quick question about inddor stoves

[crs7200]

If you use a indoor stove such as the Summit, how well does it heat the entire house? I have a 2 story house. Basically 3 rooms downstairs and bedrroms and bath upstairs. 1800 sq feet. Heating with forced air oil now.

If you put the stove in the center of the downstairs, how well does the heat radiat around the house? Hot and cold spots??

 

[Jags]

If you have a vehicle that weighs 4000 pounds and put 1 gallon of gas in the tank, how far can you go????

This is picking on you a little, but it is to make a point. House layout, insulation, windows, lat/long. plays a HUGE factor in your question (much like dealing with the different variables of the vehicle). Much more info and a house diagram would help get you a "reasonable" answer.

 

[crs7200]

Well, without having a diagram of the house, it is basically like this.

3 large rooms downstairs. No open access to the upsatiars. Meaning that there is no loft or open areas to the upstairs. Even the stairway going upstairs is enclosed. 3 bedrroms upstairs and a bath.

House is 130 years old but is in good shape. Fairly well insulated (except kitchen) windows are o.k.

What I really would like to know is can a free standing unit suffieciently heat a entire house if you don't have a open layout?

How well can the heat radiat around the house when it is basically a colonial build?

I would think that the downstairs will be really warm and the farther away you get from the stove, the colder it will be.

If this is the case, a boiler with heat exchanger built into my existing stove may do a better job, but at a higher cost.

Oh, my truck weighs 6000lbs and will go about 14.5 miles on a gallon of gas. ( unless I am going down hill or hauling wood !!)

 

[Jags]

Well, I think you probably have a pretty good grasp of what to expect already. In your situation, the reality is that you probably will have very different results in each room. Obviously you can move heat/cold around with fans, but its probably only gonna "marginalize" the temp differentials.

I'm glad you had a sense of humor with my vehicle metaphor.

 

[Adios Pantalones]

You could move the heat around downstairs pretty easily with a couple small fans blowing cold air to the stove from open doors, but I think that you get the idea that heat will have a hard time getting upstairs without effort. Look in the boiler room for some indoor wood fired boilers that are very efficient, but-yes- expensive.

 

[pinewoodburner]

Without a way for the heat to move upstairs, it will probably not heat the entire house. 1800 sq ft would require a pretty good size stove and since you only have 900 sq ft per floor, the downstairs would be pretty hot. If you have an open staircase, natural convection would let the heat rise, but getting it to the far rooms upstairs would be difficult.

 

[gyrfalcon]

If you use a indoor stove such as the Summit, how well does it heat the entire house? I have a 2 story house. Basically 3 rooms downstairs and bedrroms and bath upstairs. 1800 sq feet. Heating with forced air oil now.

If you put the stove in the center of the downstairs, how well does the heat radiat around the house? Hot and cold spots??

Depends on what you mean by "heat." If you want to heat the upstairs to the point where you can lounge around in your negligee in midwinter eating bon-bons, not gonna happen. Depending on how your ceiling/floor between the stories is constructed and how well insulated your attic is, you might get enough heat in the bedroom directly over the stove to sleep comfortably.

My 160-yo farmhouse never has had heat on the 2nd floor and I've found my small 1st floor woodstove actually sends a bit more heat upstairs than my oil-fired baseboard hot water system did. But in the depths of winter, it's definitely too chilly up there to do anything other than sleep. If I want to read in bed a bit before going to sleep, I put on a small space heater for 5 or 10 minutes to warm up the area right around the bed.

On the first floor, if you require all rooms to have temps in the 70s to be comfortable, you're not going to achieve that. Best you can probably do is bring your adjoining rooms up to mid-60s with the judicious placement of fans, would be my guess, but that depends on your storm windows, insulation, etc.

I've found, btw, that thermal curtains make a big difference with my older windows/storms, and I have them on all my windows and two glass-paned doors and pull them closed as it gets dark.

In most situations, a wood stove is never going to give you the even, consistent, all-around heat a central heating system does. If you have a reasonable tolerance for temperature variation, chilly spots here and there, and don't mind running a good space heater once in a while to supplement when you're using the adjoining spaces, you'll do fine. My kitchen is the farthest room from my stove and the least well-insulated, so I just bake a lot of casseroles and pies.

 

[madrone]

Since you have forced air you can do what I do, which is run the fan after the stove really gets cooking. My return is in the same room as the stove, so it's pulling cold air into the room. The bedrooms upstairs never get as warm as the living room, but it does seem to equalize things a little.

 

[crazy_dan]

I heat my 2 story Old Old Old farm house with laughable insulation. not very open floor plan with a summit 3 large rooms and 2 smaller rooms down stairs and 2 large rooms up.
It does OK if you keep it going and plan ahead and don't let the house get cold before lighting a fire.
The stove is in the kitchen, this room and the bathroom are the warmest almost uncomfortable sometimes.
the living room and master bedroom are the next warmest and rarely get uncomfortable.
The kids rooms are up stairs and it is defiantly cooler up there but they don't complain much about it being too cold.
When i do venture up there it is cooler but not cold.
It takes a long time about a whole day to re-heat the house after we are gone for a day in the winter, (IE Christmas where we go to family in IL for th whole day and the fire goes out).
It is doable but it takes forethought and all the rooms will not be the same temp.
The room with the stove will be the warmest and only gets cooler with distance from stove.
My house is about 1500 sq ft.

 

[savageactor7]

Well wood heat is uneven, we have an old farm house 5 rooms up and down. If your stove is in the middle of the house it will tend to make it easier to approach an even heat state. But I don't think you can get there when it gets to zero there are a lot of trade offs using wood. All things considered though it a very good deal...more so if you have your own wood source. I suppose if it's real important to have even heat you could use fans to move the air around. Now if you're worried about the stove room being 80 and the farthest bedroom where the baby sleeps being 40...that wont happen. Here in hell house the difference is only 8-10 degrees or so.