I have a wood burning stove heating up my basement but the heat can't get to the upstairs because of the home design. I can't cut openings in the basement ceiling (upstairs floor) for the heat to just rise naturally, so I am thinking about cutting a vent in the cold air return duct downstairs (in the wood heated room) so I can just turn the forced air fan on and the heated air downstairs will be drawn into the cold air return then flow through the forced air system. It seems to me that the warm air will get sucked out of the basement and more properly distributed through the house. I am anxious for any advice I can get - can anyone out there provide any guidance? Thanks!
Cut opening in cold air return?
- Thread starter darrend
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I think the return inlet, by code, has to be at least 10' from the heat source. We have a ranch house w/no basement, but I do run the furnace fan to distribute the heat and it does work pretty well in our case. Some will claim that this doesn't work, but the air temp up near the return is often higher than the discharge temp of many heat pump systems.
Sometimes it works, most of the time it doesn't. Most people try and blow the dense cold air from upstairs down to the basement and that will push the warm basement air up to replace it.
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