What btu for my situation

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Bungiex88

New Member
Feb 10, 2017
19
Central pa
Was wondering if anyone has a house similar to mine. Square foot is 2000 including basement with 2 story lIvins area. It's an old farm house not insulated too much but plan on fixing that anday its nother to bad.. I'd like to heat the whole house with a stove. No blowers. I'll be putting registers on the 1st floor. The basement is poured concrete but not a finished basement that's where the stove is going to be. I'm not sure how much btu I will need I live in central pa. I know there's charts for square foot but I would imagine there based on single story well insulated houses. I'll be burning primary coal. The 3 stoves I was looking at was #1 ds econo rite burn it's 140,000 btu 71% efficient for $1300. #2 ds 110 energy max 110,000 btu 84% efficient $1900. #3 ds 160 energy max 160,000 btu 85% efficient for $2500. I do have a oil boiler that heats the house now but was wanting a stove so I can heat my house without electricity.
 
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nepacrossroads.com
 
No stove is going to heat a 2000 SF poorly insulated house from a basement with uninsulated cement floors and walls.

You can heat your house with a wood stove, but if you want to do it from the basement you need to get rid of the infinite heat sink in the stove room first (insulate the floor and walls).

After that, the layout of the house will determine how much heat you actually see upstairs. You may find that a lot more insulation is required to heat the house with the basement stove. (This isn't a bad thing; you ought to do that insulation no matter how you heat the house.)

Edit: I noticed this was a coal stove question after replying. As a disclaimer, I've never even seen a coal stove and don't know a thing about them, but I'd imagine my wood stove advice above holds true.

There should be a moderator along soon to punt this thread over into the coal stove section. :)
 
Didnt see a coal stove section. I wouldn't say it's to poorly insulated. I don't burn a lot of oil but the basement windows and doors are in bad shape which are getting replaced by next winter.
 
The first problem you face is that because you are putting the stove in the uninsulated basement, some or most of the heat is going to go directly to earth- less if there's great airflow from the basement to upstairs, more if there's not.

Either way, protecting the warmed air from bare masonry is something to think about before you get the stove. You don't want to install the stove and then find out that putting up 2x4s to hold insulation on an exterior wall means you can no longer meet required clearances, for example. (Also, stoves are heavy, do the floor before the hearth pad and stove.)
 
The wall that the stove will be next to isn't a outside wall my pap extended the basement years ago on the back side of the house so the whole back basement outside wall is insulated. My pap used to have a coal boiler hooked to the system years ago but didn't have and rads in basement and that boiler would keep the basement at about 85 to 90.