Masonry Heater for new 2 story house green house

[Ron Paul]

Building a new house with masonry heater. 1768 Sqft 928 sqft on 1st level and 840 on 2nd level. the house will have a venmar air exchanger and double wall very High R value and unbroken vapor barrier. I know all the heat will not get upstairs so i will have a full electric heat back up system with every room zoned, but maybe there is a simple design element that can bring the wood heat upstairs. Now we are in the planning stage so its no problem to change the plan to allow for some changes.

 

[jetsam]

I have a stove in a large high-ceilinged room. If you put your back to the stove and walk 25 feet, you're through a large arched doorway, standing in the house's entryway and and heading upstairs.

When it's 75 in the stove room, it's 73 in the hallway and roughly 72 at the top of the stairs, and 60-70 in the upstairs rooms, depending if their doors have been open.

This kind of open design where the stove room is open to the upstairs sends a lot of warm air to the upper level. I don't need fans to keep the upstairs warm. I could probably improve it by getting rid of the arched doorway, but it does fine as is.

A great room with the upstairs hallway on an open balcony would be a great design for a stove room, too.

 

[begreen]

Is the upstairs over the unheated garage? Is so, really beef up the sealing and insulation under the upstairs floors. Supplemental heat up there may be required due to the offset location. You could try placing a fan on the floor at the top of the stairs, pointing downward. Run it on low speed. Hot air from below should replace the cooler air via the top of the stairwell.

 

[St. Coemgen]

Why do you think the heat will not go upstairs? Heat rises. It will rise through the stairway column, and unless you put insulation in the ceiling between floors (and you should not) it will diffuse through the ceiling into the second story. Slowly, for sure, but it will happen. The main "problem" I see in your design is your upstairs is partitioned into many rooms. That will decrease airflow and heat distribution.

And one can also build a "tall" masonry oven, that also goes up through the second floor so it's stored heat can also be released directly upstairs. Masonry ovens are all custom built, so something to think about.

Worst case is you may need to place circulating fans to move the air upstairs or between rooms upstairs. Also see:

http://woodheat.org/moving-heat-around-the-house.html

Having axillary electric heating is not a bad idea to maybe take a bit of chill off, just in case (and for such electrical heating I recommend considering this product http://econo-heat.com/us/), but if the space is well designed, and if the masonry stove is built large enough to heat the volume of air in your home (careful, since these types of stoves can be, unfortunately, underbuilt), then it should heat the house reasonable well overall.

 

[begreen]

Some heat will migrate to the bedrooms, but the problem is that upstairs is offset and not above the main floor so it doesn't get the benefits of warm floors due to the heat below it. The space below it is unheated. It the bedroom area is well sealed and insulated that will help. Confounding factors will be the degree of insulation, opening size at top of stairs, glass area (in bedrooms), static air mass, etc.. If the heat loss is greater than the gain through the stairwell opening then supplemental heat will be needed. The fan trick mentioned will help heat circulate.

 

[Simpleacres]

I installed a two-story masonry heater last year. It was a custom core made by Empire Masonry Heaters in NY. The only problem my customer had was over-heating the house! I'v been very happy with Empire's all-organic refractory cores that last longer and cost less than most of the competition.