Experimenting with a different way to get the heat from my basement...

[drewboy]

I have two rooms in my basement, unfortunately the woodstove is in the corner of the front room and the stairway is in the next room. Essentially I have to heat 2 rooms before the heat even thinks of making it's way towards the stairway (which is on the end of the house and creates another problem). I have tried fans but it just doesn't give any results with my set up.

I have a small sign shop in the basement and have an abundance of 2ft wide cor-plast panels (think campaign signs). I figured if I can direct the stream of hot air from that front room to the stairwell I might be getting somewhere. I hung the panels from the ceiling and made a 'channel' from the front room doorway to the stairs. It hangs only 2 ft down and actually collects the hot air which rides along the ceiling and brings it right to the stairway.
So far it is working great, when I go to the top of the basement stairs I get a pretty substantial flow of heat compared to what I had before.

I'm not as concerned with the looks as with keeping the upstairs thermostats lower. As far as the safety aspect, I didn't change anything in the stove room and I have a CO monitor and hard-wired smoke alarms throughout the house. I think this was a good alternative to cutting registers in the floor and I can take it down in 5 minutes at the end of the heating season or when we have a Pats super bowl party downstairs...

 

[Huntindog1]

Too bad you dont have a duct thats running all the way from upstairs to the basement as one trick is and I do it, is at the far end of my house I opened an existing vent so it was straight into the basement , then I put a small quiet 12" fan point down blowing into that vent. By blowing air down into the basement I pull air all the way down the hallway to that end of the house as the center of my house is the warmest as my stove is in the center down stairs in the basement.

 

[zzr7ky]

I've found returning cold air to the basement is the key. Warm air will figure out where it needs to be. I have a powered cold air return on a switch in a closetlocated near the center of the home.