Air Circulation

[yaemish]

I'm new to the forums and this is my first port.

I just bought a house with a Whitfield 20 FS-2 pellet stove. It is in good shape and was well maintained. The unit has three settings for heat. I'm having some problems with it, mainly I don't think it is as hot as it is supposed to be. People that I have talked to all indicate that when the pellet stove is cranking, it should be heating you out of the house. Thats just not the case with this. But one problem at a time.

Lets assume that it is heating correctly. I have an attic bedroom that sits directly over the entire floorplan shown below. The image doesn't show a door or steps, but they would be where the yellow arrow is pointing. When the stove is on for a few hours, the main room that the stove is in heats up well, the other rooms on the floor get to an acceptable level. The door that leads to the attic is in the bedroom near the stove. I leave that open so that the heat will go up... It's just not doing that great a job.

I was thinking that maybe I should cut a hole in the ceiling above the stove and put a grate in there to allow the heat to rise directly into the attic bedroom. Of course I don't want to do this if it isn't going to help or if the stove isn't capable of heating that large an area. I would love to hear from anyone with experience in these matters.

*The yellow arrow is substituted for the open door that leads to the attic bedroom.

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

I'm new to the forums and this is my first port.

I just bought a house with a Whitfield 20 FS-2 pellet stove. It is in good shape and was well maintained. The unit has three settings for heat. I'm having some problems with it, mainly I don't think it is as hot as it is supposed to be. People that I have talked to all indicate that when the pellet stove is cranking, it should be heating you out of the house. Thats just not the case with this. But one problem at a time.

Lets assume that it is heating correctly. I have an attic bedroom that sits directly over the entire floorplan shown below. The image doesn't show a door or steps, but they would be where the yellow arrow is pointing. When the stove is on for a few hours, the main room that the stove is in heats up well, the other rooms on the floor get to an acceptable level. The door that leads to the attic is in the bedroom near the stove. I leave that open so that the heat will go up... It's just not doing that great a job.

I was thinking that maybe I should cut a hole in the ceiling above the stove and put a grate in there to allow the heat to rise directly into the attic bedroom. Of course I don't want to do this if it isn't going to help or if the stove isn't capable of heating that large an area. I would love to hear from anyone with experience in these matters.

*The yellow arrow is substituted for the open door that leads to the attic bedroom.

Well the heat will rise the only problem you have is that you need to get the cold air falling so there is convection happening in the right places. This of course assumes that the stove could heat your living area.

How big is the house, what is the BTU rating on that stove, and how well is it sealed and insulated, and what kinds of windows does it have?

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

BTW welcome to the forums yaemish.

Here is a heat loss calculator


http://www.builditsolar.com/References/Calculators/HeatLoss/HeatLoss.htm


which should give some idea of what is required in order to size a heating device for a house. This will determine if your pellet stove can heat your living area as long as you can get the air moving properly.


If it was me doing the sizing I'd like to have a bit of additional heating capacity.

Now a pellet stove is a slow steady beast and can not keep up with a boiler or furnace that fires at rates frequently better than three or more times that of a pellet stove.

 

[jtakeman]

yaemish. welcome to the forums.

What I did with my basement instal was. I used a laser IR thermometer and found the hot spot above my stove. I installed the largest floor vent I could find. That gets some heat up there.

In your case I would also add a vent toward the bottom of your drawing. Living room? Front door area. Put a fan facing down and try to create a currant back to the stove area.

jay

 

[hearthtools]

the profile 20 is a small stove. I think it is 32k rating.
so about 1,600 SQ FEET MAX.
Things that will reduce the heat output is if the heat exhange is not clear. ALL PASSAGES ways.
follow the help pages linked at the top of the pellet room.

also with a cut up home no matter how much heat you have you are going to have a hard time getting the heat out of a small room and into the other rooms with out Fans or other air movement.

For fire serppersion reasons it is not safe to cut holes in the attic and NOT CODE.

 

[krooser]

I see the problem... you don't have a roof on your house... :exclaim:

 

[jtakeman]

For fire serppersion reasons it is not safe to cut holes in the attic and NOT CODE.

Good point Rod, Don't want to do anything thats against code.

 

[yaemish]

Thanks for the input. I just installed a roof, that helps a lot. I actually have a ceiling fan in the same room as the stove, I'll start by adding one in the living room area too. The house was built in the 30's so I'm going to guess that their isn't much insulation in the walls. The exterior is brick, I'm hoping that helps a bit.

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

Thanks for the input. I just installed a roof, that helps a lot. I actually have a ceiling fan in the same room as the stove, I'll start by adding one in the living room area too. The house was built in the 30's so I'm going to guess that their isn't much insulation in the walls. The exterior is brick, I'm hoping that helps a bit.

I'm going to be blunt.

Before you start playing fan games and cutting anything run the calculations.

If that place is an uninsulated brick house it is likely that that poor little pellet stove will have all it can do to heat the room it is in.

If the house leaks heat faster than the stove can produce it you'll never have any success heating the house and you'll just get frustrated.

 

[sweetsncheese]

People that I have talked to all indicate that when the pellet stove is cranking, it should be heating you out of the house.

You need to find some new people. It may heat you out of a room, but it's very unlikely it'll heat you out of your house during the cold months. It's a space heater.

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

People that I have talked to all indicate that when the pellet stove is cranking, it should be heating you out of the house.

You need to find some new people. It may heat you out of a room, but it's very unlikely it'll heat you out of your house during the cold months. It's a space heater.

But, but, sweetsncheese, yaemish is heating space, the space yaemish wants to heat happens to be his house.

Likely yaemish is a little bewildered about now and I'm going to insert a link to something else that needs to be considered.

https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/48670/ it is a post entitled I hate my pellet stove by Romy.