Heating rooms with doors closed

[Dmill97]

Hi there guys My name is Derek. New to this forum page and first time homeowner! We have a wood stove and love it. A little outdated it’s an old Schrader fireplace lol. Ordered a new Quadra fire stove so we’ll see how that goes. But I wanted to ask if there is anyone that has a solution to getting the heat into the rooms with the doors closed. I will attach a rough sketch of my floor plan. I’d like to be able to close the doors at night and still be able to get some heat in the bedrooms. They get too cold at night if not. I will be getting the crawl space better insulated as well and windows. Thanks in advance!

 

[kennyp2339]

Your not with the doors closed

 

[begreen]

It will take a well-insulated, ducted air system in the crawlspace that pulls air from the bedrooms and pushes it into the livingroom. The BR doors will need modification to allow some air passage or wall vents will need to be added between the BRs and the hallway to facilitate passage of air.

 

[Bad LP]

Ain’t happening.

 

[Sawset]

first time homeowner

a solution to getting the heat into the rooms with the doors closed.

Long long ago, there were folks who heated with wood stoves. If they wanted heat in a room, yet privacy with the doors and transomes closed, then each room had a stove. Hotels, hostels, train stations with rooms to rent, homes with guest rooms, rent a room, with a stove.
You're going to want to open the doors to let some heat in.

 

[Trevor M]

At the risk of being shot since Im such a newbie here.. Since you encapsulating the crawl.. run an "cool air duct" to feed the stove. The other end of the duct will go to "cool air return vents" cut into the floors of the rooms. The warm air will travel along the ceiling and be drawn into the rooms via vents above the doors. Circulation is the name of the game.

I don't know much about wood burning.. but I do know that this is how they did it in the old days.

 

[Grizzerbear]

I get the privacy thing. But i would just open the doors. What trevor m mentioned can work if done right.....my grand folks house was set up like that and it worked.

 

[Dmill97]

Thanks guys for the replies!

 

[Northern NH Mike]

All I could come up with was some type of duct system that circulates the air.

We leave our doors open, run a fan to push the cold air toward the stove at floor level and get a nice circulation up to the second floor bedrooms. When we need "privacy" I close the door for eight minutes and 42 seconds and then reopen for the rest of the night ;-).

 

[Trevor M]

8 minutes! You trooper..I find that ² min is good lol.

 

[Grizzerbear]

All I could come up with was some type of duct system that circulates the air.

We leave our doors open, run a fan to push the cold air toward the stove at floor level and get a nice circulation up to the second floor bedrooms. When we need "privacy" I close the door for eight minutes and 42 seconds and then reopen for the rest of the night ;-).

8 minutes! You trooper..I find that ² min is good lol.

Im so fast i dont even have to shut the door.

 

[Dmill97]

At the risk of being shot since Im such a newbie here.. Since you encapsulating the crawl.. run an "cool air duct" to feed the stove. The other end of the duct will go to "cool air return vents" cut into the floors of the rooms. The warm air will travel along the ceiling and be drawn into the rooms via vents above the doors. Circulation is the name of the game.

I don't know much about wood burning.. but I do know that this is how they did it in the old days.

So whoever lived here before they installed a fan and duct work in the attic and has little vents going to the back bedrooms from the ceilings. Blows cold air but I’m wondering if they tried to get the warm air from the living room and kitchen to get back there that way?

 

[Bad LP]

All I could come up with was some type of duct system that circulates the air.

We leave our doors open, run a fan to push the cold air toward the stove at floor level and get a nice circulation up to the second floor bedrooms. When we need "privacy" I close the door for eight minutes and 42 seconds and then reopen for the rest of the night ;-).

Damn. How freaking big are the fish you catch?

 

[begreen]

So whoever lived here before they installed a fan and duct work in the attic and has little vents going to the back bedrooms from the ceilings. Blows cold air but I’m wondering if they tried to get the warm air from the living room and kitchen to get back there that way?

Attics are usually quite cold. Unless the duct is very well insulated it will lose a lot of heat. If it is reasonably well insulated, try reversing the blower so that it blows cool air into the warm stove room.

 

[rwhite]

The problem I always found was moving the high volume of air. I tried the small register blowers and the just couldn't move the volume of air in the ducts. The circulation fan was just to big and moved it to fast and cooled the air to much. If you figure it I'd like to know. So far the ceiling fan running in reverse has been the best. I keep the doors open as well. With the living room at 75ish the back bedroom is around 68. Which is good for sleeping. The heated mattress pad is also pretty nice!

 

[toddnic]

Without the doors open, it will be tough to transfer heat. I know a homeowner that installed an open vent above the bedroom doors that helped with heat transfer, however, that really didn't work great but did provide some heat transfer. I've also found that running the fan on the HVAC unit does not provide much heat transfer either.

 

[rwhite]

Without the doors open, it will be tough to transfer heat. I know a homeowner that installed an open vent above the bedroom doors that helped with heat transfer, however, that really didn't work great but did provide some heat transfer. I've also not found that running the fan on the HVAC unit provides much heat transfer either.

I think all I ever managed with the circulation fan was to get the entire house evenly cold. I'm not sure how hot furnace tubes are inside (1000 degree?). But by the time it reaches the register its 70. So starting with 70 its usually 50 by the time it comes out the register.

 

[EbS-P]

We used electric space heaters when it got really cold in the back bedrooms. I did the math since I already had the heaters it was cheaper to run them than any other method I could come up with. We didn’t use it too often. Only for the coldest 4 weeks of the year and only when we were in the rooms. Small rooms heat fast. Was it a moral win? no but it was comfortable. Leaving the doors open as much as we could with a fan on the floor blowing towards the stove kept them pleasant so the space heaters weren’t running full time and didn’t have to bring the temp up to far when they were turned on.

 

[Trevor M]

I feel that slow migration of air is the answer.(warm air migrates to cold air) Ducting in the crawl directly to the bedrooms and drawn into the fire via the air inlet on the back of the stove. The warm air will migrate slowly but eventually reach the vents above the doors and remain at a constant temp. Don't think I would want to use the vent in the attic at all, as mentioned it very cold up there and unless the pipe is very well insulated you will lose all the heat and could even be dealing with a mold issue.

 

[Sawset]

We have a bedroom and a couple rooms at the end of a hallway, about 35ft from the stove. As an experiment, I took an incense stick to the hall, measured the air speed top and bottom, calculated air volume at about 5-700cfm, equal to 5-7 hvac registers, for 3rooms, all generated by the stove at the far end. To duplicate that with forced air takes power from a fan to create pressure in a small sized duct. Passive systems like gravity feed furnaces from years ago had 4 times or more the size ductwork that forced air does. 5-7 hvac registers, equates to about the size of opening the 3 doors to the hallway.
Another thought, running the furnace fan - the cold air returns are generally down low, the coldest parts of the room. The coldest air, is being circulated.
When they set up forced air furnaces, a temp change across the heat exchanger is measured, and the fan speed adjusted to make that to 50deg +-, or whatever the manual specifies. Outgoing air could be 120deg or more. Passive heat has none of that, and relies on small temp changes with large ducting to compensate. Small ducting, small flow rates, small temp differences, means small amounts of heat, and the rooms stay cold.

 

[Trevor M]

Demill97.. The reason I'm so invested with your situation is that I'm in a very similar situation. Though we don't have a long hallway and 3 bedrooms as you do, we do have a back bedroom that is heated with floorboards and we like to have the door closed in the evening. Tomorrow we are having the crawl fully encapsulated and an industrial sized dehumidifier installed. This will keep the odor and humidity down. What I am intending to do after the encapsulation is what I mentioned previously, though I won't be using ducts in the crawl(perhaps you wont need to either) I am going to cut a cool air return into the floor directly into the crawl. I will probably attach a check valve of some sort so the cooler crawl space air can't come back up that vent under certain conditions. I will attach a 4-5" pipe from the floor of the crawl directly to the stove. The idea is that the somewhat warm air from the bedroom will now be heating the crawl which should help keep the humidity down and warm the main floor(ceiling of crawl) so that the electric heat in the crawl won't have to work as hard.

 

[EbS-P]

I’ve put off insulation and encapsulation of my crawl space for now. It needs it though. Waiting to make a decision about replacing all the ductwork be forever I do anything to the crawl space. Let us know how it works out.

I do know my house is so leaky that the stack effect draws a pretty good supply of air from the crawl space into the house.

 

[Jackfre]

I think the ideal, given this lay-out is a properly sized register over the stove to properly installed (sized, sealed, insulated) ductwork with a fan in the attic to push the air to the rooms. You could then short-cut the doors an inch or so to allow the air out of the BR. If that doesn't work, put another duct system in the floors to reverse the flow with its own fan. That represents a substantial investment even if you do it yourself.
By the time you run this exercise I think you will be best served with a mini split with the small ceiling mounted air handler (evaporator) for the bedrooms. These units have very low static pressure generally so the duct lay-out must be precise. They do operate efficiently and will heat and cool the bedrooms. Trying to force the stove to do this is really not a good idea

 

[ShawnLiNY]

I think the ideal, given this lay-out is a properly sized register over the stove to properly installed (sized, sealed, insulated) ductwork with a fan in the attic to push the air to the rooms. You could then short-cut the doors an inch or so to allow the air out of the BR. If that doesn't work, put another duct system in the floors to reverse the flow with its own fan. That represents a substantial investment even if you do it yourself.
By the time you run this exercise I think you will be best served with a mini split with the small ceiling mounted air handler (evaporator) for the bedrooms. These units have very low static pressure generally so the duct lay-out must be precise. They do operate efficiently and will heat and cool the bedrooms. Trying to force the stove to do this is really not a good idea

Complete waste of money and time ( the stove is not a furnace and would never provide enough warm air on th outlet side of vents ) always move cold air to warm area , warm air will flow back

 

[Jackfre]

Complete waste of money and time ( the stove is not a furnace and would never provide enough warm air on th outlet side of vents ) always move cold air to warm area , warm air will flow back

I agree with you on the stove not being a furnace, but the op is asking if it can be done. Sure it can if you throw enough dough at it. The problem with bringing the cold in to the stove room, in this lay-out, is that you may create discomfort in the primary area. I've done thousands of apartments with the gravity/passive flow systems (Rinnai Energysavers and Fujitsu mini-splits) as well as when using Tjernlund Airshares with good results so I'm pretty squared away on how they work and the problems. This lay-out offers very little to work with other than a separate system, and the ducted mini-splits would be the best option.