Air Circulation - Side Split

[dmacadam]

Hi All,
I did try to search for answers to my questions already, so apologies if this has been covered before.

Here is my situation. I have a side-split home, with electric heat and a pellet stove in the family room (I'll refer to the family room as the pellet stove room from here on). the bedroom level is directly above the pellet stove room. The kitchen & living room level is adjacent to the pellet stove room / bedroom section. There is a fourth un-finished level below the kitchen/living level that we aren't concerned about heating. I can post a diagram if necessary.

The pellet stove room heats up very quickly, but the rest of the house stays relatively cold. We end up turning on the electric heat way too often through the winter.

There are small vents in the floor of each of the bedrooms, and the stairs that run from bedrooms -> kitchen/living -> family room are open (return air?).

After doing a bit of research, I have an idea that I think will work better to keep the entire house at an even temp.

My plan is:

1. Install a wall fan that moves cold air from the un-finished basement to the floor of the pellet stove room
2. Install a wall fan that moves hot air from the ceiling of the pellet stove room to the floor of the kitchen/living level (this will be very close to the stairwell, which may be an issue).
3. Install a floor vent with a fan that blows air from the far end of the kitchen/living level into the unfinished basement.
4. Install a floor vent with a fan that blows air from the bedroom level into the pellet stove room (more efficient cold air return?)

I have two questions about this plan.

Do you folks think that heating the un-finished level is overkill? The floor of the kitchen/living area gets super cold, and using this area as a "duct" to circulate the air might help with the cold floor as well.

The wall fans that I mention would be stacked pretty much directly on top of each other on the pellet stove level (one on the floor and one near the ceiling). Is this an issue? Will the cold air simply rise to the ceiling and be recycled back to the kitchen/living? Or will the pellet stove overpower this as I am hoping?

Cheers,
Derick

 

[vinny11950]

Welcome to the forum, Derick.

Off the top of my head, here are some of my suggestions:

1) Please provide stove make and model. We don't know if the stove is sized properly for the house situation.

2) What is the house situation exactly? I mean sq. feet, insulation and windows quality. It may be the house is too drafty to make a difference, but I imagine Nova Scotia has good building codes for winter.

3) I would not go through the trouble of installing wall fans as they don't do as much as imagined. There are plenty of threads here discussing this idea. A big box fan pointed to exhaust the cool air from the cold rooms will draw the top side warm air to fill the void. I think the same for the vents, not worth the trouble.

 

[dmacadam]

The stove is a Harmen Advance. I can't see a model number. It's about 15 years old I think.

The house is appx 35 years old. Each level of the house is appx 485 sq. ft., so including the unfinished basement, total sq. ft. would be 1940. All windows have been replaced 3 years ago. Not sure about insulation, but I do remember when we had the home inspection done, the bats in the attic were a little thinner than what is currently recommended. It's probably the same throughout the house. I've lived in a drafty house before, and this house does not feel drafty at all.

Thanks for the info on the wall fans. We have young kids, so I'm looking for something more out of the way than fans ideally. Maybe we should just put up with the electric heat until the kids are a bit older...