Help on circulating air from insert

[Marcus]

Hi- I'm a newbie and am having a Regency I3100 insert installed next week. We have a 3000 sq ft ranch with a partial basement and I'm hopeing to heat the whole house. It's an open floor plan. Fireplace is in the center of the house in a sunken great room with vaulted ceiling and ceiling fan. I am in the process of insulating the heating ducts as we have a 60ft run through the insulated crawl space to one end of the house. I plan to use the furnace blower to circulate the fireplace heated air. I had a thought that I probably also should insulate the cool air returns since I want to keep that air as warm as possible as it is going to be recirlulated. I saw another post where someone mentioned they put an air return vent high up on the wall in the room with the fireplace to suck the warmer air into the air return and recirculate that. That makes sense as I really want to circulate the warmer air that is higher up, not the cooler air at floor level, which is where most of the cool air returns are located. We also are having blown insulation put in all our attic areas.

Just looking for any feedback, ideas, or oppinions!

I have been lurking here for a few months before having just registered and feel I have become so knowledgable just from reading the posts here. Eveeryone's ideas have been very helpful. Looking forward to joining the heating with wood family.

Thanks for the help!

 

[paulgp602]

Not an answer to your question, but I have the Regency I2400 it works great. I heat about 1200 sq feet with it and it has been a worthwhile endeavor considering how oil prices are these days.

 

[kregars]

Marcus,

Im in the same boat but with a smaller house. My problem is the doorways and high ceilings. My only lucky side to this is that it's a single level ranch, but a rambling ranch at that. I am having to install 2 woodstoves to accomplish my task. The one in the front of the house will likely be a Quadrafire 3100 standalone stove, and the one in the back will be something smaller...maybe the 2100, or the like. Back room I am heating is ~500sf, the rest of the space is in 2 bedrooms off this room, and the front side of the house.

From my looking, and planning, insulated returns are the way to go, especially in the attic above the insulated layer. It's also nice that I am in the process of replacing the entire ducting as the stuff I have was degraded to the point I wasnt willing to waste time and money fixing it, but out and out replacing it. The return for my house is a single line shot (most likely you have multiple points of return) due to multilevel. As for how I am planning on handling air movement...right now I am in the expensive and dirty state..so I havent gotten that far.

 

[Marcus]

kregars, good luck with your project. Our house is mostly just a single level ranch, so the air return is mostly just a straight shot. We are hoping new attic insulation and ventillation will also help a lot. We have such bad insulation that we get bad ice damns. Right now it is about 25 degrees outside and cloudy, but we have snow melt dripping off the room because of heat loss. We are blowing in about R-49 and adding soffit baffles and continuous sofft and ridge vents, so that should sove the problem.

 

[kregars]

Yeah..it amazes me that the house I am in had a full roof replacement..not just the shingles, but the plywood was pulled and replaced as well. They did SOME of the work...and it boggles my mind that while they were at it they didnt just replace the main line and returns (since it was exposed and more easily accessible)...but alas...they were doing just what was needed to get ready to sell...and I was the lucky receiver..so now I gotta do all the hard stuff in tight spaces...I'd love nothing more than to relo the main lines and the return...one thing I did when we first moved in was to replace all the feeder lines off the main line to the rooms. They were in sorry condition and were uninsulated. That was a heck of an undertaking and what led me to identify I needed to redo the entire shebang. New HVAC and handler, but old duct work leads to semi ahead of the game but alot of wasted heated and cooled air in the process.

Which leads me to look at the spray/expanding foam from the thread:
https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/1327/

I'm thinking of contacting them to find out what the cost of the removal of old and spraying in of new in the attic (unused space). There is currently 13in of blown in (not the new stuff..the old stuff) that will need replacing at some point...figure while I'm up there, might wanna just do the whole thing in one shot. And trying to get it done before summer...DC Metro summers and playing in attics aint my type of 'fun'...I'd rather be freezing up there working than melting.