How To Get Heat Into The Rest Of The House?

[drizler]

My multifuel stove is unfortunately located in one end of the house so its hard to get the heat moved to the other end. As you can see in the pic a lot of the heat gets bottlenecked in the living room due to that dropped section of the cathedral ceiling. Can I make some sort of boxed cuts in that section and get a noticable amount of heat movement. The hallway that is just behind the doorway pictured to the left has a similar smaller dripped section that likely does the same thing. Currently as last season I moved heat with a small box fan on the hallway floor blowing towards the heated room. I would like to mount a small fan up there to help move heat down the hall by pointing it in the other direction. Is doing this worth the effort? I had thought of hanging a ceiling fan in the area in front of the stive but I doubt that that would do much to get the heat down that hallway. Any ideas from you HVAC or builder sort of guys?

 

[Corey]

It would definitely be worth a shot. First I would make sure that the place you want to put the vent is not a major load bearing member of the house. If it is, there is likely to be a solid header in there that you can't cut. If it is non, or minimally load bearing, there is probably some open space. The easiest thing to do then would be to "thump" the wall with your knuckles to map out the hollow spaces, cut the sheetrock away on both sides of the wall and install a couple of nice vent grills. If you were really crafty, you could wire a small fan inside the vent for added heat transfer.

As a last ditch effort, you may not be able to go above the doors because of the headers, but may have better luck going straight through a wall for two adjoining rooms...depending on how your floorplan is.

I'm pretty much in the same situation...stove in one end of the house and bedroom 100 feet away in the other. A few small fans near the ceiling seem to make a huge difference in the heat transfer through the house. But the most my heat has to "jump" is one small header between the family room and rest of the house. Running a ceiling fan seems to stir up one room good but cuts the heat to the rest of the house because it disrupts the "river" of hot air flowing along the ceiling.

Good Luck
Corey

 

[quads]

Running a ceiling fan seems to stir up one room good but cuts the heat to the rest of the house because it disrupts the "river" of hot air flowing along the ceiling.

I discovered that too. I have a ceiling fan in the same room as my stove and I never run it. If I do, the room with the stove gets warmer and warmer as the rest of the house gets colder.

As for Driz's problem, try a doorway fan placed in each doorway near the top corner. They work pretty good for me and help a lot.

 

[roac]

Is there a cold air return vent in that room your stove is in? Have you tried using your central heat's blower to distribute the warm air more uniformly?

 

[pmac]

Is there a cold air return vent in that room your stove is in? Have you tried using your central heat's blower to distribute the warm air more uniformly?

That's the approach we took, and it works fairly well. Our stove is in the basement (finished) and I hoped at first that the warm air would just naturally rise up thru the rest of the house via the stairs. It did, but not nearly enough to prevent the basement from getting too hot and the rest of the house too cool.

So we had a heating guy come in and install a return air duct in the wall across from the stove, and run the gas heater fan without the heat on. Made a world of difference. It's still warmer downstairs than upstairs, but the difference is about half of what it was before.

 

[elkimmeg]

The mistake most make is trying to manouver the warm air. What you aught to consider is, how to move the cooler air at floor level.
Move the heavier dense air makes room for lighter warmer air. Supply without returns is useless. Fans at door tops only circulates warmer at ceiling level. Pushing lighter air into denser cold air does not work all that well. Removing the cold air draws warmer air in to replace it.
On the heating side having ceilings returns are the least effecient and poorest designed systems. Central hall way returns even worse without returns in bedrooms. A well designed system would have high and low feeds and returns. But that cost more money, most builders cheap out. low for heating high for AC. If one applies simple, logic a ceiling return is returning the warmest air back to the heating unit. It should be the opposite the coolest air. With a low return, it draws the warn air down instead of it always being in the upper portion of the room at ceiling level. It also creates the natural convection to enhance heating.
Point being, one has to move the cooler air to effeciently circulate lighter warmer air.

 

[mikedengineer]

Exactly right Elk. I found this out by trying different fans in different locations. My bedroom is 25 feet fown a hall from the stove. From the stove there is a ceiling drop just like what is pictured. I have a small fan located at the top of the opening blowing down the hall. It is a 60CFM 4" axial fan. Then in the bedroom I have another 4" axial fan at the top of the doorway blowing in that is a 100CFM fan. In the room I have a box fan about 2 feet from the door blowing out. It is slanted slightly downward. Just to keep that cold air on the floor. I probably should have the mroe powerful fan nearer to the stove, but this set-up works AWESOME! I think there is only a 5 maybe 10 degree difference depending on the temperature outside. I got these axial fans for free, but at $20 a pop get them.

-Mike

 

[quads]

Fans at door tops only circulates warmer at ceiling level.

I tried them at the bottoms of the doors, but kept tripping and falling.

 

[carpniels]

Hi Elk,

I have been in only one house in my life that had separate high and low returns. Amazing build. The guy us an engineer and built the house himself. The most amazing thing I saw there (apart for every heating system know to mankind in the basement) was the double roof system. He built a room above the garage that was insulated, and the ceiling was insulated. To prevent icedams, he built the real roof 4 inches above the ceiling so that cold air from the soffits could rise upthere and go out through the ridgevent. The whole roof as easily 2 ft thick.

Another question: since you said moving cold air is more important that the hot air, what do you suggest for all of us to do in regular ranch house? Horizontal air movement is quite tricky. I have three fans blowing (ceiling fan in the room with the stove, 1 pedestal fan next to the stove to moveth hot air above the stove into the diningroom and 1 vornado fan on a ladder in the hallway at the other end of the dining room to move the air into the hallway where the bedrooms are. How can I, and all others on this forum, place or fans better so the heat form the stove is distributed more evenly?

Carpniels

 

[mikedengineer]

Carpniels,

Check out my post above. I hope I explained my set-up well enough for others to understand. I have a circulation with my fans that brings hot air into my bedroom 25 feet from my stove via a fan at the top of the bedroom doorway blowing into the room along with another fan at the top of the cieling by my stove blowing towards my bedroom. That brings my hot air into my bedroom. Then I have a fan on the floor blowing out of the bedroom taking cold air out of the bedroom and back towards my stove. This IS the circulation that works for me and I'm sure that it would work for 90% of others applications.

-Mike

P.S. pardon me if i butted in on Elk's and yours conversation

 

[roac]

P.S. pardon me if i butted in on Elk's and yours conversation

Mike,

Don't ever worry about that. The last time I checked this conversation going on is on a public forum. ;-) A forum to exchange ideas among many minds, not just one or two. If a private conversation is wanted then a PM can be initiated. None of us should ever be afraid to contribute even if our knowledge is incomplete.

 

[elkimmeg]

I have no problem

Problem #1: Using the ceiling fan negates all natural convection Great for mixing air in the room with the stove. Poor at circulation air to other rooms you have neither light warn air high or coller air at the bottom what you have is a mix. Use a series of floor box fans to direct the bottom cooler from the space you want to draw warmer air into. No its not perfect stoves are designed to be space heaters. Sure beats cutting a lot of useless holes and getting nowhere

 

[Penny]

Hello, just joined. We installed a 1990 earth stove over a year ago that does not have a blower on it. We could order one for 180 approx. and found a fan on Grainger.com for $90. I am wondering about noise and CFM's. I think the blower I can buy 14m22 from Lennox the CFM's are around 150, unless I am mistaken and am quoting from the ECOfan that I looked at over and over on ebay, debating on rather to purchase. Anyway if someone can help with noise and how much CFM's would be good, I'd appreciate it. Here is the model we are looking at on (broken link removed) Blower,216 CFM,115 V DAYTON
4C942 It also shows a different amount of cfm's. ??
Thanks, Penny

 

[roac]

Hello Penny and welcome to the forum, I'll address the ecofan question. The heatwave is an alternative to the ecofan, it has a lifetime warranty, 200-300cfm and it will withstand higher heat than the ecofan at about the same price. Someone else I'm sure will chime in shortly on the other part of your question.

http://www.thermalengines.com/

 

[babalu87]

We have a Cape home and I have been noticing that unless all the doors to the bedrooms (2nd flo0r) are open I dont get near the heat I should be to the second floor.
Put one of these http://www.kaz.com/kaz/store/product/a6d13b8a10ca28fdcc08f2674efbfc4d/ at the top of the stairs tonight and am already noticing a big difference in airflow.

I put it at an angle pointing down the stairs and have it on a removable bracket

 

[drizler]

When I started this I figured it would end up going all which ways and I was right. First off I have a zoned boiler so no circulation whatsoever. I do use a small box fan in the side of the hallway to blow the cool air in and enjoy tripping over it almost as much as I enjoy watching others do the same. Thats why I use the small fan, its light small and goes flying instead of something to fall on.
I have no problem getting the cool air in just that damned hot air dam between the rooms. I think that keeps most of the hot air sitting in a bubble. There is a smaller similar dam in the hallway. What I want to do is notch those areas out and just put in a small 4" or so fan high in the hall to get a little hot air action going with the cold draft in the hall. What I want is to simply make it easier for the livingroom air to flow into the kitchen area behind that large drop in the doorway where it is easier to then send down to the bedrooms. Probably in the form of some knick nack shelf like some custom houses have. I am not worried about the load bearing wall which it it. I just want to work around the structural stuff boxing it with new sheetrock.

 

[richg]

I had this problem in my bilevel house, and came up with a pretty neat way to move the air. I placed the stove downstairs in the rec room, and then ran ductwork that exhausts into the living room and three bedrooms. The Intake is in the rec room. The whole thing is driven by a thermostatically-activated high speed inline fan. I bought a line voltage switching sub base, and set it to "cool". The sensor probe of my P61A is upstairs. The chain of events is that when the temperature upstairs drops, the stove kicks on downstairs. The termperature in the rec room rises, and since the thermostat is set to "cool", it kicks the fan on when the temp downstairs rises. Hot air is set upstairs, and cool air is brought down the central stairway that leads to the rec room. In the summer, I mount a big air conditioner in the rec room window, and set the thermostat to "heat". It sends cool air up, and forces hot air down into the rec room where it is cooled and recirculated. It was a lot of effort to find the right parts and install this system, but it works incredibly well.

 

[Penny]

Hello Penny and welcome to the forum, I'll address the ecofan question. The heatwave is an alternative to the ecofan, it has a lifetime warranty, 200-300cfm and it will withstand higher heat than the ecofan at about the same price. Someone else I'm sure will chime in shortly on the other part of your question.

http://www.thermalengines.com/

Thanks. It sure would be a good idea for power outage. Better cfm's and withstanding higher heat is a plus. I'm curious to how hot our stove has actually been.

 

[rjlets]

I have two of these in the doorways they do a pretty good job of moving the air. the nice thing is that there up high where the heat is. HD has them also.

http://www.improvementscatalog.com/product.asp?product=144925zz&dept_id=10120

 

[Penny]

Initially we were going to cut out a spot, add a fan to push warm air into the kitchen. Sounds like the wrong thing to do.

After reading all the replies on pulling the cold air into the warm space, we're rethinking the way we eventually want the fan system in our wall to be like. We are going to just cut out a hole behind our wood stove (sounds like our situation is somewhat like the above post) put in a fan, add a thermostat to the cooler end of the house, and pull cold air into the wood stove area from the kitchen. What about another hole at the top, pushing the warm air out? The bedrooms are past the kitchen, we use heaters in the last two bedrooms, with the door closed. With our latest cold spell of two weeks, I'm sure we'll feel that one.

Thanks again for ideas. Also, thanks for the welcome.

 

[papabear]

Initially we were going to cut out a spot, add a fan to push warm air into the kitchen. Sounds like the wrong thing to do.

Hmmm, me too Penny.
My stove is in the basement and a friend gave me a 30" X 30" grate. So I was about to cut a hole the size of Texas in my beautiful hardwood kitchen floor right over the stove. But have not yet because it really bothers me to do that to my floor.
So I am really liking this thread since I have unused and unhooked return grates in every room from the old furnace which is not in use. Cold air falls into the basement but if I helped the air move with maybe little duct fans or something - that may do the trick. I don't need much because the stove keeps it 65 most of the time, more on a warm day and less on a cold day. If I could raise the temp say 3 or 4 degrees upstairs, that would be great.
Thank you folks for a different perspective!

 

[Tristan]

All this talk about putting fan on the floor is all THEORETICALLY sound ... however ... what about us folks with toddlers. If my wife sees a fan on the floor, first thing she's going to do is unpug it and put it away, second thing she's going to do is tell me that there must be to much heat in this house anyways because its gotten into my head. So what else can I do to "move the cold air" Thanks.

 

[tinkabranc]

blow cold air to the heat & not try to push hot air. cold air is denser & fan moves more air . allow for circulation by open passage for air return.

I am confused now. I have both a return register and vents in the same room as the stove.
Are you saying to face the fan towards the stove instead of trying to blow the stove heat from it?

 

[Tristan]

The children.... what about the little toddlers... lets not forget about the little innocent children and their curiosity ( and the wife's anger)