Can't get hot air out and upstairs! Help!

[HearthKB]

First off, I want to say I love my Woodstock Fireview. Its everything I hoped for and more. If someone is looking for a great stove, this is the one to purchase.

But the only problem I'm having is I can't seem to get the hot air out of the room the stove is in. It has a 13' cathedral ceiling at its peak. I didn't take a temperature reading with the stove on but I'm sure it has to be well above 80 degrees in there. Its T-Shirt hot even when its in the 20's outside.

I have a ceiling fan in the room and so far this is what I've tried.......Blow air Up....Blow air Down.... blow air into the room.... blow air out of the room.... across the stove.... at the stove.... above the stove.... As of now, the best way to get the air out is blowing down with the ceiling fan and a regular fan blowing across the front of the stove and out the room. But I still can’t get the heat to the kids play room which is a 7' walk to the left, make a right and walk 5'. Whcih is not far at all. That room is always 68-69 no matter how hot the rest of the house is. Usually right outside the stove room is 76. Down the hall towards the kids playroom is 74. The playroom is on the other side of the dinning room which is 76 degrees. I was thinking about getting one of those in-wall fans to blow air into the playroom. What do you guys think of this idea? I don't want to start breaking through walls if you don't think it will help.

Upstairs is another issue. I can hardly get any heat up there. The stairsway is located only 10 feet from the stove room to the right. 12 stairs total. Luckily, I have a second oil heat zone up there which keeps us warm at night.

I hear so many people heating 2300+ sqft homes with a Fireview. I just can't get it to heat my 1900 sq ft home. Any suggestions will be GREATLY appreciated. Thanks!

-KB-

 

[Burd]

Have you tried blowing the cold air towards the heated room? Ive think I read on here that if you put a fan in the hallway on low and blow the cold air towards the stove that it will help with heating and moving the air around and I think it will help with the bed rooms. I've also read people with ranch type homes have the problem of having the stove at on end and the other end is always cold you would think that they would just blow hot air to the cold spots but they dont they blow the cold air towards the stove SO They SAY
cant hurt to try it
Good luck
BURD

 

[mayhem]

Yep. Couple of small box fans on low setting right on the floor. Set them to push the cold air out of those rooms and towards the stove room. The hot air will naturally move into those rooms to replace the air pushed out y the fans. You may or may not need to run the ceiling fan downwards inorder to get the hot air down to the level of the hall way ceiling...this is the main problem I'm dealing with right now...I've got a great room with 26' ceilings and a couple bedrooms down a 12' hallway on the first floor...hall is about 18" away from the stove, but its really hard to get the heat in there.

 

[Todd]

How hot do you want those rooms? Seems to me your doing just fine if your mostly in the 70's . There is no way you will get even heat throughout the whole house, there will always be cool spots where maybe a small space heater is the answer. As far as the upstairs, try pushing the cold air down the stairs or maybe you can rig some kind of cold air return from up there?

 

[begreen]

Like with a flue, add a few ninety degree turns into the airflow and heat doesn't travel too well. Can you post a basic floorplan diagram? Maybe a well place sledgehammer will help airflow.

 

[eernest4]

first, what works the best is to blow the cold air out of the room that is too cold and towards the stove. You will have to place 20 inch box fans in stragic locations. The cold air will flow along the floor into the stove room & be heated while warmer air flows along the cieling from where it is hot to where it is not hot.

Depending upon how this (the floor fans) works for you, you may want to put in hot air supply and cold air return registers for other rooms that the fans dont seem to help warm up much.

I was planning to install fan forced hot & cold air registers in my house this past summer, until a company offered me big bucks to buy my land, so I though, why send the money for air registers when the buyer is only going to bulldoze the property & build a shopping center.

Now, because of the stock market crash, the realitor lost his persepctive buyer & the deal fell
through; leaving me in my old house with another winter with box fans instead of through the wall fan forced hot & cold registers. Just when I was soo getting ready to buy another house in texas instead of ct.

Heat is an accellerated vibration of the air molecules and cold is air molecules that are not vibrating very much at all. This takes place on the atomic level, so it is nothing you can see.


Summary:

If you own your own house & intend to stay there, I would put in hot & cold fan forced wall and ceiling registers so as to make your home properly comfortable.

You will be happy that you did for years to come.

Do it yourself, if you are able to & save at least half of what it would cost if you paid to have it done.

Fan forced registers run between 70.oo to 200.oo each, depending on how fancy a unit you buy.

What to look for is the cfpm of the fan motor.
cfpm =cubic feet per minute of air flow.

Shop around for air resisters, some one will sell you one for half of what the first guy you looked at is asking for it.



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i would that the sledge hammer idea that some one posted previously in this thread seriously
before going nuts ruining 8.oo saw all blades on a concrete wall surfacing.

Its like this, take a ball ping or just a claw hammer & smash a 4 inch hole through the wall to see what the wall is made of. Then you can use the proper tool according to the wall material to trim out a nice neat rectangle.

My walls were wood lattes with 3/8 or 1/2 inch of high sand content cement mix with a finishing coat of plaster of paris.

Stupidly, I ruined two $8.95 sawz all blades & i was wondering why the tool wouldn't cut because
of trying to saw through a cement coating. I wore the teeth clean off those blades.

I ended up the job using a hammer & a wood chistle that I had to re sharpen after i was done.
I am keeping that wood chistle ready for the next attempt, in the summer of 2009 , so i am not finished ruining that wood chistle on cement yet.

best of luck with whatever your choice is.

 

[drizler]

The small fan on the hallway floor is the ticket. Shop around for the cheapo Wallyworld 10 buck special. Just make sure you plug em in at the store and listen to them for how quiet they are. The noise level varies a lot and price has nothing to do with it. I found a 10" fan works well for me without blocking too much hallway. Try to get one with rounded edges as you WILL be tripping over it. The good news is that the human animal has the capability of learning to avoid these obstacles. One of those little pistol grip laser thermometers is quite handy too, 30 bucks from Harbor Freight but mine seems to hold up and work well even though it is made guess where. At my ranch style place to get 70 F in the stove room I get 64 in the next room over and 56 down the hall and around the second curve in the bedroom. Thats with the fan running like I said.

 

[Risser09]

Sounds to me like you're doing just fine except for getting air up to your second floor, which would be hard to give any suggestion without actually seeing the interior of your house.

I have a Woodstock Keystone in my basement and I get a hot fire going for a few hours when I get home, without the cat engaged, to quickly heat up the house. Have you tried this? You may see a need to get the stove nice and toasty, albeit using more wood, to get some of that heat to the far corners of your house. Once you feel adequately heated, it might be time to engage the cat.

 

[FatttFire]

Box fan on the floor WORKS! I thought BG was nuts but he was dead on! Try it!

 

[cgeiger]

I'll second the box fan on the floor approach - I keep one upstairs to pull as much warm air up (by pushing cold air down) as well as a second fan downstairs that blows across/behind the stove on the hearth. Additionally, we have ceiling fans in both the stove room (family room) and master bed. The clincher is we can run the heat pump with fan only to circulate the air since the returns are both optimal placed to scoop up the warm air from the stove. Or, we set the thermostat to something like 62 and it only comes on, sucking in warm air as it heats which causes a very short cycle time. Ours rarely came on though last season.

Using an old VC Resolute in a 2300 square foot home, we kept the family room around 70, and upstairs around 62 to 64. Directly adjacent to our family room is the foyer so most of the heat gets sucked right out and up. Our kitchen down the hall and living room/dining room across the foyer rarely got above 63. Luckily the upstairs return is right there to grab it and blow it into all the bedrooms :D. This year, we've seriously considered installing decorative sheets to help block off air flow and allow us to pump air from one side to the other. Imagine if you will that our home is a rectangle split into thirds longways. The center third is the 2 story foyer with a short hallway on the short side that connects the left third to the right third. Unfortunately, the left third with the stove has a door to the middle third (foyer) and the connecting hallway which also has a door to the foyer. If we just install a curtain in the hall doorway as well as the door that leads directly to the foyer we can then push air all around the "backside" of the opening so that it flows all around the first floor before rising to the second. Not sure if it will work - but worth a try.

One other thing to keep in mind is that many (most?) stoves heat primarily by radiation not convection. We try to "manufacture" convective heat from our stove by blowing air around it - it works because we can feel the hot air come out the other side and rise. But if we did not blow air around at all, the room would quickly form something akin to a thermocline and we'd still feel cold on the sofas and chairs. With our new Oslo, I expect we can keep the Family room at barbeque and the rest of the house in a range closer to 64 - 68 which is much more comfy than last year..

 

[meathead]

An in wall fan close to the ceiling of a heated room could help move some warm air into the rooms you are having trouble with...

honestly at 68/69* I'd say you're doing pretty darned good. The only way to heat every room over 70* with wood is to have a stove in every room or have a very open floorplan. I'd say the best solution is to tell the kids to play in the 68* room and like it.

 

[Todd]

Sounds to me like you're doing just fine except for getting air up to your second floor, which would be hard to give any suggestion without actually seeing the interior of your house.

I have a Woodstock Keystone in my basement and I get a hot fire going for a few hours when I get home, without the cat engaged, to quickly heat up the house. Have you tried this? You may see a need to get the stove nice and toasty, albeit using more wood, to get some of that heat to the far corners of your house. Once you feel adequately heated, it might be time to engage the cat.

This makes no sense to me. Why would you get more heat without the cat engaged? In a few hours I can get my stove cookin up to 700 with the cat engaged. No way will it heat my house in the bypass mode. It's just more heat up the stack and a waste of wood. The sooner you engage the better.

 

[HearthKB]

I'm sorry I haven't responded to this thread since I started it. I caught a nasty stomach virus and have been decommissioned the past few days. Give me another day or two to get better and I'll draw up a floor plan for you guys to review.