I recently moved into this house with a hearthstone 1 wood stove in the unfinished basement. Basement is 1600sqft. There's a hood above the stove that ties into the hvac. There's no fan, but an opening for the intake that I think was put there to capture the hot air as it rises. (More on this below). We got the stove/chimney inspected and it was given the ok. We were excited to see if this could work to help supplement heat, realizing it would be less efficient in an unfinished basement.
We bought 1/2 cord wood and have been running fires in it the past couple days. We're new to all this but feel like we've got it figured out. We're getting 6 hour burns without much difficulty. Monitoring temperatures & it is running around 300 without much input from us. Wake up in the morning with hot embers after 8+ hours. So fires seem fine.
Can't say it's heating the house, though the basement is toasty. Went from 58 to 72 near the fire. (Who puts a large stove in an unfinished basement?). So - besides feeling like it's not really giving the furnace any help....I feel like the fires are bothering my lungs. I don't have asthma, but it feels like my chest/throast are bothered. The humidity has maintained at 40 percent, to so I don't think it's related to humidity.
We're burning hardwood. But it's not fully seasoned. The wood is not uniformly cut it so it's not easy to stack in the stove well.
Question -
1. I feel like there is a lot of particulate in the air that's bothering my lungs. Do you think this is related to the old stove not being efficient? The unseasoned wood, or is this a thing you deal with when you burn wood?
2. Can we add a fan to pull air into the ducts better and would there be a benefit to the rest of the house, given that this is in an unfinished basement. (We plan to finish the basement one day).
Thanks for entertaining this long winded post. Trying to decide if I want to update the main level broken prefab with zc high efficiency fireplace or if it's just better to go with gas.
We bought 1/2 cord wood and have been running fires in it the past couple days. We're new to all this but feel like we've got it figured out. We're getting 6 hour burns without much difficulty. Monitoring temperatures & it is running around 300 without much input from us. Wake up in the morning with hot embers after 8+ hours. So fires seem fine.
Can't say it's heating the house, though the basement is toasty. Went from 58 to 72 near the fire. (Who puts a large stove in an unfinished basement?). So - besides feeling like it's not really giving the furnace any help....I feel like the fires are bothering my lungs. I don't have asthma, but it feels like my chest/throast are bothered. The humidity has maintained at 40 percent, to so I don't think it's related to humidity.
We're burning hardwood. But it's not fully seasoned. The wood is not uniformly cut it so it's not easy to stack in the stove well.
Question -
1. I feel like there is a lot of particulate in the air that's bothering my lungs. Do you think this is related to the old stove not being efficient? The unseasoned wood, or is this a thing you deal with when you burn wood?
2. Can we add a fan to pull air into the ducts better and would there be a benefit to the rest of the house, given that this is in an unfinished basement. (We plan to finish the basement one day).
Thanks for entertaining this long winded post. Trying to decide if I want to update the main level broken prefab with zc high efficiency fireplace or if it's just better to go with gas.
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