heat question

[farmer brown]

I have a heat pump for my home with wood backup. I light the wood stove every so often to provide radiant heat which takes the chill out of the basement. Even though the house is centrally heated, the heat from the heat pump doesn't warm the basement sufficiently, even with all the vents opened. I was going to install an outdoor gasifier and have already installed the heat exchanger in the plenum of the air handler. Will the heat exchanger provide a different "kind" of heat so I no longer have to light the indoor stove? Is this kind of heat similar to what we experience from the indoor stove?

 

[Gooserider]

I have a heat pump for my home with wood backup. I light the wood stove every so often to provide radiant heat which takes the chill out of the basement. Even though the house is centrally heated, the heat from the heat pump doesn't warm the basement sufficiently, even with all the vents opened. I was going to install an outdoor gasifier and have already installed the heat exchanger in the plenum of the air handler. Will the heat exchanger provide a different "kind" of heat so I no longer have to light the indoor stove? Is this kind of heat similar to what we experience from the indoor stove?

If I'm understanding your question, you have a forced air system that is warmed by a heat pump, and you are looking at adding an outdoor boiler to supply an alternative heat source feeding into the same air circulation system?

If so, I would say that your heat exchanger will provide the same sort of heat you get from the heat pump - essentially both are using an HX to warm air that gets blown around the house. What feeds the HX is irrelevant. Depending on whether the boiler HX is hotter and / or bigger than the heat pump HX, it might or might not do a better job of heating the basement - I wouldn't put bets on it.

What I might do in addition to the HX in the plenum (which I assume is also feeding the rest of the house?) is to put a few panel radiators in the basement in order to supply some direct heat in that area, possibly after looking at whether you need to beef up the basement insulation and airsealing... It sounds like either your basement is a major heat loss area, or you don't have a good duct setup for it, either way adding some direct heat will help... In addition, while they aren't as cozy and romantic as a wood stove, a radiant panel will put out radiant heat, which is probably much more like what you get from your woodstove.

Gooserider