Air Flow Pattern Suggestions [Rough Floor Plan Included]

[PolrBear]

Now that my Englander 30-NC is set up the way I want and cooking nicely, I need some input on how to spread the heat around. Here's a rough diagram of the main floor of my 1700 square foot house:


Heating the upstairs is optional (and easy, given the preexisting floor vent directly over the stove). Heating the basement is not a concern. That leaves the about-1000 square feet you see above. Currently, the stove room and office stay very warm, the bedroom stays tolerably warm as long as the doors are open, and the living room can fall into uncomfortably cool territory if it's really cold outside. The corner bath is an ice chest and the kitchen stays warm only when the cookstove in there is going. (We have a heat pump to keep things from getting too chilly, especially when the fire dies down at night.)

So far I've tried a pedestal fan in the bedroom door, pointing straight at the stove and as far down as I can get it. This helps achieve the airflow outlined above, but I know there's more heat to work with if I could only spread it around more efficiently. Any ideas? I'll be happy to post back with more info as needed.

 

[begreen]

Try a table or box fan placed on the kitchen floor, pointed toward the stove room. Run it on low speed.

 

[snaple4]

Do you have any transfer grills in your walls? May help if you can get some of that heat into your dinning area. Could run some duct in the ceiling or basement to put an inline fan in and that would move your air. Get some good cool air from the kitchen blowing on the stove.

 

[Gunfixr]

I added vents in walls during the renovation, above the doors to the bedrooms. Thinking of adding more, going into the dining rm and kitchen.
I just cut the drywall on both sides, built up spray foam in between the wall sides, and trimmed out the center to make a closed passage, so the heat wouldn't fill up the space in the wall. Bought the vents like you put under Eaves, painted them to match, installed them over the holes. I did spray the yellow foam flat black.

I been thinking of adding fans. Using a slower cooling fan, like used for electronic enclosures, run the wiring down to the light switch, swap in a double switch. You can turn them on and off at will, seperate from the light.

Also, the ceiling fan in the room with the stove is large, and not very far away from the stove. It will spread the heat pretty well on it's own.

 

[PolrBear]

Try a table or box fan placed on the kitchen floor, pointed toward the stove room. Run it on low speed.

Low speed to create less turbulence? Or why?

Do you have any transfer grills in your walls? May help if you can get some of that heat into your dinning area. Could run some duct in the ceiling or basement to put an inline fan in and that would move your air. Get some good cool air from the kitchen blowing on the stove.

I've thought of installing a transfer grille or two in the dining room wall. The project would be complicated by my wife's china cupboard being up against that wall, and by the fact that we live in an old house and you really don't want to start cutting on these walls unless absolutely necessary.

I just cut the drywall on both sides, built up spray foam in between the wall sides, and trimmed out the center to make a closed passage, so the heat wouldn't fill up the space in the wall. Bought the vents like you put under Eaves, painted them to match, installed them over the holes. I did spray the yellow foam flat black.

Interesting. That's probably how I should do it if I end up installing transfer grilles as above.

I been thinking of adding fans. Using a slower cooling fan, like used for electronic enclosures, run the wiring down to the light switch, swap in a double switch. You can turn them on and off at will, seperate from the light.

Don't the ones for electronics typically run on low voltage? You'd need a power supply somewhere.

Also, the ceiling fan in the room with the stove is large, and not very far away from the stove. It will spread the heat pretty well on it's own.

Speaking of that, what about ceiling fans? I'm open to installing one in the stove room if that would be helpful.

 

[Gunfixr]

Too high of speed with the fan will cool the air, which is not what you want now.

Some cabinet fans are 110, plug into a standard outlet.

I'm currently using the ceiling fan. In my case, the stove is in the living room, and that room almost centered in the house, lengthwise. It's a good sized room, about 15' x 25'. The fan is almost centered, having been shifted to one side just a bit to keep it from being over the stove. On either side of the stove are doorways, master bedroom and dining room. Through the dining room is the kitchen. Across from the stove is a short hall, with a bath on one side, bedroom on the other, bedroom straight at the end. The stove is on a long wall, so it's 15' across to the hall. The stove is pretty close to the center of the house.
The fan is 70", and DC. It has 6 speeds instead of 3. The slowest, is just creeping along. I usually use that, sometimes the second. It easily warms the master bedroom, and dining room, and the kitchen is just a bit cooler. The master bath is just a bit cooler. The 3 rooms across are just a bit cooler.
Running the ceiling fan in the master bedroom warms the master bath a bit.
I haven't tried the ceiling fan in the kitchen, maybe I should sometime.
Before this, I tried several times running a small desktop fan on low, on the floor in the doorway from the living room to the dining room, pointing into the living room. I also had a fan that size hanging at the top of the master bedroom door, but pointed into the bedroom. This was because this is a much narrower doorway, and it was more out of the way up top. This worked also, but the ceiling fan works a bit better, and is silent. This method made me think of the small cooling fans in the vents. But, I did not put a vent into the dining room or bathroom, only into the three bedrooms. I've considered adding vents into the dining room, and to the kitchen.

 

[begreen]

Low speed to create less turbulence? Or why?

Less draft and noise. A box fan moves a lot of air even at low speed. The trick is to blow air from the cooler space into the warm space, down low. Cold air is more dense than warm air.

Is there a basement in the house?

 

[PolrBear]

Is there a basement in the house?

There's a basement under the living room and kitchen and an adjoining crawl space under the bedroom and stove room. The rest of the rooms are on a slab.

 

[begreen]

Try the fan trick first just to note the temperature change in the kitchen. If that test achieves a 5º rise in the kitchen temp in say 30 minutes, then a more sophisticated and permanent way of doing this would be to cut a 6x10 intake grille in the floor of the kitchen and bath and run an insulated duct from them into a Y and then a quiet inline 150 cfm fan with the output duct going to the stove room. The fan can be controlled by a switch or an air conditioning thermostat in the stove room so that it makes contact when the stove room temps exceed a certain temp, say 74º.

 

[PolrBear]

A short pedestal fan in the kitchen seems to help some; when the stove was running really hot, it seemed to increase the temperature in the living room 2 or 3 degrees F almost immediately. At the moment the stove is down due to some repairs I just discovered I needed (in another thread), but in the meantime I installed a transfer vent between the stove room and dining room:

 

[beardley]

I think the issues on the "east" side is caused by the stairwell. Most of your heat is probably going right upstairs. Is there a door to the stairs? If not, I would agree that your best bet is a fan maybe between the 2 bathrooms pointing back to the stove room. I've found they cylinder fans work very well and are very quiet. I don't own this one, but one very similar. Works great and is whisper quiet on low speed. .

(broken link removed)

 

[PolrBear]

We have a heavy curtain hung over the entrance to the stairwell, and judging by how stinkin' cold it is upstairs when the floor vent is covered, I don't think much heat is finding its way up there.

Waiting impatiently for my baffle boards to arrive tomorrow so I can fire up the beast and try again with an actual secondary burn....

 

[PolrBear]

On really cold days, we're still struggling to get the north end of the house to not feel like a refrigerated tomb. A fan in the stove room door blowing toward the living room seemed to work better than placed in the kitchen and blowing toward the stove room (though I still don't have one that blows right down on the floor), so now I'm thinking of installing a duct, as described earlier, to force cold air from the kitchen into the stove room. Would a 4" duct and a 195 CFM blower be sufficient? Been doing a bit of shopping.

 

[Gunfixr]

The faster you move the air, the cooler it will feel, and the faster it will cool.
So, you need volume, but not speed.
I'd probably go larger than 4", at least 6", if not 8". Pulling (or pushing) through a smaller passage will increase pressure and therefore speed, which will cool the air more.