Closing off the stairs to 2nd floor?

[gyrfalcon]

This thread brought back some old memories. In 72 when I built our first log house we got 6' of snow on Nov 6 and had to move in. No doors so my DW hung 2 wool blankets over the front door. It worked like a charm. Even in -45 the blankets enabled us to keep the house at 70 or above. It worked so well that I did other projects until about the middle of Feb. then the DW said she was ready for a real door and you know what that means.

Wow, two blankets and no door and -45?? Can that be true? That's just stunning. All these modern building and insulating materials and storm doors and the rest of it, and a couple of blankets does the trick even better. Amazing. That 6 foot of snow around the house probably helped a lot, too.

You gotta watch out, though. When we women start demanding actual doors, that means we're getting serious, as it sounds like you found out . Heh.

 

[gyrfalcon]

The effect of this is really amazing, a lot more than I would ever have expected. My north-facing office, which is off the far end of the long room the stove is on the other end of, is up to 67 with no fan and certainly no cheating with the little space heater. It does have a temp floor since it's on a separate zone with the (1st floor) bathroom, and I have that set to low 60s because of the presence of a new little kitten temporarily housed in the BR, but it's 3 or 4 crucial degrees warmer in here than it was with that 2nd floor doorway open. I guess since the heat can't go up, it's spreading out sideways more instead.

 

[LLigetfa]

My hearth room is in an ell and my fireplace has the central heat blower option. As long as I have electricity, I can keep the entire ground floor (open plan) fairly even except for the laundry/mud room which is at the opposite end. The upstairs is a few degrees cooler but fairly even as long as doors are kept open.

When the power goes out, it's a different story. The cookstove is gas so we can still cook. We've only had short outages with -40 temps so have yet to find out for how long and how warm we can keep the house. The wife thinks we should get a backup generator.

 

[MikeC]

Hello:

New to the forums. Looking into a wood insert. I live in split level home. Bedrooms are six steps up from the living where the fireplace sits. I was wondering if I turn the thermostat to fan, would it help circulate the warm air to the second floor? Just wondering if it would work.

Thanks

 

[gyrfalcon]

My hearth room is in an ell and my fireplace has the central heat blower option. As long as I have electricity, I can keep the entire ground floor (open plan) fairly even except for the laundry/mud room which is at the opposite end. The upstairs is a few degrees cooler but fairly even as long as doors are kept open.

When the power goes out, it's a different story. The cookstove is gas so we can still cook. We've only had short outages with -40 temps so have yet to find out for how long and how warm we can keep the house. The wife thinks we should get a backup generator.

I'm with your wife. Power on or off makes no difference in heating my house, other than losing the overnight backup of the oil burner, but nothing I couldn't live with fairly comfortably for a while. Got plenty of canned goods and a little Sterno stove for coffee or soup, but I might go semi-crazy if deprived of both TV and Internet for very long.

My neighbors about a mile down the road have a good generator set-up, and they've told me I'm welcome to hole up with them if we ever have another ice storm like the one a few years ago that had power out all over the state for weeks. If you have neighbors you can tolerate, you might see about splitting the cost and doubling up in one or the other house in the event of a long-lasting outage.

But man, I would not want to go with a burner that needed a blower and no source of power in -40. Probably not in plain old 0, for that matter.

 

[gyrfalcon]

Wowie zowie! Stove is near 500, something I've only managed once before with my very best wood, and what I'm burning right now certainly ain't that. Room temp around the stove is up to 80, 68 in my office off the other side of the house.

I'm stunned. I was only hoping to get a couple degrees from closing off the stairs, but wow. It's not like there was even particularly an ankle-level cold draft noticeable from that stairway door, so I'm just gob-smacked, as the Brits say, by the extent of the difference it's making.

 

[LLigetfa]

But man, I would not want to go with a burner that needed a blower and no source of power in -40...

Don't get me wrong, I can still burn a decent fire, just can't get the same even heat throughout the house. Might even have to resort to closing off sections of the house. We had an outage last winter in -40 that lasted a few hours. We invited the neighbor over since they don't have the option of wood heat but they finally dragged out their generator after realizing the outage might drag on.

As long as the power isn't out for days, I'd much sooner hold up in my hearth room with a quilt over the entrance than fight with trying to get a generator going in -40 outside.

 

[gyrfalcon]

As long as the power isn't out for days, I'd much sooner hold up in my hearth room with a quilt over the entrance than fight with trying to get a generator going in -40 outside.

Well, there is that! I wouldn't want to go to the neighbors', either, nice as they are, unless things got pretty desperate. But the thing of it is, you don't get any advance notice about the power going out for days and days because of some freak weather event like an ice storm, and no chance to rush out and buy a generator before it happens. Huddling around the hearth is fun and cozy for a few hours, but it gets maddening and then really depressing pretty fast. Each to his own, though. If my neighbors hadn't spoken up, I'd go out and get a small one myself since those kinds of outages sure can happen here.