Another moving heat question.....

[koppertop]

Howdy everyone!
I have a bit of a specific question regarding moving hot air to other parts of the house. I've searched a bunch and read a few recent posts which have been helpful and have gotten me to my current question.

Some background:
We recently removed an existing gas fireplace and installed a freestanding wood stove. The stove is an Ironstrike Performer S210. Our home is two floors, the stove is installed in the living room which has a vaulted ceiling, and this area of the house is not two floors. Going into the project, I thought getting warm air up the stairs to the bedrooms wouldn't be difficult.

Here is a basic layout showing the new stove location and the stairs that go up to the bedrooms. The bedrooms are located above the art studio and the garage.
We have a ceiling fan in the living room and are running it on winter mode. I have tried running our furnace on "fan only" with little to no increase in heat upstairs. I have tried running a box fan at the top of the stairs pointing down the stairs with little to no effect. I can get the living room and dining area up to 75ish (probably more if I wanted/tried) and the kitchen and even art studio are pleasant, meanwhile the upstairs bedrooms are low-60's.

Could I possibly cut a vent in the wall where I have the pink arrow in the above floor plan? This would take hot air from the area near the top of the vaulted ceiling and let it pass directly into the stair way. Obviously, I'd be putting the vent between studs and avoiding any other framing. Here is a photo from the kitchen area looking towards the front door, proposed vent is where I have put the red X up near the ceiling. The red X isn't exact, the vent would be in the wall up near the peak of the vaulted ceiling.

I would likely make the vent so it could be opened and closed to allow more or less hot air up the stairs. Right now the temp upstairs is great at night but a little cool during the day and especially at shower time. Being able to open/close the vent seems ideal and I could likely make it reachable/adjustable from the landing on the stairs. Thoughts? Any other solutions that I haven't tried that are less invasive than cutting a hole through the wall? I've kicked this around in my head for a few days and I don't see why it wouldn't work well.

Thanks for any thoughts!
-KT

 

[mikey]

If you send more heat upstairs it won’t move around downstairs as well, we put a bifold door at the bottom of our stairs to control the amount of heat going to our 2nd floor, if you spend most of your day on the first floor keep that in mind.

 

[Dataman]

Oil Heater is best option. https://appliancesradar.com/best-room-oil-heater/

 

[danham]

Howdy everyone!
I have a bit of a specific question regarding moving hot air to other parts of the house. I've searched a bunch and read a few recent posts which have been helpful and have gotten me to my current question.

Some background:
We recently removed an existing gas fireplace and installed a freestanding wood stove. The stove is an Ironstrike Performer S210. Our home is two floors, the stove is installed in the living room which has a vaulted ceiling, and this area of the house is not two floors. Going into the project, I thought getting warm air up the stairs to the bedrooms wouldn't be difficult.

Here is a basic layout showing the new stove location and the stairs that go up to the bedrooms. The bedrooms are located above the art studio and the garage. View attachment 304962
We have a ceiling fan in the living room and are running it on winter mode. I have tried running our furnace on "fan only" with little to no increase in heat upstairs. I have tried running a box fan at the top of the stairs pointing down the stairs with little to no effect. I can get the living room and dining area up to 75ish (probably more if I wanted/tried) and the kitchen and even art studio are pleasant, meanwhile the upstairs bedrooms are low-60's.

Could I possibly cut a vent in the wall where I have the pink arrow in the above floor plan? This would take hot air from the area near the top of the vaulted ceiling and let it pass directly into the stair way. Obviously, I'd be putting the vent between studs and avoiding any other framing. Here is a photo from the kitchen area looking towards the front door, proposed vent is where I have put the red X up near the ceiling. The red X isn't exact, the vent would be in the wall up near the peak of the vaulted ceiling.
View attachment 304963
I would likely make the vent so it could be opened and closed to allow more or less hot air up the stairs. Right now the temp upstairs is great at night but a little cool during the day and especially at shower time. Being able to open/close the vent seems ideal and I could likely make it reachable/adjustable from the landing on the stairs. Thoughts? Any other solutions that I haven't tried that are less invasive than cutting a hole through the wall? I've kicked this around in my head for a few days and I don't see why it wouldn't work well.

Thanks for any thoughts!
-KT

Based on air flow in our 2-story home, it occurs to me that the box fan should go at the bottom of the stairs. If I sit on our 2nd floor landing, I feel nothing but air warmed by the living room stove. At the bottom of the stairs I can feel cool air near the floor. And as you probably know, slowest speed works best. I "heat" my office using a small desktop USB fan sitting on the floor in the doorway. Last night the living room was at 76 and my office, with door closed for dog control, had dropped to 63. Within an hour of that fan spinning it hit 68.

 

[stoveliker]

I think the fan where.you indicate would work. And contrary to what I generally think, having it pump warm air out of the stove room (i.e. flow pushed into the stairs) would likely work best indeed.

The problem you have is that the warm air has to turn too many corners for it to reach upstairs. Pushing it there will allow cold air to drop down the stairs.

The corollary is that the art studio will get somewhat cooler.

 

[Dataman]

Wood stove is space heater. Not whole house. Farther away from it, cooler. Supplement it. Or dress warmer. I have heater in our bathroom. No way for heat to reach it otherwise.

 

[DuaeGuttae]

You mention possibly opening and closing the vent from the landing of the stairs. Is that landing located halfway up the stairs which then turn to continue all the way to the second floor? If that’s the case, have you tested putting a fan on low on the landing to blow cold air down? If you had one at the very top blowing toward the wall, I could see that not being so effective because too much air would bounce back.

I very much like your idea of cutting a hole, though I think I’d be in favor of using a small transom window instead of a vent if they make them small enough to go between studs.

@stoveliker had a good point, I thought, that in this situation a fan blowing the warm air to the desired location might be helpful. (I’m sure you’ve noticed in your recent reading that the common recommendation is to blow cold air toward the stove, and that’s why you tried the fan at the top of the stairs.) I know I’ve read of such a thing as a room-to-room wall transfer fan on this site. There’s also one (or used to be) that goes level to level and would allow you to take air from near to the ceiling downstairs and move it a bit higher up the wall upstairs. The fans are designed to go between studs. The manufacturer that I recall is Tjernlund, but there may be others. I have no personal experience with these, but I’ve read about them here.

Before I went such a route, though, I’d continue playing with fans to see if you can work something out. I’d also spend time with an infrared temperature gun figuring out where the hottest air is downstairs. I‘d also experiment with pushing the stove a little harder (you said you could get the temperature higher in the living room) and see if you can effectively move that heat more toward the base of the stairs. Have you put a fan opposite the door shown in the picture and blown cold air in that direction in order to move more heat down the hallway toward the stairs? That might, of course, obstruct the access to the kitchen. I’m just thinking that you could do more playing with moving air before committing to a hole in the wall. There’s also a little trick that I found helpful in studying air flow in my own home. You can tape or tack a few squares of bathroom tissue at the top of door frames to see the air move. You could also stand on your stairs and hold some squares of tissue down near the steps and see if air is flowing down (though you could also probably feel that on bare feet). There’s just a lot of investigating you could do, though all of it may still lead you back to the solution you asked about initially given the layout of the house. From the picture it does look as though you could be trapping a lot of hot air in the hallway up toward the ceiling.

 

[stoveliker]

One more thought I had: if you put a fan in where you indicated, and if the art studio gets too cold when the fan is blowing hot air (onto the landing), then you could always reverse the fan (or its installation). You'd then blow colder air down into the stove room which will be replaced by warmer air coming up the stairs. That increases the flow from the stove room to the art studio (rather than have the cold air bounce down from the stairs onto the art studio).

 

[Dix]

Welcome to the Forums

Open up the stairwell wall to the left looking @ the bottom of the stairs. IMHO.

 

[BigJ273]

Oil Heater is best option. https://appliancesradar.com/best-room-oil-heater/

Not at $6 a gallon

 

[stoveliker]

That url advocates for oil-filled electric space heaters.

 

[Sawset]

We have a two story. When it gets cold out, and there is a significant heat load, the upstairs rooms are in the 60s, lower level 70 +/-. We ended up adding heat with a few desktop type heaters. They really do a good job adding spot heat when and where it's needed. We've tried all you are suggesting, including the added vents. Adding vents had the least effect. One thing to do, is get some incense sticks, and get a visual of where the air is moving, and how quickly. We found it surprising. Plus it's fun learning how air really moves in and around spaces.

 

[Dataman]

Not at $6 a gallon

But they use no Oil at All. It's 1500watts to run at max. Do great job. Go to the Link. Of course now is the wrong time to buy.

 

[FPX Dude]

Yah, put an IR gun up there, how's the temp vs. say floor level, I say make an opening. I have those transforms (if that's what they're called), between my rooms and with the IR gun I can tell they're holding a lot of heat back at the ceiling level. Without them I know the heat would move easier to my back rooms. My next house already has plans to not have anything that blocks heat movement, and just let normal convection do its thing.

 

[weatherguy]

I did something similar at my house and it worked, just make sure you put a fire damper in the vent.

 

[peakbagger]

BTW oil fired space heaters are a scam. All electric heaters are 100% efficient, the only thing going with an oil fired space heater is most do not use fans so they are quieter.

 

[koppertop]

Thanks for the ideas, everyone.

I understand that the woodstove is a space heater and won't heat the whole house, just trying to bump the upstairs up a couple more degrees. We actually prefer the bedrooms upstairs to be cooler. I like the idea of incense sticks to better "see" where/how air is moving.

I think I need to get a smaller, gentler fan to try on the landing of the stairs before I commit to cutting holes in walls. Unfortunately, no outlet on the stairs so I'll need to run an extension cord to test the fan there.

Just went through a 24 hour power outage and was happy to have the new wood stove. It kept the downstairs nice and warm and the upstairs were cool but entirely tolerable given the circumstances.

Thanks again!
KT