How do you heat the whole house?

[shtrdave]

I see a lot of people here that heat a whole house with one stove, similar to mine. I am wondering how you do it?

How do you circulate the air throughout the house? My main room is 18x26 and I have issues keeping it all about the same temp, without getting into the two bedrooms and the bathroom.

The half of the room that is kitchen is a few degrees cooler than the rest of the room, it is noticably cooler at floor to knee level.

I am sitting here and the temp was up to about 68 and then the stove shut down and the temp is dropping I now have a bit of a chill, and the stove will not come back on for a couple of hours until the temp drops to maybe 63. If I set to stove temp then it runs and it gets far to warm, does one just need to play around with the settings to figure out the temp thing?

 

[nate379]

About the only time I have trouble is when it's -20* out, then the back rooms of the house are a bit cooler. If it's 70* in the living room (where the stove is) it might be only 65* in the back rooms.

 

[subsailor]

You're never going to have the whole house the same temp when all of your heat is coming from 1 spot. I run my Harman in stove temp only, but I'm always playing with the temp setting. If you want to set it and leave it, then you're going to have the temp swings.

 

[Hoot23]

My Harman does a pretty good job heating the whole house. It's a 1900 sf colonial. It's an open concept. Stove is in a corner in the living pointed towards the stairs. You can feel the air circulating with the cool air riding the steps back downstairs. The dining room and back bath are cooler, but we hardly use them. The living room and kitchen stay at 76-77, and upstairs stays 72.

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

Well if you can keep the heat in your place and move it around things do even out. But it usually takes a bit of planing to get it to where it is livable. There is always a temperature difference in various parts of a house.

Currently I'm working on evening out temperatures a bit in my house. My wife's sewing room is the coldest room in the house during the winter. There is a good reason for that besides it not being close to the stove and that is the fact that the window area to floor space is the highest of any room in the house and that the heat on its way there goes through another high window area with a cathedral ceiling thrown in for additional fun.

To cut the heat loss due to window area I'm building interior storms and I also have plans for some additional insulation in the attic area that the cathedral ceiling isn't part of.

Just tossing a stove in a place usually doesn't do the job.

As a lot of folks on here will tell you doing this from a basement without running duct work is usually a lost cause. But my house already had the air moving system (totally passive and no ducting). So far things have worked out and the Missus hasn't taken me out into the woods and left me there.

 

[Don2222]

We have our stove in the middle of the basement with 2 registers that come up to the Livingroom and one in the kitchen. The ductwork from the registers go right down and touch the stove where the hot air comes out. That supplies the hot air upstairs and then we leave the door to the basement open for the return air. This heats our 2,000 sqft house perfectly down to -10 below. Never got any colder so I do not know below that! LOL

 

[save$]

It is all about keeping your heat in your home. Tighten it up. Do a heat loss audit. Your temps will never be even but you might reach a point that is acceptable. Really tight home can have air quality issues so you will want to keep that in mind as you button up. I run air cleaners and two humidifiers. We really notice the difference. I have one stove and oil hot air and water. I only bought 100 gallons last fall, and if the gage is accurate, I still have over half of that left

 

[St_Earl]

wondering if you have the outside air supply (o.a.k.)

when i added mine, i noticed a great reduction in that knee to floor level draft.
i deliberated a long time before adding mine.
because my stove is one that draws a bit from places other than the main inlet, i didn't get the absolute miracle i expected. but the difference was major and the oak was well worth doing in my case.

you may want to compare notes with someone who has the same stove as you and has the o.a.k.

 

[Don2222]

Hello

Having an OAK on the pellet stove so it does not rob the furnace of air it needs is important. More important is to have an OAK on the furnace so it does not rob the pellet stove of air!
Has anyone tried the Combustion Air System - Carlin or Becket Burner Air boot??
See Pics and detail
https://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/forums/viewthread/58408/

Please take a look. It works!

 

[DexterDay]

I own a furnace now. But for a few seasons. I used just my Quad (soon to be replaced). It heated my 2,200 sq ft on Low until it got below 10° outside. It is centrally located in my Ranch. Which is about 17 yrs old and I have done quite a bit of sealing up and insulating. I tried to run it at a lower setting and let it run 24/7. So there was no swings in temp. The stove room will always be warmer.

But I use a ceiling fan in the Stove room (dining room) a ceiling fan in the kitchen, and ceiling fans in all 3 bedrooms. Also added through the wall fans in each room. Broan fans and a Tjernlund aireshare for our bedroom. That helps keep about a 2° difference throughout the entire house.

Only use the furnace below 30°-35°. So the Quad upstairs sees the most use in the shoulder seasons (now). Its running on the stat now.

House layout, insulation, windows, outside temp, and placement all play a part...

 

[StihlHead]

I have a wood stove on one wall of the living room and I use a box fan on one side of the stove to blow the heat around the house with. 1400 sq ft 2x wide trailer, I leave all the room doors open and they all stay abouth the same. The far side of the house is a bit cooler than the other, as the stove is not in the center of the house.

 

[bbfarm]

Our house is set up where every other room branches off the dinning room, so we put our stove in the dinning room.

2 story 1870's farmhouse. It is insulated well and that helps.

At first we ran the ceiling fan in the dinning room to help distribute the heat, but found that it was not necessary, the other rooms besides the dinning room only run about 5 degrees cooler.

 

[jtakeman]

Near 2K sqft raised ranch. Stove in the basement. House had a wood eater in the basement and ducts in the floors for each room when we moved in. Struggled with moving the heat from day 1. First pellet stove was a 48K BTU quad. It did fine until the cold set in( below 20ºF). So I started adding fans to move the air, What worked best was moving the cold air back down to the stove area. Added a louvered door to yhe basement and a box fan to push the air toward the stove. Then I added a hood(heat collector) with duct to each room. Each room duct got a booster fan. This worked better until the temps hit 0ºF. So I added more BTU's with the backup wood eater. 2nd stove was a bigE that was supposed to be more BTU's but actually was worse than the quad(long story!). 3rd stove(Omega) with much more BTU's got me to below zero temps, But still had chilly spots(kitchen-far bed room).

Fast forward to today. I ducted the rooms right to the stove. Made it as close as possible to a furnace. No more fans like before, Just baffles to adjust each room. The only thing I kept was the louvered door to the basement for return air. I have not needed to assist it with the wood eater. I have been toasty warm in -20ºF and the stove hasn't had to go above medium heat setting. In a few years we will purchase a pellet/multifuel furnace, But until then we are very warm with the current setup!

Every house/install will be different, What worked for us may not work for you. But the big thing is get the cold air back to the stove/furnace. Once the cold air is evacuated, The warm air replaces it. The faster you do this the quicker the rooms warm. Also the more BTU's you throw at it, the faster you recover from heat loss in the cold. Where many get in trouble is not having enough to overcome the heat loss quick enough in the cold. Sizing the stove to the middle of the actual BTU requirement range gives a bit of extra power when trying to recover from power loss's or other mishaps(empty hopper syndrome). If your stove is on the small side, Probably best to go low and steady 24/7 just keeping up to the heat loss. And do let the hopper run out of fuel. If it happens use the fossil fuel eater to catch back up, Then let the pellet eater keep it there.

 

[silverfox103]

I have a 2300 sq. ft. "L" shaped ranch. Four years ago, I bought a P 68 Harman. The best place to put the stove, unfortunately was not centrally located. It worked pretty good, the furthest end of the house on a cold day stayed 65 or 66. We supplemented with a zone of oil heat, of course where the cold area was, was where we spent a good deal of our time. As luck had it, I had a chance to pick up a older, but not used much, Harman P 38 and generator for $500. It was a friend of mine, who didn't like the cleaning, lighting, and lifting pellets etc. (it was his wife's idea to get the stove).

Anyways, had it installed on the cooler end of the house. I can't tell you how happy I am! I added remote thermostats to both units, I also have a few "rinky dinky" fans, that we all have. Never heard the wife complain once and Jake the boxer stays off of the couch and as close to the stoves as he can get. The best part is, I used not one drop of oil!

Now, I am waiting, as I do every year, for HD pellets to get under $200 a ton.

Tom C.

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

Now the very important things you should take away from the above.

Keep the cold air return going towards the stove.
Make certain the heat stays in the house by insulating (which should be done no matter how you heat) and air sealing your house (yes there is a limit that if you go below it you need to use an air to air heat recovery unit).
Don't use your indoor air as combustion air.
Have a good open air flow pattern in the house.

Easy peasey to borrow one of Dexter's phrases.

The one thing not mentioned above is that you have to properly size your stove. Even if you do everything mentioned it is possible that your stove can not meet the BTU requirement of your house below a certain temperature.

Even if your stove can meet the BTU requirement it is possible that you can't get the net BTUs out due to improper setup, maintenance, and operation (assuming a properly functioning stove).

 

[jimbom]

Seal and insulate the envelope as much as practical.

 

[smwilliamson]

I see a lot of people here that heat a whole house with one stove, similar to mine. I am wondering how you do it?

Fill the hopper, plug in the stove and turn it on.

 

[shtrdave]

It does have an OAK , I do have seem to have some drafts but not sure where they are coming from, I may need to look into getting one of those smoke pencils or maybe find a professional energy auditor. I t could be the block building or the concrete floor under the floor. I am wanting to be as efficient as possible. I think some or most is going up through the ceiling, but not sure how to go about curing that problem.

I guess next winter when it gets cold I will be able to work with it better and it will no doubt run more constant than it does now.

I may look for a few thermometers and place them in different locations to check actual temp differences.

 

[P38X2]

You can use stick incense as your smoke pencil. Just don't get the ones that smell like a room full of old ladies at a bingo hall. Get your place up to temp and go near windows and doors and track those drafts down. Outlets can also be problematic as well as gaps under your baseboards on outside walls.

 

[chuckster]

I use two thru the wall fans in tne ceiling. One at each end of the house. Brings the upstairs bedrooms up about eight degrees. I had to modify the fans a bit to make them stretch from downstairs ceiling to upstairs floor.

 

[shtrdave]

I thought of fans but I don't have a lot of room for them, I have no basement as the floor was built on the concrete of the building, 2x4 with 3/4 plywood is insulated underneath with blue board and has the tubing run for a radiant system, but a friend that used sell them said he did not think it would work so well do to the amount of used up floor space, so I never finished it. There is an upstairs kind of it is more like an attic, which leads to another. it is for storage mostly and has the air handler for the heat pump up there..

 

[jeff_t]

I thought of fans but I don't have a lot of room for them, I have no basement as the floor was built on the concrete of the building, 2x4 with 3/4 plywood is insulated underneath with blue board and has the tubing run for a radiant system, but a friend that used sell them said he did not think it would work so well do to the amount of used up floor space, so I never finished it. There is an upstairs kind of it is more like an attic, which leads to another. it is for storage mostly and has the air handler for theory heat pump up there..

You have an in-floor radiant system that doesn't work well, because of the floor space used up by, your stuff? If it worked with the building empty, it should be fine when it's occupied. Radiant systems warm the room and it's contents, which in turn warm the air. Shouldn't matter how much stuff is in it.

A simple, small desk fan blowing cool air into the stove room works for me.

 

[RidgeRunner56]

Small house for me, maybe 1,000 sq/ft. Open floor plan; living area is warm, bedroom is cooler for better sleeping.

 

[Snowy Rivers]

We ar heating a 2300+ sq ft ranch style home and have one large stove in the family room, then one small stove in the living room (35-40 feet on the opposite end of the house)

we also have a third stove thats in the living room.

The stoves blow toward each other.

The suggestion of small room air fans is the ticket.

It actually takes very little in the way of a fan to get the cooler air moving back into the room where the stove is located.

Try locating a small little desk fan in a spot in the cooler areas and aiming it down to direct air back to the stove.
Natural convection usually gets the air moving right along.

Good luck

snowy

 

[DirtyDave]

we have ceiling fans on low in livingroom and bedrooms and den and dinning room. house is basic U shape inside vaulted ceilings skylights with shades mainside of house with stove 70, bedrooms 65 to 68 . house is 22 / 2300 sqft