is the "location" of the vent at the floor vent 15 feet from the stove, or the exhaust fan straight above it? If it is interpreted as being where the fan is, moving the fan 10 feet from the stove would still be useful, since hot air concentrates just under the ceiling and spreads out there.

There are some passive vents elsewhere between the basement and first floor, left over from decades back when there was a coal furnace in the basement here and nothing to circulate heat beyond those. Would current code require all these have fire dampers, when there's a wood stove anywhere in the basement? The house inspector I brought in when buying the place made no comment on them, and the stove (an old Vermont Castings Defiant) came with the place. Or is that sort of venting in a category where it's grandfathered in existing construction, while forbidden in new construction or alterations?

If the vents do require fire dampers, I take it there are available vent assemblies where those work on some sort of passive, bi-metal mechanism? This is something that can just be dropped in replacing the current grills?

 

[maple1]

My issue is that I just purchased the house in the spring, and as the frost began to thaw, i had water coming in through the foundation. There is no blueskin or weeping tile and very poor drainage where I live. If I insulate now, it's going to get wet in the spring and mold will surely follow.

We gutted the house on the main level so it's fairly tight now, but it's definately not super tight.

If at all possible, I would consider slapping up some closed cell styrofoam sheets on your basement walls. Tape the seams, stick it however you can. Run it right up over the rim joist space. It won't soak up water, any that comes in in the spring will run down the back of the sheets onto the floor. Then when you get around to improving the drainage issue, you can tidy up the styrofoam & finish it properly later. I agree that a huge amount of heat is being heatsinked out thru the walls. It is not just the 3' above ground, when the frost sets in that will be another 2-3 feet anyway of basically solid ice on the other side of that concrete.

Good luck.

 

[wkpoor]

One way to get heat out of the basement is to get a cheap fan intended for a bathroom ceiling vent operation, mount it on the ceiling over your wood stove, then get some flexible 4" duct (or whatever fits the fan outlet) and run it from the outlet of the fan to one of your holes in the floor. Or put a grate in the floor that has a fitting on the bottom to accept the duct.

Now, the fan might quit on you after a year or so. They have on me. But you can get that sort of fan $10-20 in a big-box store (Home Depot lists on at $14 that looks to be about the sort I've used), and the flexible duct is cheap too. A nice floor grill with a fitting to receive it is probably going to be the most expensive part of this setup.

If there are codes in your area, this is not a code compliant recommendation.

pen

I contacted my local FD last yr about cutting holes in the basement ceiling. They said they knew of no codes for doing that and as for the increased danger, you might buy yourself another 30secs without the hole. Any flame will travel the ceiling and find the stairwell so its kind of a mute point.

 

[pen]

One way to get heat out of the basement is to get a cheap fan intended for a bathroom ceiling vent operation, mount it on the ceiling over your wood stove, then get some flexible 4" duct (or whatever fits the fan outlet) and run it from the outlet of the fan to one of your holes in the floor. Or put a grate in the floor that has a fitting on the bottom to accept the duct.

Now, the fan might quit on you after a year or so. They have on me. But you can get that sort of fan $10-20 in a big-box store (Home Depot lists on at $14 that looks to be about the sort I've used), and the flexible duct is cheap too. A nice floor grill with a fitting to receive it is probably going to be the most expensive part of this setup.

If there are codes in your area, this is not a code compliant recommendation.

pen

I contacted my local FD last yr about cutting holes in the basement ceiling. They said they knew of no codes for doing that and as for the increased danger, you might buy yourself another 30secs without the hole. Any flame will travel the ceiling and find the stairwell so its kind of a mute point.

I agree, just wanted to let people know that this concern is out there.

I have a hard time being concerned about a grate in the floor when there is an open stairwell right there. However, I can see that flames shooting through these open holes could potentially eliminate other exits in the house for you.

It's just information, everyone can do as they see fit with it. Just be careful

pen

 

[kenora]

I have a similar house (maybe a bit bigger at 900 sq/ft) that is heated with oil/forced air. My crawspace (4 ft) has a poured concrete pony wall with 2x6 framing above. I am not sure if I am lucky or not but the foundation sits on the giant granite rock that makes up much of N/W Ontario, as a result the basement floor and those pony walls are nasty heat sinks.

What I did was glue 2" styrofoam (blue stuff) to the concrete pony wall and 2x6s. Then I bonded (glueded) drywall to the styrofoam as a fireblock (its code in Ontario, mind you I never had it inspected I just didn't want grief if the insurance company got as look; I would claim I boght it like that).

Total cost was about $400, since I was only going up 4 ft your cost would probably be twice that.

fwiw I am looking at putting a wood stove in the L/R (main floor).... thinking of a Jotul

I included a picture of the house and driveway for those that have't been out our way!

these picutes were taken in August

 

[wkpoor]

WHAT August! That looks like January here.

 

[jtb51b]

I'd suggest you check www.tjernlund.com for the Airshare product.

That looks promising. I am going to look into them! Thanks for the link!

Jason

 

[kenora]

WHAT August! That looks like January here.

Just pulling your chain...those were a few days in early December last year

 

[410MAN]

Well solotripper,
the only thing i got to add is all ya'll up far north (thats past Arkansas) sure get cold, Move down here to North East Texas where it gets down to maybe 18 about every 3 yrs,
If you do move bring a BIG airconditioner , good luck on keepin warm

 

[Joe in MI]

+1 on everybody that mentioned the basement walls being a heat-sink. I "borrowed" a thermal imaging camera from work the other day and checked out my house. From outside, the uninsulated crawl-space and exposed basement walls were blazing white with heat on the black and white display. I initially thought maybe they had just held the heat from the sun during the day. I went down into the basement and looked at the same walls from inside. The uninsulated basement walls were relatively warm until you got up to ground level. The foot or two of above-grade wall looked black (COLD!) in the display. I am clearly losing a ton of heat out those walls.
I have a ton of other things going right now, but I'm seriously considering spending some time and money and at least insulating the crawlspace walls.

I don't have any experience with basement installs, but based on what I know about heat, and heat transfer, I think you're either going to need a bigger stove, or a more insulated setup in the basement.

Looking at this from a different angle - Does anyone know if an outside air kit would do him any good? It makes sense (to me, anyway) that if he's got a roaring fire going, it's going to be pulling in a lot of air, creating a slight negative pressure environment in the basement. Would an OAK make enough of a difference in that situation? I don't think it takes much - people have posted how simply cracking a living room window allows their stove (without an OAK) to burn better. That's GOT to have an effect on how the air is moving around the house.


Bear in mind that everything I know, I learned from the internet.