Heating the Second Floor

[CarpentersCure]

Good morning,

I’m seeking guidance on how to more effectively heat the second floor of our home using our wood stove insert. I’ve attached drawings to help show the layout. Below is the basic information about our house, stove, and current setup.

Location
We live in northern Baltimore County, Maryland, roughly 10 minutes south of the Pennsylvania line. Based on the IECC climate zone map, we’re right on the edge of zones 4 and 5.

Wood Stove
We have an Osburn 3500 insert that I installed last winter. The chimney is on the exterior, and I installed approximately 26’ of .006 insulated stainless-steel liner. I also sealed the smoke shelf/damper void with Rockwool insulation. The stove is located on the first floor of our home.

Current Setup / Information
We have two HVAC systems—one per floor. The first-floor system is turned off, and the upstairs system is set to 62°F just to prevent temperatures from dropping too low. We heat the house exclusively with the wood stove, running it 24/7. I load it around 9 PM and still have a full bed of hot coals at 5:30 AM for the next load.

The first floor stays very comfortable—around 70°F throughout the day, and typically about 67°F in the morning. We keep the first-floor doors closed and use a window fan mounted near the ceiling in the sitting room (where the stove is) to push warm air down the hallway toward the kitchen. This setup works extremely well for heating the entire first floor.

The challenge is getting heat to the second floor. As shown on the drawing, the staircase is located in the foyer and is set around a corner. The foyer itself gets plenty of heat from the stove, and the first-floor thermostat is located there—so I can easily monitor the temperature. However, the warm air seems to stop at that point and does not continue up the stairs. The stairs are a standard straight run with a high ceiling void, not an open landing.

I’m looking for recommendations or ideas on how to move heat upstairs more effectively. Would placing a fan at the bottom of the stairs help? Or a fan at the top pulling warm air upward? Our home was built in 1991, and I’ll soon be adding insulation to the attic to restore any lost R-value. We also recently installed new windows, so I don’t suspect major issues with the building envelope. It seems to be more a matter of airflow.

Thank you for any help or insight you can offer. Let me know if anyone needs more information.

Brandon

 

[stoveliker]

Things work better if you push colder air to the stove. So a fan on the floor upstairs pushing colder air down. It'll be replaced by warm air coming up.

 

[EatenByLimestone]

What temp is upstairs? I only see the downstairs temp mentioned. Is it possible that you’re losing a lot of heat from the upstairs? What is the insulation like in the attic? Walls? Windows?

Are you getting as much heat as you can out of the insert, is there a blockoff plate installed with insulation above it?

 

[Dix]

The wall between the stairway & the living room is closed off, or open?

Welcome to the forums !

 

[DBoon]

I have a two story house - about 1000 square feet on the first floor and about 750 square feet on the 2nd. Stairwell is one room away from the woodstove room (and there is a 5' wide opening to the stairwell room). It's an ideal setup (and similar to yours in terms of stove/stairwell placement and upper/lower ratio of square feet)

2nd floor ceiling (attic floor) is well air-sealed (entire house is <1.0 ACH50), R-60 in half the ceiling and R-75 in the other half. Most windows upstairs are new casement or high-quality new double hung (R-4.5 and tight) and there are two older, original windows with storms (R-2, sealed well). Heat loss upstairs is about half of the downstairs (mostly due to less window square footage and more new windows). There is a heat recovery ventilator that does exert a draft of air down the stairs (intakes are on the first floor, all exhaust is on the upper floor), but I don't think this has too much impact (if I change it to only run 1/3 of the time instead of continuously then the upstairs gets slightly warmer).

Having said all of that, my upstairs will maintain at about 5 degrees cooler than the downstairs with just the woodstove running. If I want 68 degrees upstairs, downstairs has to be 73 degrees. If it drops overnight to 69 or 70 downstairs, upstairs will drop also (and takes all day to heat up again). Mostly, this is ok - bedroom are upstairs and I don't mind them cooler, my office is upstairs but gets heated by me and my computer+monitor and warms up nicely (and gets most direct airflow from woodstove moving heat upstairs). I'll usually run radiant heat in the bathroom floor to keep the bathroom warmer than it otherwise would be. In deep winter, I won't push the woodstove crazy hard and I'll just run radiant heat in the entire upstairs to add a little boost to what wafts up from the woodstove.

Therefore, even if you were perfectly insulated with no leaky windows, your upstairs will not be a warm as your downstairs. You might need a bigger woodstove downstairs or need to run 3 fires a day instead of 2.

Hope this helps.

 

[kborndale]

Put a mini split upstairs.