Heating Question?

[lchambers]

We have a two-story daylight basement home with about 1250' on each floor. It was built in 1971 with brick open fireplaces in the family room (completely finished basement) and above in the living room. A small Whitfield pellet stove was inserted in the basement fireplace and has worked well heating our family room. The home is equipped with forced-air furnace using natural gas. We would like to find a wood stove insert and possibly place it in the living room natural fireplace as our main source of heat. I had been told by a dealer that an electrician could come in and setup a rheostat to push warm air from the pellet stove/wood stove through the forced-air vent system througout the house? How has this worked for people doing this? Is it efficient? What brand/model of wood stove are favorites for something like this?

Thanks
Larry <

 

[begreen]

Using the forced air heating system to distribute the house is usually inefficient. There's often too much heat loss in the ducts and there's the electricity use to be accounted for. Also, I don't believe you can put a woodburning insert in a natural gas fireplace. Or is this is a masonry fireplace designed for wood, but currently with natural gas logs?