Is a basement woodstove or Heat exchanger my best option

[ohno40]

I've got a woodstove in my basement. It's got blowers on it and I have 6 inch pipes leading from the blowers up to a register in my living room floor. However, I'm still not really happy with how much heat is actually getting to the living room. I plan on installing a cold air return on the far side of the living to try to help the heat come up and the cold air go back down into the cellar.
I've got plenty of wood from my property ready to go.
However, I'm the only one who can stock the stove and therefore I only run it on weekends.
I'm wondering if I would be better off buying a heat exchanger for the my fireplace. I think i'd end up getting about the same amount of heat as the wood stove in the cellar but that's kind of why I'm writing this. I may be wrong about that.
Also, one advantage to the heat exchanger is that my wife or son could easily keep the fireplace going. I imagine that it will burn a lot more wood than the stove because I wouldn't have as much control over burn speed, right?
My fireplace does not have a cold air inlet. If I get an exchnager, should I also have a cold air inlet created? How is that done and what is the cost (approx) of having that done. Is it a mason who would do it?

 

[begreen]

I don't think a heat exchanger will not help much. The problem is that as the fireplace cools down it is pulling a lot of air out of the heated space. If you want the fireplace to be a good source of heat, consider putting a good insert in it or a freestanding stove on the hearth, either in or in front of the fireplace.

 

[VTSR5]

After four years of attempting to supplement the oil heat in my 1900 sq foot cape using a cast iron woodstove (Scandia 315 copy of Defiant) in the wrong end of the basement, I have now installed a fireplace insert on the first floor, right where the most heat is needed, most of the time. It's the right solution for me, but there were a few improvements I made along the way that made the basement stove more effective. Here's what I learned:

Force-feed the registers: Floor registers work, but you need a lot of surface area to make them effective, and in my 2x4 framed 1970's era Vermont home, they are still too feeble to get the job done unless power assisted. I supplemented my one large register with a muffin fan blowing upward from below. Now that was effective, but the little one-speed fan moves too much air most of the time, and it's a little noisy. One future mod I had in mind is to use an aftermarket speed control for a router to dial back the fan speed to quiet it down and manage the flow better. Another thought I had was to use a bathroom ceiling vent fan and some insulated flexible duct to serve the register. I never did this, but the idea has promise. With such a set up I could draw the hottest air from the ceiling above the stove, and locate the fan further from the register to better manage the noise.

Isolate the stove to concentrate power: I located my stove in an insulated room in the basement, and insulated the ceiling of this room except where the floor register is located. This concentrates the power of the stove and allows a nice deep strata of hot air to develop right at the joists to feed the register. I've seen the air in this layer reach over 100 degrees, and stay in the 90s for hours when the stove is really cooking. FLow through the register dramatically improved with this arrangement, and I waste less energy heating the larger area of the cellar and the room directly above the stove, where extra heat is not wanted.

Shield the stove to enhance convection: By necessity, my stove back is about six inches from my poured concrete foundation wall. Though the wall is not combustible, I have now shielded the stove from this surface with a heavy guage metal heat shield standing two inches off the stoveback. This has had two, maybe three excellent results. First, it stopped radiative losses into the concrete (these losses had been large enough to expose the grass in my yard near the stove wall all winter long). Second, it created a large convection chamber across the back of the stove, converting more of the stoves heat into hot air more quickly, and creating strong air flow and turbulence over the stove. Finally, I think my temps are up in the firebox, which should lead to better combustion and fuel efficiency.

Forget-me-not: One thing I have never liked about having a stove in the basement, besides carrying wood throught the house and down the stairs, is that this powerful appliance is out of sight and therefore potentially out of mind when in operation. A stove or insert on the main floor can be monitored in passing without adopting the sort of paranoid awareness of a remote hazard that makes me leap off the couch and run downstairs in the middle of a movie just because I got a whiff of something hot from somewhere. Even when I think I have my wits about me, I have managed to overfire the stove on two occasions, and both times it happened the same way: I had just refueled after an overnight burn, and so left the air control open to get things going again. I went upstairs for a cup of coffee, and got distracted by other business.

I'm getting better results from an insert on the first floor. But I keep the stove in the basement as a back up and for extra capacity. I think the tips and tricks I have implemented here have helped me double or triple the usefulness of my cellar stove. I hope they inspire you to do the same. Good luck.

 

[jeff123]

Your coment above was I have now shielded the stove from this surface with a heavy guage metal heat shield standing two inches off the stoveback.

I would like to try the same thing, what is the minium gauge I should use ?

 

[Adios Pantalones]

I don't think it's got to be heavy at all. Anything that will reflect heat will work, and if the stove is at 600F, then the sheilding won't get near hot enough to cause an issue.

 

[VTSR5]

Your coment above was I have now shielded the stove from this surface with a heavy guage metal heat shield standing two inches off the stoveback.

I would like to try the same thing, what is the minium gauge I should use ?

The twenty six gauge material I found at the hardware store seemed too flimsy to me. So I went to a HVAC shop and asked them to make something up according to my drawing. They used 22 gauge. Its got good heft to it, and works great. I had the stove very hot last night but concrete stayed cool, not even warm. Spacing in my case is two inches from stove to shield, two or so inches from shield to concrete. I was surprised at how effective it is.

One nice thing they did is grind and releive the edges a little so they dont cut the hand.

Another nice thing is they bent the last 2 inches or so on verticle ends of the shield forward about 30 degrees. Makes it kind of like the wings on a wingback chair. Gives a little stiffness to the shield, and wraps it forward a little toward the stove. Came out looking nice.

Seen from above: ___________________________/