Stove Sizing and Distribution into House

[DHag]

I'm not (totally) new to wood stoves, but new to the forum. And I'm definitely clueless regarding my questions. Seems like this is probably the best place to ask.

Our home is a 1973 ranch-style, 1200 sq. ft., over a full basement. Our basement is partially finished, a continuing process. An extended family member lives downstairs. We can't depend on her to tend a stove, so putting one downstairs isn't an option.

The house was the ultimate in tight and insulated when it was built. Now it would be "just above average" by today's standards. The living room/family room/kitchen is an open design, and makes up about half of the upstairs area.

We want to place a nice woodburner in our main upstairs area, a model that has big glass so you can see the fire, but puts out good heat to drop our propane bills. We already do a bit of zone heating, in that we close off heat vents in the guest room, which we don't use, and in our main bedroom because we like to sleep in a cold room. The third bedroom is an office with two computers that keep it fairly warm. The propane furnace is a new high-efficiency (84%) unit in the basement, with three outlets down there.

Here's my thought. With a wood-burning stove in the main room, is it workable to use the blower of the furnace to distribute heat to the rest of the house? Not to keep the whole house at a constant 75 degrees or such, but to keep the rest of the house and basement cool but livable?

I'm a bit confused by the size ratings on the new stoves, as they are generally listed for so many square feet. Would we want to get one for the 1200 square feet of the main floor? Or a smaller one because the main room is only half the house? Or one for 2400 square feet if we want to blow the air to the whole house? Or perhaps we should go by BTU output in comparison with our furnace's BTU output as a guide?

Finally, we live well out of town, and our electricity is not the most reliable in bad or cold weather. We would like the option to be able to cook on it if our power went off. Is it necessary to have a stove specifically adapted for cooking on top, or do all stoves make enough heat on top to cook on? We do have a generator to power the house, but it would be nice to be able to conserve its use for night-time or extreme conditions. Plus our convection range pulls pretty good current. Even when we have power, cooking on the wood stove might be an option we would pursue to save on electricity, too.

Sorry for the length of this post. Thanks for any guidance and insights.

 

[begreen]

Welcome to the forums. There is lots of information on these topics. At time it can seem overwhelming. For your size are and climate I suggest looking at approx. 2 cu ft stoves. There are lots of them out there, so tell us more about your budget and stove location flexibility. If you are trying to keep the costs down, stick to convective steel stoves. If possible run the flue straight up the interior of the house, somewhat close to center. This will draft better and stay cleaner with a one story flue, cost less than hanging it outside and it'll look better.

Using the furnace fan to circulate heat has it's downsides. Often duct heat loss negates gains. Hot air doesn't do well going down, it wants to rise. So the basement probably would be colder without the thermostat calling for heat. But perhaps the system could be zoned so that the tenant space is on its own thermostat?

 

[DHag]

For budget, we would like to keep under $1500, but that's not absolute.

The living/dining/kitchen area is about 600 square feet. I guess you would call it a vaulted ceiling. It follows the roof line, no attic or space above. We could certainly run the pipe straight up through the roof, to one side or the other of the peak.

We have ceiling fans, which we run "blowing up" when heating, to equalize room heat top to bottom. The forced-air furnace has two intakes. One is in the floor of the living room, on the opposite side from where we would place the stove. The other intake is at the end of the hallway, another 15 feet farther from the stove location.

The house is classic Ranch style. There are three bedrooms and a laundry room off of the hall. We keep one bedroom and the laundry room closed off, and the furnace vents to them are closed (except when we have overnight guests). The master bedroom is also closed off during the day in heating season. We open the windows at night, because we like to sleep "cold" under heavy blankets. Just the way we were raised. The third bedroom is our office, which is open, but gets most of its heat from two computers.

As for using the furnace blower to distribute heat to the house, and some to the basement, I reasoned that if the ceiling fans are keeping the temperature in the main room even, then it would suck air in and push it around. Yes, of course, there would be heat loss in the duct work (didn't think of that), but that would all be in the basement. If it's not a feasible idea, I won't pursue it.

As for cooking, I have seen stoves like this one, for example: Example stove
It has a cast iron top, specifically for cooking.
Is it necessary to have a cast iron top on this type of stove, in order to cook on it? Or will all them make enough heat on top?
I guess a convective steel stove would be suitable for cooking?

I'd like to have the best efficiency possible, even though there is no shortage of wood on our place. And I'd like to feel good about not dumping a lot of smoke into the air, so EPA certified appeals to me, though I don't think I want a catalytic model.

 

[eclecticcottage]

I really don't think you need a "cooktop" stove. Our Lopi doesn't look any different than most, and we have cooked on it-of course, Lopi says it's a "cooktop" but I don't see what makes it such. We've also cooked IN it, on coals and with a few small splits around the dutch oven (cooked a stuffed chicken). The dutch oven was a pita to clean but the chicken tasted great. Cast iron seems to be the material of choice for stovetop cooking because of how it distributes the heat-we use ours on the kitchen range now too because we like it better than the stainless we have.

The sizing of the stove really depends on the insulation and layout of the house. The Cottage is slightly under 700 square feet, putting us well under the listed heating size for the Republic 1750 (1200-2000), but because we aren't well insulated, have old windows and a closed layout (vs open), as well as two large sliding glass doors, it works very well for us. It even struggles a little when it's in the single digits and we haven't been home to feed it a little more regularly (in other words, once it gets cold-like 50 or so-in the Cottage and it's really cold out, it takes a while to get up to comfortable inside).

 

[begreen]

Agreed. There can be a lot of confusing marketing jargon around things like cook top, burn time, heating capacity, etc. Almost any stove can be used to cook on, particularly if it has a flat top, directly over the firebox with no convection air gap. You should get the stove that best fits your needs. I would recommend sticking to American or Canadian brands for good reliable service in steel stoves.

A good stove in your price range is the Pacific Energy Super 27. But if you want to economize, there are stoves at a lower price that are still quite good. For examples, I would also look at the True North TN19 (Pacific Energy's economy line), Englander 13NC, Drolet Eastwood 1900, Napoleon 1400.

http://www.dynamitebuys.com/store/cart.php?m=product_detail&p=1834

 

[bluedogz]

Re: cooktops- I'm kinda the cookin' guy in the house, and have cooked on my Sierra, in my open hearth, and over a hole in the yard. I'd suggest looking at stoves that have enough flat surface to accommodate the pan you might use. IMHO, dedicated 'cookstoves' are unnecessary, and probably take you out of your budget.

Browsing here, I've also learned that the output ratings of various stoves aren't as consistent as we'd like. My ancient smoke dragon keeps 2000+ sf warm with a firebox around 2 cf., none of them fancy blowers or anything. My central air handler is surprisingly poor at moving warm air around the house, but a $29 tower fan does a fantabulous job.

 

[pyper]

When our power goes out I'll cook on the gas grill. At our last house we had a propane range.

My house is the same vintage as yours, but with a living room and a family room (standard ranch configuration). So take yours and put a wall in the middle. I also have a half finished basement. My furnace has three returns. One in the family room, one on the other side of the wall in the living room, and one down the hall.

I've run the hvac fan, but it doesn't seem to do much.

If your basement is uninsulated (my furnace is in the uninsulated part) then the heat loss probably offsets the gain through the ducts. So a little warm air is sucked into the return, but it radiates out into the unfinished part of the basement and then radiates into the walls and floor, and emerges as cool air from the registers. That's my idea, anyway.


If your basement is insulated, then you'll get some heat gain through the floor (heat radiates in all directions). Our last house was a big spiral, with the stove at one end. For one week last winter we ran the stove 24/7 as the only heat source. The back of the house stayed cool, but not nearly as cold as I would have imagined.

Oh, and you're looking at very inexpensive stoves, because the chimney will eat up a big part of your budget (maybe more than all of it if you pay a professional to put it in)