Help with whether to buy Harman p43 to replace oil heat...I know nothing about this!

[Gregg_D]

I have a split level 1500 sq ft ranch where I am considering a Hartman p43 in the basement (only place for it to to). Stove is on far left wall in basement (with drop ceiling and insulation on ceiling). The basement is finished with a long hallway running the length of the house. All the doors in that hallway are closed. There is an open stairway leading up to the main living room and kitchen, and the bedrooms are on the 1st floor at the opposite end of the house from where the pellet stove would be. Would this stove and set-up be sufficient for heating the upstairs? Would putting in floor registers in the first floor at the end of the hallway where the bedrooms are help with the heat flow? There is a ceiling fan in the living room and another in the bedroom. The bedrooms would be over the rooms in the basement that have their doors always closed. Would a register directly over the ceiling where the stove is in the basement and two more in the hallways on the first floor be useful? What could I expect for temperature in the bedrooms/bathroom on the first floor (since they are one floor up and on opposite end from pellet stove)? Thank you for any help before I spend $3500 on stove and pellets that might not be sufficient to replace my oil (spending $2000-25000 on oil per year).

 

[Jacques909]

I would get a bigger stove p61a

 

[Big E]

If you have forced hot air, you could open up the blower door and let it "blow" through the ducts and let the blower run...I know many say it can't be done, yet I have done this exact same thing for 4 years now.

 

[Gregg_D]

I don't have forced hot air. Unfortunately hot water running through baseboard.

 

[begreen]

The stove is an area heater. It's not going to heat the opposite side of the house given the layout. Ranches are hard enough to heat without doors blocking the convective flow. The area above the stairs may get some convective heat, but not the bedrooms. Maybe consider a pellet furnace?

 

[wsar10]

nothing will beat the "hot water" heat !
I would keep it or upgrade it than subsidize with a pellet stove in a common area.

 

[wsar10]

IMO, I would put in a modern coal boiler..........
Or (what we did) add a mini-split to your house for the same price.

 

[DAKSY]

I put in a P43 when I wanted to wean myself off the dinosaurs & while it did OK in a 1450 sf home,
It wasn't enough. I STILL had to turn on the oil boiler. It DID cut down on my oil consumption, but
the house wasn't as warm as I wanted. I upgraded to a P61A & now I only use the boiler for DHW.
Like BG said, it's gonna be a challenge to get the heat where you want it in your ranch, especially at the far end.
Cutting thru floors is against Fire Code in many places & you might want to inquire with your insurance
agent & the AHJ in your area. That being said, you DON'T want registers to allow the heat to go up. You
want convection vents to allow the cold air to drop. These need to be located near outside wall - which are by
nature the coldest part of your home. You can try to push the heat up the basement stairs with fans & blowers
& if you can get warm air to the bedrooms, the cold air may drop to the basement & set up a convective flow.
The only thing I can recommend is to give it a shot. It's a major investment & if it works, great. If it doesn't,
you can always spend more time in the warmth where the stove is located...

 

[JDB]

Last year we heated our house in Vermont with a Harman P43 as the principal heat source. It's in the living room, which is the room that has the stairway to the 2nd floor, so the heat rose nicely to the bedrooms. Our house is a 2900 s.f. old farmhouse that is fairly well insulated. There's no ductwork from the furnace to the 2nd floor, only to the 1st floor, so the Harman actually did a better job of getting heat upstairs than the furnace (and it's a new furnace, installed in 2011). To push the heat to the back of the first floor we installed a few of those little corner fans in doorways, which worked well. The back of the first floor was usually a couple of degrees colder than the front where the stove is, but it was not uncomfortable. Our set up heated the house exclusively until the temperature dropped to the single digits (Fahrenheit), or if it was very windy, then the stove struggled to keep up. Also, our plumbing is set up so that in very cold weather we need to run our furnace in the basement to keep our pipes from freezing.
But we went from burning 650-750 gallons of oil to burning 4-5 tons of pellets, plus about 100 galls of oil. So we saved between $1000-1200.

For this to be successful for you, you will need to devise a method to circulate the air around, it won''t necessarily distribute itself. Cutting floor registers above the stove will help, registers with assist fans would be better.

 

[UpStateNY]

http://www.harmanstoves.com/Products/PB105-Pellet-Boiler.aspx

(broken link removed to http://www.masssave.com/residential/offers/gas-networks-hehewh)

http://www.lung.org/associations/charters/northeast/woodstove/