Cold air return and house convection

[area_man]

I have a den in the basement where the wood stove is, and a fireplace upstairs in the living room. The stove in the basement is enough to heat the house, but I need to improve my cold air return to drain cold air from my daughters' bedrooms at night. During the day, I need to improve cold air return from the open floor plan living room/kitchen/dining room, and the office which is in the bedroom area.

In order to isolate the two areas, I'm going to install a pocket door between the two upstairs areas so they can be controlled independently. This will be most useful at night when I heat the bedrooms/bathroom/hallway, but not the office.

In the LR/K/DR area, there are three vents. I think one might be a cold air return, but I'm not sure. I think the cold air return in the hallway is the main cold air drain for the area, which I could use simply by closing the bedroom and office doors. Would it make sense to install a fan in that cold air return to maximize the use of it?

In the bedrooms, the cold air returns are a single 3x11, and in the office are two 3x11's. In the hallway between all the rooms is a larger return, it seems to be about 24x6 or so.

I was thinking about installing cold air returns with a fan in each of the bedrooms to make the most of that small opening. Both of the bedrooms are significantly colder than the rest of the house. Also, I've seen small round openings in walls toward the ceiling that would allow warmer air to travel into the room. I would like to install those in the bedrooms so they get the most heat at night.

I could also install a vent at the bottom of the bedroom doors to improve air flow towards the larger cold air return in the hall. Do you think that would do the trick?

My purpose in all this is to maximize the amount of cold air going to the stove room, which would cool off the basement when the stove is burning hot to decrease the temp of the master bedroom in the basement and the stove room while increasing the temp in the bedrooms upstairs.

 

[ridensnow23]

Trying to heat a closed floor plan with wood heat can be areal crap shoot unless your wood burners are directly tied into the duct work.

I have an insert in my living room and the thermostat is just down the hall. We have to keep the doors to the living room closed, otherwise the insert warms the hallway and the furnace does not kick on. End result is the rest of the house gets cold.

If those rooms are cold when you are running just the furnace, then you may need to look at some duct changes and or adding insulation. Your best bet is to get opinions from a good HVAC guy or two. You may have a return problem, or you may have a supply problem. The design of the house can play a major factor and has to be considered.

 

[begreen]

I think you may be mistaking cold air returns for the supply vents. Can you draw a sketch of the floorplan and post it here? Mark the location of the stove and FP.

 

[mac cloud]

I think begreen is right,your cold air return vents are probably just the larger centrally located ones .

In my house,(raised ranch style),the 2 cold air returns are at the end of the hallway,and in the living room/dining area .
The bedrooms/bathroom only have supply vents .

 

[area_man]

OK, here are some freehand drawings that aren't to scale, along with rough approximations of the locations of vents. I think the vents blow instead of drain, with the exception of the one in the hallway, I think it drains. I'll have to experiment a little with a lighter to see whether some of them blow or drain... but I think all of them blow with the exception of the one in the hallway.

The thermostat is in the Cold Storage room. If I could possibly align the stars to keep that room cold I would LOVE to do that. It's a great space to store my pressure-canned food.

The bottom floor is a daylight basement with the exception of the cold storage room and the back of the master bedroom, that is all completely underground and likes to be at 58F. There are open holes between the closet at the back of the master bedroom and one upstairs bedroom, so heat going from the den through the master bedroom would flow to that upstairs bedroom unimpeded. Or cold air flowing back down. I don't know which one is the case, and it probably depends on the relative heat in each room.

The upstairs bedrooms are much cooler than the rest of the house in the winter, and much warmer in the summer. If I could connect them to the rest of the house then they would be more regulated.

If I could do so safely, I could add a cold air drain from each of the upstairs bedrooms that goes directly to the master bedroom, and just leave the master bedroom door open when the stove is cooking. More cold air going to the master bedroom, more warm air convecting up to the upstairs bedrooms, and the stove could cook off at high temperature with lots of air flow and space to dissipate the heat. That would keep the whole house toasty and comfortable. If I can put in fans that assist the cold air drains, that's all the better.

But I don't know about that stuff, I hope you guys do. The box fan tipped down on a folding chair in the hallway thing is not something that's going to work out well in this house. The hallway is too narrow.