Circulating heat thru a raised ranch

[CJK440]

Hello,

I just recently picked up an Avalon wood stove insert for my fireplace. I own a 2000sf traditional raised ranch and my fireplace is on an end wall in the basement "family room". The basement gets nice and toasty but a very sharp change in temperature as you walk up the stair well. I have electric baseboard heat and thus have no ductwork to use to circulate air.

I tried installing a thru the wall fan over the doorway from the family room into the stairwell. It blew air out thinking I can coax some warmth out but to no avail. I'm thinking the air is just jamming up in the narrow stairwell and not going in either direction. I thought about relocating the wall fan between the family room and the foyer, which I imagine would do just a bit better.

I would think that all other concerns aside, my best bet would be to install a thru the floor fan above the stove pushing hot air up into the living space above, letting the cold air find its way down the stair well getting some positive circulation going. But I understand there are some fire code concerns when you cut a hole in the floor. Does anybody manufacture a thru the floor vent with some sort of heat tripped trap door etc?

Anybody else have the same predicament?

 

[Fsappo]

Your going to get a million suggestions pretty soon, and they all will be good ones. The thing I've found is every house seems to have its own personality. I try to think of heat rising up in a house like this:

Tip the house upside down and try to fill it from the basement with water. If the house is tight, the water wont go up those stairs because it is trying to replace air that has no where else to go

So, now what do do? Make holes is the easy solution. What I have found in the past is finding the coldest areas furthest from the stairs and cutting in a floor register. One of two things will happen, depending on the "personality" of your home. Heat will rise from the basement up thru the vent, or cold air will return to the basement by falling thru the vent, drawing heat up the stairs towards the vent at the same time. Your basically breaking the seal of the house between up and down.

Now, you have a raised Ranch, so you don't have the typical 1000 ft box stacked right on top of a 1000 ft box situation. You can look at crawl spaces as an option.

Folks on this site may talk about blowing cold air downstairs towards the basement. I never tried that method and havent had to since I heard the suggestion, but the science of it makes sense. It also may be cheaper and less permanent that chopping holes.

 

[Backwoods Savage]

It is always easier to move cool air than warm air. But in this instance, I don't know about the different levels so others will chime in soon. I'd still sit a fan in that passageway and try blowing the cool into the warm. It is certainly worth a try and may be an easy fix. Just leave a fan on low speed; you don't need to move the air fast.

 

[DAKSY]

If you want the cold air to drop down, you'll probably hafta install registers - in the floor - near the
outside walls of the house. Those areas tend to be colder than the interior floors.
When the heat rises, the cold air will have some means to get to the lower areas &
you should be able to get a good convection flow going...
Most heating supply vendors will have these & they can be almost as decorative as you want them to be.
HTH

 

[savageactor7]

A combination of ceiling and floor fans will help, generally it's more efficient moving the colder air toward the stove.

 

[CJK440]

Franks,

Good analogy. I think thats the situation.

Most of my attempts were trying to push warm air out, before I start chopping holes I'll try a floor fan at the bottom of the stairwell blowing cold air toward the stove.

 

[matt701]

I have an 1850 sqft raised ranch, 3700 including the basement. I tried using a very large woodstove in the middle of my basement and that worked just okay until the temps got into the 30's. I don't know your insulation details, but the raised ranch looses a lot of heat having the basement bricks mostly above ground and exposed to the weather outside. I insulated my basement with 1 inch fiberboard and then installed 2 fans blowing heat from the open chase directly above the stove into 2 seperate rooms upstairs to help push the heat upstairs along with the stairway being about 6' from the stove. Long story short, I couldn't heat this large of a space and ended up buying a wood furnace.

 

[CJK440]

My house has a 4' knee wall which is 1/2 burried outside. The interior block has studs attached with glass insulation and sheet rock. So its fully insulated.