How to get the heat to the rest of the house?

[Adchrist]

I have a relatively small woodstove in my kitchen on the ground floor of my rented 2 story home. We have a forced air furnace in the basement that we try very hard not to use. We have closed off the upstairs for the winter & are thinking of capturing the heat over the stove & sending it to the return air side of the furnace to circulate through the house using the furnace fan.
It seems to me that I need a collector over the stove, plumbing to the furnace (with water), and some sort of radiator at the furnace to act as a heat exchanger. (pulling air into the furnace that is warmer than the NORMAL return air).
Does anyone have any ideas on simple, cost effective & aesthetic ways to do this? My better half is NOT thrilled with the idea of some CONTRAPTION hanging in the air near the stovepipe. Any and all ideas are sure to be helpful. Thanks in advance from a 1st time poster!

 

[Pagey]

Most people here will encourage you to use fans to blow cold air towards the stove, setting up a convection current which will help to move the air from the warm stove to the cold area. Unfortunately, if you start messing around with trying to push/blow heat from the stove via drastic measures, you can create a situation where you end up reversing the chimney, thus pulling smoke back into your house down the flue.

 

[atvdave]

It's hard to tell dew to peoples different floor plans, but what works for me is using small fans. I don't do like most people say and blow cool air back at the burner, I mount the fans high on the door frame and blow it down my hallway to my back bedrooms. The room with the insert is always in the 80's, and the back bed rooms are in the lower 70's.

I'm experimenting with some in-line duct fans to help even out the air, but I don't have them installed yet.

 

[Corey]

Whether you choose to blow hot air across the ceiling or cool air across the floor, a few well placed fans will probably serve you well. There is really no need to build a wild contraption above the stove and try to circulate water to a heat exchanger on the furnace. Most furnaces are designed to circulate a small amount of really hot air, not a large amount of relatively cool air as comes from a wood stove...you'd wind up loosing almost as much heat as you gain.

 

[atvdave]

Most furnaces are designed to circulate a small amount of really hot air, not a large amount of relatively cool air as comes from a wood stove...you'd wind up loosing almost as much heat as you gain.

+1 on that. I also tried that as well, and all I got was cool air blowing out of my registers. But I never installed anything over my insert to try to capture the heat.

 

[precaud]

The simplest, most effective, and most elegant solution for heat distribution is a ceiling-level air vent. In my house, one such 32" x 8" vent sets up a circulation that keeps all but the most distant room quite warm. Right now it's 74 in the living room where the stove is, and 69 in the hallway, the furthest point in the circulation pattern. No fans, no noise. It just works. Super-insulation in the ceiling really helps here - mine is R50.