I have a wood stove which keeps the lower floor of my Greenville cottage nice and toasty. But the heat has a hard time making it upstairs. The stove chimney rises through the upstairs bedroom, where of course it is plenty insulated. Is there a safe way to uncover it so it would heat the upstairs, much like a steam radiator pipe? I've searched online but can't find anything addressing this. Thanks for your help!
Is there a safe way to use a wood stove chimney as a radiator pipe to heat the upstairs room?
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Hmm, a class A chimney would give off a small amount of radiant heat if uncovered. I'm pretty sure there is a code requiring them to be boxed in as that pass thru certain types of rooms. Aside from code, I have seen tons of folks use a class A chimney in the same manner your describing.
Thanks for the info. Can you direct me to any DIY website that would explain a safe way to do it? I imagine it would be safe to open up one side of the "box" facing the room and enclose with a safety grill, but I would want to see a plan for it.
Class A pipe is insulated not only to provide fire protection, but also to prevent the cool pipe from slowing the exhaust gases to the point where the smoke can condense and cuase creosote. There isn't anything at all safe about cooling a chimney.
The class A will give off a modest amount of warmth, but perhaps not enough to heat the room. The main thing would be to make it safe from being touched. A friend used some stainless, perforated mesh on standoffs to surround his class A, yet let it convect into the room. It looked cool in a high-tech sort of way.
brownrice said:
When you say "plenty insulated" do you mean it is boxed in or that it is a very well insulated pipe (aka class A)? Having read this thread I hope you understand that what is being suggested is that if your class A pipe is enclosed in a box with 2" clearance around the pipe you may be able to open up the box and put a grill around the pipe (leaving the pipe itself alone). Nobody is suggesting that you modify the insulation around the pipe itself.
With that said - I can't really see any problem with exposing the outside of the pipe (as long as it is protected against anything violating the 2" zone around it) and allowing whatever heat wants to come off it from going into the upstairs room. As to excessive cooling of the pipe - think of all the installs where the entire class A run is outside and not boxed in. Certainly this is not going to be any worse than that!
Key caveat - repeating to emphasize - is that you would need to make sure that nothing can accidentally or otherwise violate that 2" buffer of air space around it. Thus the need to put a grill or something around it. The buffer zone is in case of a chimney fire when the outside of the pipe can get very hot and if you had something (say a blanket tossed against it) touching the pipe it could catch fire and...
Then there is always local code to consider - you may be required to box it in. You can discuss what exactly constitutes a "box" with your code enforcement folks - they may allow something with a lot of holes in it, or they may not.
Assuming the stove was properly installed, you have some sort of stovepipe (single or double wall) from the flue collar on the stove to the first penetration of the structure (sounds like the ceiling above the stove). From that point on up to daylight you should have Class A chimney pipe. Sounds like it's enclosed in some sort of chase as it passes up through the second floor on its way to the roof & out. Yes, you could open up the chase if you want to. No, it won't do much to heat the second floor. The effect on the performance of the chimney would probably be minimal, because the insulation is built into Class A pipe...after all, it's what goes up outside with nothing at all around it. Personally (and to put it bluntly), I think you'd be wasting your time exposing the chimney upstairs. Maybe think of some way to encourage upstairs cool air to come downstairs into the warm stove area...warm air will then be encouraged to migrate upstairs. Rick
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