Why am I not getting heated out of my room?

[joefrompa]

Hi all,

It's been 10-30 degrees here recently and I've had the fire cooking along at 450-600 pretty readily. Yes, I don't have ideal quality wood. I'm using a mixture of ash, pine, and ironwood and all if it's burning well at least. I'm getting the stove to heat up nice and toasty and turning the blower on high.

I have a 1973 2-story colonial and my insert is in a room that is 12' wide and about 35' long (family room-to eat-in kitchen space-to kitchen). 70% 8' ceilings. Air-sealing is good, insulation is original. The room exits into some cold spaces (i.e. 55 degrees) - a dining room and a foyer. Those places are cold, but I accept that.

However, my family room, 8-10' from the stove, is not getting hot. My wife and I are both in sweat pants and long sleeved shirts with socks on lying on a sofa literally 8-10 feet away from the stove and where the air should be blowing right past us. It might be 70 degrees in there, but there's alot of air movement so it's tough to tell.

Stove is cooking along good, good stove top temps, blower on high....

I literally don't know where the heats going since I'm so close to the stove!

Just to share some experiences around this this winter within the entire house:

1. Stove cranking all day at 400-600 degrees, blower on 75%-100% all day, I can't hold the house (2000-2200 square feet) at 65 degrees if the temps below 20 outside. It will slowly drop down.
2. At 30 degrees outside, I may get the house up to 65-66 degrees and hold it there. It won't go above that on its own.
3. The room will be cooking if outside temps are at 40 degrees and I crank the stove for several hours.
4. My oil furnace will heat the house from 55-66 within an hour and then will only cycle on about once an hour to maintain that temp.

...

Any thoughts?

 

[Big Al]

I may be wrong, but in my experience until the furnishings in the room get warm, the room still tends to feel cool. My stove can rock the heat for a little while and there's not doubt it's hot (550-600), but the room still feels cool. Then suddenly this wave of heat just seems to fill the room all of the sudden. Stove still at the same temp it was earlier but something happened in the room. Once all the furnishings get heat soaked that's when the stove will want to drive you out of the room. I have no experience with an insert, others may be of more help. Do you burn continuously or are you trying to play catch up from a cold start. With those other rooms so cold and your stove room so big, you may be shoveling poop against the tide until everything gets warmed up.

 

[wahoowad]

Bet you have crappy windows. Just a guess. I too have a temperature where going below makes it hard to hold inside temps steady. I think it is natural for all house, some just have a lower temp than others.

You did not say if you have a ceiling fan. That makes a huge difference. Also, is the ceiling open between your stove room and your family room or do you have some kind of barrier or room divider impeding the flow of hot air along the ceiling? Warm air flows along a ceiling like water flows along the ground.

 

[Todd]

Does your insert have a block off plate? Maybe your losing heat up the chimney? Try taking your top surround off. Your stove could also be a tad undersized to heat your home but you should still be warmer in the stove room imo.

 

[joefrompa]

No block-off plate. Planning on taking the trim surround apart and shoving rock wool up the chimney/pipe for several feet worth to help further insulate the liner and keep cold air out. I'm also going to surround the back of the stove with rock wool and line it with heavy duty aluminum foil.

I am undersized and I accept that...I don't need to heat the whole house. But I did want the "shorts and a t-shirt" feel for my stove room, especially since it's such a narrow room.

I don't have a ceiling divider or blockage in this room. The ceiling is even. I do have a ceiling fan directly under where I'm sitting....turning it on seems to get the heat out of the room more, whereas leaving it off seems to let the room heat up more fully before the air moves out.

Windows are Andersen Casement style, which from what I understand are about the ideal windows for air-sealing.

 

[Battenkiller]

I may be wrong, but in my experience until the furnishings in the room get warm, the room still tends to feel cool. My stove can rock the heat for a little while and there's not doubt it's hot (550-600), but the room still feels cool. Then suddenly this wave of heat just seems to fill the room all of the sudden. Stove still at the same temp it was earlier but something happened in the room. Once all the furnishings get heat soaked that's when the stove will want to drive you out of the room. I have no experience with an insert, others may be of more help. Do you burn continuously or are you trying to play catch up from a cold start. With those other rooms so cold and your stove room so big, you may be shoveling poop against the tide until everything gets warmed up.

I think there's a lot of truth in what you are saying. I do know that radiant heat goes in all directions, from every object in the room, it's just that it goes a lot harder from the stove so you don't notice the other parts. After a day or two without burning, all my basement walls are cold and the whole area feels colder. Give it a day of steady burning and the sheetrock walls are up to 120º in spots, and you can really feel a huge difference, even at similar stove temps.

 

[Big Al]

I only burn part time. I start a fire in the afternoon around 4, in a 62 degree house (900 sq.ft) The first load of wood makes the stove room confortable (jeans and a t shirt) once the furniture warms, and it takes the edge off the other rooms. I reload around nine and then the shorts and t shirt go on and the socks come off. The rest of the house gets really confortable at this point too. On weekends, if I start burning earlier in the day, the temps get crazy by the 3rd load. What I'm trying to get at is, perhaps, like I said earlier, you need to warm the stuff in the room to feel the warmth in the air. All that cold furniture sucks the heat out of the air and lying on a cool couch doesn't help. Maybe you just need two fires to get your area up ti the desired temp.Hope this helps. My 2 cents.

 

[Big Al]

I may be wrong, but in my experience until the furnishings in the room get warm, the room still tends to feel cool. My stove can rock the heat for a little while and there's not doubt it's hot (550-600), but the room still feels cool. Then suddenly this wave of heat just seems to fill the room all of the sudden. Stove still at the same temp it was earlier but something happened in the room. Once all the furnishings get heat soaked that's when the stove will want to drive you out of the room. I have no experience with an insert, others may be of more help. Do you burn continuously or are you trying to play catch up from a cold start. With those other rooms so cold and your stove room so big, you may be shoveling poop against the tide until everything gets warmed up.

I think there's a lot of truth in what you are saying. I do know that radiant heat goes in all directions, from every object in the room, it's just that it goes a lot harder from the stove so you don't notice the other parts. After a day or two without burning, all my basement walls are cold and the whole area feels colder. Give it a day of steady burning and the sheetrock walls are up to 120º in spots, and you can really feel a huge difference, even at similar stove temps.

Got any science to back that up BK ;-)

 

[Hankjones]

Wonder if your heat it up at your ceiling. In my split level sometimes my feet are cold since the cold air draft comes across the floor pretty fast. Maybe a ceiling fan would help?

 

[BrotherBart]

You have the same thing we had with our insert and to some degree with the free stander in the fireplace that we replaced it with. Cold draft coming back to the stove. When you are sitting the warm air is moving up at the ceiling and cold air down there with you headed back to the insert. Turn the blower down really really low and see if that room doesn't heat up.

 

[egclassic]

I may be wrong, but in my experience until the furnishings in the room get warm, the room still tends to feel cool. My stove can rock the heat for a little while and there's not doubt it's hot (550-600), but the room still feels cool. Then suddenly this wave of heat just seems to fill the room all of the sudden. Stove still at the same temp it was earlier but something happened in the room. Once all the furnishings get heat soaked that's when the stove will want to drive you out of the room. I have no experience with an insert, others may be of more help. Do you burn continuously or are you trying to play catch up from a cold start. With those other rooms so cold and your stove room so big, you may be shoveling poop against the tide until everything gets warmed up.

I agree with this 100%. Before I started burning wood, my sole source was NG. Naturally, I have a programmable t-stat installed.
During the day while at work, I have the temp only go down to 67*, any lower than that and all of the couches feel like blocks of ice.
Well, maybe not that extreme but you could definately feel the cold radiating from the couch. The furnace would cycle quite frequently upon returning until all the objects in the house were warmed back up, then it would only run about once an hour the rest of the night. The manuals for these programable t-stats recommend setting your temps back 8-10* when you are not home. I think 3-5* is the most it should drop because anymore and you lose all your savings due to the furnace cycling to warm the objects in the house.
Sorry, I am a little off topic being this forum is for wood burning, but the principals are the same.

 

[ansehnlich1]

I don't have an insert, however, I'd take a temp. reading of the air blowing out that bad boy when it's on high, then I'd take and cut the blower back to a lesser setting and take a temp. reading on the air blowing out of that thing and compare the two. You might get better heat with the blower on a lower setting.

Also, I'd like to know, are you sealing off or shutting doors to other areas of the house? Reason I ask is that I tried that here and it was counterproductive, I leave all my doors open to the spare rooms now and I think it works better for heating the whole place.

Lastly, you talked about wood. Are you packing that thing? I mean, my Jotul will take a 22 inch behemoth of a split, and if I pack it with 22's it sure does respond different than if I pack it with 18's.

Just a few random thoughts.

 

[begreen]

Turn the blower down really really low and see if that room doesn't heat up.

+1 Had the same thought. It will be interesting to see how this affects the room temps.

 

[BrotherBart]

Turn the blower down really really low and see if that room doesn't heat up.

+1 Had the same thought. It will be interesting to see how this affects the room temps.

We had a sectional leg facing the insert and air couldn't get under it. Your neck would get stiff from the cold breeze coming up over the top of it to get to the stove. Kinda great. The beast would be cranking at seven hundred degrees with the blower on and you were cool as a cucumber watching TV. Stand up and the heat would knock you right back down.

 

[woodgeek]

Hi all,

It's been 10-30 degrees here recently and I've had the fire cooking along at 450-600 pretty readily. Yes, I don't have ideal quality wood. I'm using a mixture of ash, pine, and ironwood and all if it's burning well at least. I'm getting the stove to heat up nice and toasty and turning the blower on high.

I have a 1973 2-story colonial and my insert is in a room that is 12' wide and about 35' long (family room-to eat-in kitchen space-to kitchen). 70% 8' ceilings. Air-sealing is good, insulation is original. The room exits into some cold spaces (i.e. 55 degrees) - a dining room and a foyer. Those places are cold, but I accept that.

However, my family room, 8-10' from the stove, is not getting hot. My wife and I are both in sweat pants and long sleeved shirts with socks on lying on a sofa literally 8-10 feet away from the stove and where the air should be blowing right past us. It might be 70 degrees in there, but there's alot of air movement so it's tough to tell.

Stove is cooking along good, good stove top temps, blower on high....

I literally don't know where the heats going since I'm so close to the stove!

Just to share some experiences around this this winter within the entire house:

1. Stove cranking all day at 400-600 degrees, blower on 75%-100% all day, I can't hold the house (2000-2200 square feet) at 65 degrees if the temps below 20 outside. It will slowly drop down.
2. At 30 degrees outside, I may get the house up to 65-66 degrees and hold it there. It won't go above that on its own.
3. The room will be cooking if outside temps are at 40 degrees and I crank the stove for several hours.
4. My oil furnace will heat the house from 55-66 within an hour and then will only cycle on about once an hour to maintain that temp.

...

Any thoughts?

My main thought is that you are heating a whole 2200 sq ft house down to about freezing without overheating the stove room. A lot of the housing stock down here is poorly airsealed and insulated--your demand at 32F could be 40,000 BTU/h and your stove could be working just fine. Moreover, a lot of folks DON'T want their stoveroom so hot and are struggling to distribute--you are sad your natural distribution is so effective? In woodburning nirvana, you feed the stove and your whole house is just evenly comfortable for hours at a time--are you there? My primary guess is that your house is poorly airsealed, and the stack effect driven flow is carrying the heat to the rest of your house. As the leprechaun said, it might be leaky windows, or it might be invisible air leaks in the framing of your house--under the sill plate and in the attic.

More constructively--it is hard to tell if you are underperforming unless we know your heating demand. Your furnace is likely oversized, say 120,000 BTU/h, and can heat your house in a flash. The cycling 1 per hour is not important, but rather the percentage runtime. IF it puts out 120,000 BUT/h, and runs 50% of the time, then your demand is 60k, if it runs 25% of the time, only 30k. I think some folks think their house is well insulated b/c their furnace doesn't run much, but in fact their furnace is just way too big (which makes then run inefficiently). So, listen to your furnace cycle a few times and time the on cycle. Then look at the sticker on the furnace to estimate its output (the number is usually the fuel input heat, you need to multiply by something like 80% eff to estimate the heat delivered to your house).

To 'close the loop', you can break out the bathroom scale and estimate how many lbs of wood you would burn in ~1 hour at 32F. IF your demand was 30 kBTU/h, and burned 6 lbs of wood/h, your are getting 5k BTU/lb, and that is about as good as it gets. IF you were burning 12 lbs/hr to make 30 kBTUs, then you have some mysterious heat loss, like a missing block off plate, or running the stove with too much air, etc.

 

[Intheswamp]

That 1750 has a nice 10" protrusion into the room to help radiate heat. Just out of curiosity, while you've got the surround off of it after stuffing insulation up the chimney why not run it without the surround on and see if it makes a difference. I've thought several times that for an insert a surround with stamped vent slots in it would be good to let some of the captive backside heat out that the blower might not move.

Just thinking with the few brain cells I have left...
Ed

 

[begreen]

Give it well seasoned wood and it'll be burning a hundred degrees hotter. You will notice the difference.

 

[Hogwildz]

Give it well seasoned wood and it'll be burning a hundred degrees hotter. You will notice the difference.

X1
You will be amazed at the difference in heat output by burning 100 degrees hotter.