gas stove expectations

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Oct 14, 2011
43
South Puget Sound
I've lived with lots of different wood stoves, but I now have my first gas stove, and I'm not sure if it's working correctly or not. We bought a Travis Industries 616 GSR2 Diamond-Fyre Insert, and had it installed in the fall of 2013. It's in a room that is about 20' x 40', but the specs said that it would heat a much larger space. I don't remember the details, because it was supposed to heat a much larger space, so I didn't need to worry about the details. Anyhow, on her work-from-home days, my wife wanted to work downstairs, but she found that it was too cold. With the stove's blower going full blast, it's louder than we thought it should be, and it still wasn't warming the room enough, so she added a couple electric fans blowing towards it, put a curtain across the stairwell to the upstairs, and a curtain across a section of the room (taking out about 20' x 9'). With those measures in place, it was okay except her feet were cold.

We have a house built in 1960 with crappy insulation, but I haven't gotten around to replacing the insulation because a) western Washington state isn't that cold, and b) the upstairs is warm because of the fire, and c) we have a gas furnace that heats the whole house if we need it to. But we were hoping that we could heat just the downstairs, and the stove we bought should have done the trick. Where do I begin when trying to solve this mystery?
 
Do you have new or old windows?

I experience the same issue you do in western Oregon, in a daylight basement. I'm also new to gas stoves, but this thing can get hot.

I find that it will warm okay, but I get cold air leaking from the old windows and crap insulation.

Your stove is probably fine, I would spend some time sealing gaps. The stove will only heat so much before the cold air rushing in wipes it out
 
You have 800 sf with crappy insulation. You have a 38K (NG) input unit. Less than that if you're burning LP. It's about 65% efficient, so you're getting about 24.7K BTU out of it. With GOOD insulation,
it will heat less the 800 sf. You need to either insulate better, or lessen the amount of
square feet you're trying to heat. 400sf should be adequately heated by this sized unit,
even with minimal insulation...
 
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Thanks. Looking at the specs, I see now that it says "up to 2,000 sq. ft." I thought "up to" meant "somewhat less than" not "over 60% less than". Lesson learned. The windows are good, but the wall and ceiling insulation needs to be updated. Wife is thinking it would be quicker and easier to put in a ceiling fan. Ceiling's only 7' 9" from the floor. Not sure how much it would help, but it would be quicker and easier.
 
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