Heating 1000 sq ft Basement

[Davida]

I have a 1500 sqft house with a full 1000 sqft basement with 8 ft unfinished ceiling and I need to be able to heat it for a morning or afternoon during the winter here in Virginia to allow me to do some woodworking.

I have an 80K Btu condensing boiler for the whole house with 5 zones. One zone is for domestic hot water in an indirect water heater. It has an unused zone just waiting for basement heat.

In thinking about various methods for doing this for a few hours of the day, it seems that radiators would be a little slow and not a great deal of wall space is available. Modine type heaters are probably too noisy.

So I am wondering, if I get a furnace fan (squirrel cage) and a heat exchanger if seems a simple matter to hook it to the boiler, build and enclosure and have a thermostat control its operation. This should heat the place up more quickly and perhaps waste less heat. The basement has cement walls, uninsulated, but the basement is half underground and has a few very tight windows.

Is this kind of system feasible? What size blower and coils might I need for such a space? What CFM would be appropriate?

Many thanks for any advice on this.

 

[blades]

Insulate the walls and rim joist area first- other wise 80% of what heat you do add downstairs just gets absorbed those 8ft high x? long heat sinks called walls.

 

[Davida]

In the plans! Thanks.