House Plans - Stove Selection - Opinions?

[burningfire]

Hi All,

We're just starting to frame our house and I wanted to post a picture of our plans to get feedback before all of the walls go up and the stove is ordered.

We live in western Canada. Our coldest temps are typically -25C (-13F) with average nightly lows of -10C (14F) during the winter. The house is in the trees and won't get a ton of solar gain during the winter. The walls will be R20 and the ceilings R40.

The goal of the stove is to provide the majority of the heat in the house. Each room will have electric baseboard as backup.

Our stove choice is either the Sirocco 30 or Princess.

Above the stove the ceiling is open to the "Kids Play Area" meaning that area is like a loft. It shows the opening on the upstairs floor plan. We will have a ceiling fan above the living room.

A few specific questions.

1) Is the firebox in those stoves appropriate for this plan?

2) We're debating changing the kitchen around to get a half height wall where I marked the plans. I'm thinking that would make a big difference in getting the main floor more evenly heated. Thoughts?

3) How successfully do you think we'll be able to heat this house with either of those BK stoves with the blowers? There is no basement to worry about.

Looking forward to some feedback.

Thanks.

 

[shoot-straight]

is it a cape-style? if so, i would say no for 2 reasons.

1. that open area is a huge heat sink. we have vaulted cielings in our stove room and it stinks. we have a ceiling fan in ours too. however, if you place a cold air return on the ceiling of it, you could run your air handler and circulate the hot air through the house pretty effectvely.
2. capes are notoriusly bad when it comes to heat loss. mine is terrible. i love the look, but simply could never build one again. if so, i would be all over your builder to make sure things are as tight as possible. its a tough job. ther

mine is about 2k as well and im in MD where its not nearly as cold. my ashford cant keep up when its REALLY cold and blowing.

 

[burningfire]

Thanks for the response.

The house is "sort" of a cape cod. On both the front and back there are two almost full width shed dormers meaning that there is an attic above a lot of the entire top floor. This also gives the majority of the top floor a flat 8' ceiling.

I've attached a picture of the front of the house so you can see what I mean.

 

[begreen]

It may work well considering this is new construction. I agree though that this will depend on how the house is built. Invest now in better insulation and tighter sealing and it will pay off for the life of the house. To that end I would consider sheathing the house with a 1" foam jacket in addition to what has been proposed. This will act as a thermal break. Without it you will get exterior thermal conduction through the studs, plates etc.. Invest in good insulation and sealing and the house will be much easier to heat. Also, I would order the stove with an outside air kit (OAK).

Immerse yourself in this site for a lot of helpful information.
(broken link removed to http://www.buildingscience.com/doctypes/enclosures-that-work)

 

[DougA]

1. I can't comment on which stove is better as I am not familiar with either, just that I would go larger than you think you need. R20 is not much for walls these days, I'd go R30 if it is still possible. If keeping heating costs low is a prime objective, then put your $$ into insulation and air tightness.

2. I've got a half height wall between the living/dining room and the kitchen and LOVE IT. A few things to consider though. Make sure that appliances are evaluated on db sound in addition to all other criteria. We switched to a nearly silent dishwasher and it does make a big difference. Even a fridge is noisy in open concept. With our wood stove in the main room and a half height wall, the far end of the kitchen is almost the same temps. We have no baseboard heaters in the kitchen by design. It's never been needed.

3. Your house design is less open than ours and I think it will present some issues. The blower is not going to be a big difference on the stove. We've got one and rarely use it and prefer the ceiling fan when needed (not that often). As a minimum, I would put floor vents with low volume fans in the upstairs bedrooms and a ceiling vent in the master bedroom. You want to create a circulation loop for the air that will take warm air from the play room and pull it gently through their bedrooms at the back and through the kitchen back to the living room. Your stove will always create an air circulation loop automatically anyway. What you need to do is design it so that it circulates through the house, not just into the kids room. As you have it designed now, the kids room will get too hot and the rest of the house will not be warm enough. To be effective, the plan I'm suggesting will require that the bedroom doors be open all the time. If that is not how you plan things, you'll definitely need an air handler and duct work.

I both agree and disagree with shoot-straight. You did not mention an air handler and it would be best to design duct work into your plans now. If you want central air someday, it will be needed but it will also help move air around the house more effectively than a passive air loop. We have a very large open floor plan with a 900' great room and 16' cathedral ceilings. It works fantastically well. The larger the space, the more it moderates everything. Vaulted works just as well as long as you have something to grab the air at the top and circulate it to the bottom. Ours has a natural convective loop.

If you search the forum here, you'll find a ton of threads on air circulation problems with wood stoves. Best to deign this in now.

 

[begreen]

Personally I would reverse the kitchen with the family room too. I don't like the kitchen at the entrance and near the stairs. Would prefer the kitchen exit to be to the deck. It's much more convenient to have the kitchen close to the deck for entertaining and barbeques.

 

[jeff_t]

The blower is not going to be a big difference on the stove. We've got one and rarely use it and prefer the ceiling fan when needed (not that often).

Blaze Kings are a more convective design than your Hearthstone. The blowers are very effective in pulling heat from the stove.

 

[burningfire]

Luckily I'm building the house so it's easy to make adjustments now. Although I've built plenty of houses for various people over the years they've almost all had only central furnaces.

Doug you're right that we aren't really planning to have central air. We're up in the hills and it just doesn't get hot enough here to require it.

Are you talking about installing some vents like in the attached picture? The ones in the upstairs bedrooms could blow cool air from the floor down to the lower level. What about the the master bedroom vent? Would you want that to blow the warm air from upstairs down or the cool air from the master bedroom up?

Having doors open in the bedrooms isn't an issue at all. Good point on the appliances too

Edit: Attaching Picture.

 

[burningfire]

I've been reading a bit more about in floor vents. I got a link to these from this site.

http://shop.tjernlund.com/collections/ventilation-and-air-transfer-fans/products/asll

They look pretty good

 

[DougA]

Would you want that to blow the warm air from upstairs down or the cool air from the master bedroom up?

My goal would be to try to get as much flow of air as possible to get the wood stove heat moving throughout the house. The warmest room will be the kid's room, so you want to blow air down from there into the master bedroom and then out to the living room. With doors on the upstairs bedrooms open, you to pull the warm air from the kids room into these bedrooms and then push it down to the office and kitchen. The flow is going to leave the bedrooms cooler than the other rooms which (for me) is a good thing but you do not want them cold. YUou also don't want too much air flow because flowing air will make the temperature seem cooler than it is.

There will be a natural loop created if you just use floor vents but I think you will need the type of power vents you are looking at. You could always try it without the fans and then buy them if needed. Caveat - you want to make sure that openings like this comply with fire regulations. I don't know if you need metal ductwork to comply or not.

The other reason for ductwork is an air exchanger. I designed one for my house but after living in it, decided it was not needed. You've got much smaller rooms and you may need it. It all depends upon life style, etc. For example, we do not smoke in our home and don't allow any guests to smoke. Back years ago, the easiest way to determine the need for an air exchanger was to cook cabbage then go outside for an hour. If you smell cabbage when you come back inside, you have fresh air problems. Low tech or KISS is often the best.

 

[DougA]

I prefer not to say much about your layout other than what you are asking. The burning question I have is: how long have you lived with this design? When I designed mine, the layout changed a lot, especially with the seasons. Cold weather makes you want larger family areas, warm weather shrinks them. Our design was over 3 yrs. and the final plan was still being tweaked for the last year. Since you are a house builder, it may be easier but you really want to be able to walk through and live in your house mentally for months.

Even after building, we were forced to change a family room to a fourth bedroom after we discovered two of the kids could not share a bedroom. Now that the kids have grown up, we've got 3 empty bedrooms. Life is funny.

 

[burningfire]

I've actually gone through a few different house plans over the last 9 months. What drove the design of this house is keeping in perspective the fact that we really don't want to be tied to a large house payment.

To be honest I don't build houses full time anymore. After finishing my apprenticeship in Carpentry I made a career change. Luckily for me though having that ticket and experience is paying off now

In your house did you have all of the ducting roughed in for the air ex-changer and then decided you didn't want to buy the unit?

 

[DougA]

In your house did you have all of the ducting roughed in for the air ex-changer and then decided you didn't want to buy the unit?

We built on slab, so no basement and we had to allow 'spaces' for the ductwork to go in the event we needed it. I have a large office beside the house, so when we were forced to put central air into the office due to heat from equipment, we put ductwork in the house and connected it in. Some summers, the need for a/c in the house is a handful of evenings but some are quite a bit more. The heat is OK but in Ont., it's the heat plus humidity that makes everything so depressing. As we get older, the humidity gets harder to put up with. A few years ago I installed a split unit to cool just the master bedroom and it saves a lot of $$ plus is very quiet. With hydro rates so high during the daytime in the summer, it paid for itself quickly.

The more you allow for 'contingencies' the safer your design will be.

My son has an air exchanger in his new house (came with it) he only uses it when he has a party. They are supposed to be inexpensive to run but they will still lose a lot of heat, regardless of the specs the mfg. quotes.

BK's are great units but keep in mind that (from what I have read here) their claim to fame is being able to burn 24+ hours before reloading. Always remember that 2 cu ft of wood is going to produce X amount of BTU (depending upon species). With a wood stove, you need to calculate the heat loss of your house, then make sure the BK you select will cover that plus extra. Most mfgs quote maximum BTU, so you won't get a 24 hr burn using the max. rating.

 

[rideau]

One nice thing about a full basement that is essentially entirely underground is that it stays the same temperature year round. Unless it is a hundred degrees out, my house feels like it is air conditioned all summer long. Another is the storage area it provides.

While we were building, I decided I wanted to be able to see the lake from the kitchen, so put a "window" in the wall. Between the door and the window, we get good circulation. On a really bitterly cold day, I can always put a small fan pointing from the kitchen through either the door or window to the livingroom/diningroom where the stove is. With a good part of the length of that wall full height, it keeps the kitchen noise pretty much in the kitchen. Don't know your orientation, but my kitchen faces South and East, and gets a lot of solar gain on sunny winter days.

I would seriously consider adding an airlock entry. It will make your home much warmer. The absence of one is my biggest regret with my home. I'd make a nice big one, with seating along one side, so people can remove boots, etc in winter before coming in. If you're in the country, you could provide for cross country ski/snowshoes etc storage there as well....and a shovel.....

 

[shoot-straight]

.

BK's are great units but keep in mind that (from what I have read here) their claim to fame is being able to burn 24+ hours before reloading. Always remember that 2 cu ft of wood is going to produce X amount of BTU (depending upon species). With a wood stove, you need to calculate the heat loss of your house, then make sure the BK you select will cover that plus extra. Most mfgs quote maximum BTU, so you won't get a 24 hr burn using the max. rating.

given the sq footage and climate, im not sure a 3.0 stove will be able to do it. certainly not a 24 cycle. overshoot, but the king and then go on the 24. you can dial it down no problem. but you can only dial them up so far.

at least thats what i would do.

 

[DougA]

given the sq footage and climate, im not sure a 3.0 stove will be able to do it. certainly not a 24 cycle. overshoot, but the king and then go on the 24. you can dial it down no problem. but you can only dial them up so far. at least thats what i would do.

Agree with that. It's a choice of either using electric baseboard to supplement when it gets really cold or getting a larger stove and burning nights only in the shoulder season. I'm a fan of going bigger and adding a bit more work to build fires in the shoulder seasons. The cost of hydro is going nowhere but through the roof and if you live on land with free wood, then use it! BTW, I follow my own advice and went to a 4 cu ft. stove this winter - love the heat and the lower hydro bills.

Last comment. Make sure that you do install some baseboard heaters so that you are legally using wood as supplemental heat only. Your insurance will be higher $$ if you are wood stove as primary heat.