Moving Air - Practically

[Sicktght311]

This question has come up a million times, but i'm looking to pick everyones brains as to what YOU would do that is not only functional, but also realistic.

We have a wide ranch style home with a second floor. Long narrow hallway separates the living area of the house from the sleeping area of the house. The woodstove is in the living room against a false wall between the LR and DR.

During the winter, the wood stove gets plenty hot, and can easily raise the temperature in the DR and LR without pushing it, however the other side of the house where the bedrooms are, sees none of this heat. The house is decently insulated, with a few drafts that i've been closing up year over year, so i'm fairly confident at this point theres no major drafts causing heat loss. The thermostat is located on the wall in the beginning of the hallway closer to the living room, so when the stove is running, the thermostat shuts off heat to the bedrooms since its seeing temps much higher than we typically have the thermostat set to, even though the bedrooms are now freezing.

I tried putting a vornado fan on the floor outside bedroom3/master bedroom to blow cold air on the floor towards the living room, but it really doesnt seem to make more than a couple degree difference. Above the hallway and bedrooms i have a crawlspace in the second floor and i was considering putting a bathroom vent in the ceiling of the LR, and running ductwork down the crawlspace and exiting in the ceiling at the end of the hallway to aid in drawing some warm air, but i nkow moving hot air is more difficult than cold, however i cant run any ductwork underneath the floor.

Any thoughts as to something that would help in my situation? I really want to avoid having all kinds of fans just sitting on the floor in the hallway, as even the one Vornado fan was always a tripping hazard in the middle of the night. I thought about putting wireless thermostat sensors in the bedrooms, and using those to control the radiator heat to compensate, but seems like that would be counterintuitive to using a wood stove to save on heating costs

 

[electrathon]

If you do use a vent/circulator that has and ductwork it is important that the duct does not leave the thermal envelope of the house. Most people that have ductwork in their crawlspace basically just end up heating the area below the house.

 

[Riteway]

Do you have a forced air furnace? If so, do you have an intake in or near the room with the wood stove? You could try getting a thermostat with a "circulation" setting (if you don't already have one). This setting will kick on the blower for around 20 minutes every hour, regardless of whether the furnace is firing. This helps equalize the temps throughout the whole house.

 

[moresnow]

Your wood stove is a space heater. Your asking a lot with it located all the way to one end of the home. It will have a rather tough time getting the bedroom temps up where you want them without keeping the stove room at 100F.
If the fans pushing cold air towards the hot stove room don't cut it I highly doubt the central forced air system will be of much help either. Just my experience trying both methods.

I thought about putting wireless thermostat sensors in the bedrooms, and using those to control the radiator heat to compensate

Herein lies your answer I am guessing. Maybe others will have a better outlook! Good luck either way.

 

[begreen]

As noted by yourself and others, this is a real challenge for several reasons. In the sketch shown is everything on the same floor? If so, what do the stairs lead to? If pictures illustrate the set up better, feel free to post.

 

[Dataman]

I use couple of box fans with filter on them. Does the job. Run on Low and my Bedroom stays about 68f. Living room 74-78 (Pellet stove). I did the same thing with Wood Stove.

 

[Sicktght311]

1) crawl space meaning area behind the knee walls in a converted attic. Insulated dead space. Not cinderblock crawl space under the house
2) no forced air. Heating is oil fired hot water radiators. Cooling is in wall air conditioners
3) Image is all one floor. stairs is to a converted attic. 2 bedrooms bathroom and hallway. It’s a “farm ranch” but the 2nd floor is similar to a cape
4) I think the stove isn’t necessarily undersized, it’s just a house that’s under designed for a wood stove. I’m not trying to honestly get the entire first floor The same homogenous temp, but rather just keep the bedrooms from dropping to 50 something degrees on cold winter nights when the other side with the stove is in the upper70s, low 80s, without having to use oil to needlessly heat. It’s a single zone heating system for the entire first floor so if the heat is kicking on to heat the bedrooms, it’s also heating the side of the house with the stove

 

[begreen]

The long narrow hallway is a major restriction for heat transfer. Is the converted attic a conditioned space that is insulated and heated? If so, would it be possible to run a duct along the kneewall, in the conditioned space? Is there a basement or is this on a slab?

 

[Sawset]

This question has come up a million times, but i'm looking to pick everyones brains as to what YOU would do that is not only functional, but also realistic.

We have a wide ranch style home with a second floor. Long narrow hallway separates the living area of the house from the sleeping area of the house. The woodstove is in the living room against a false wall between the LR and DR.

During the winter, the wood stove gets plenty hot, and can easily raise the temperature in the DR and LR without pushing it, however the other side of the house where the bedrooms are, sees none of this heat. The house is decently insulated, with a few drafts that i've been closing up year over year, so i'm fairly confident at this point theres no major drafts causing heat loss. The thermostat is located on the wall in the beginning of the hallway closer to the living room, so when the stove is running, the thermostat shuts off heat to the bedrooms since its seeing temps much higher than we typically have the thermostat set to, even though the bedrooms are now freezing.

I tried putting a vornado fan on the floor outside bedroom3/master bedroom to blow cold air on the floor towards the living room, but it really doesnt seem to make more than a couple degree difference. Above the hallway and bedrooms i have a crawlspace in the second floor and i was considering putting a bathroom vent in the ceiling of the LR, and running ductwork down the crawlspace and exiting in the ceiling at the end of the hallway to aid in drawing some warm air, but i nkow moving hot air is more difficult than cold, however i cant run any ductwork underneath the floor.

Any thoughts as to something that would help in my situation? I really want to avoid having all kinds of fans just sitting on the floor in the hallway, as even the one Vornado fan was always a tripping hazard in the middle of the night. I thought about putting wireless thermostat sensors in the bedrooms, and using those to control the radiator heat to compensate, but seems like that would be counterintuitive to using a wood stove to save on heating costs

View attachment 263888

I have something similar going on here - space heater at one end, hallway, rooms at the other end. If what is current isn't cutting it, Isee supplemental heat in your future. It takes a temperature difference to move heat. Keep the doors open. Use an incense stick to determine air flows. It can be surprising the intensity of air flow generated along those hallways. A fan in the hall at that point bumps it only a little. Some have great luck using a fan - I saw little benefit, and a noisy fan to boot. Warm air moving through the hall may just not contain enough BTUs to overcome the heat load from all those rooms.

 

[Poindexter]

My inclination would be to get a basic $20 box fan and put near the bedroom end of the hallway, on low, blowing cold air along the floor towards the stove. I see a bunch of different fan styles labeled vornado. Slow and steady wins the race here, once the convective loop gets moving your just kind of sculling along.

That would at least allow folks in all three bedrooms to get to the bathroom without tripping over the fan.

I do think an incense stick to help visualize air currents is liekly useful inthis situation.

 

[Sicktght311]

So everyone is in agreement then that a powered duct in the attic crawlspace pulling warm air from the LR to the other side of the house, would make absolutely zero difference, correct? At this point i'm all for adding anything even if its only a 10% difference. I'll have to try seeing how the air moves this winter, and perhaps move the fan towards the end of the hallway pushing the air towards the stove, instead of down the hallway

Also another major reason i'm finally trying to figure this out, is because our daughter was born a few weeks ago, so i'm trying to plan ahead for winter to ensure that her bedroom doesnt get frozen whenever we have the stove going. If that means Nest + remote sensor in her room to control the heat for the time being while i figure this out, so be it

 

[Dataman]

Put in Oil Heater. They come in 700w - 1500w. (broken link removed)

 

[Dataman]

(broken link removed)

 

[Sawset]

powered duct in the attic crawlspace pulling warm air from the LR to the other side of the house, would make absolutely zero difference, correct?

I don't think the LR air would contain enough BTU's. You would need massive amounts, not 100cfm from a small duct.
The hall here could be an example:
hall is 3ft wide
incense stick indicated air moving around 60ft/min
warm air travels in top half of hall to the bedrooms
3ft wide x 3ft (top half) x 60ft/min = 540cfm
At that rate LR is 70, 1 bedroom is 60deg.
You have 5 rooms to feed heat to on the way and at the end of the hall.
Close the doors to those rooms except one, and maybe get some improvement.

For a time we had one of those radiator type electric heaters for the bedroom, when I needed temps higher than what the stove could maintain. I thought it was interesting how the electric bill then had a bell curve lock step with the heating degree days for our area. I put it on it's own thermostatic switch, independent of the stat that comes with the heater, so I could maintain a constant 65deg.
My son just had twins - and the temp in the house there where he is at needed to be elevated some - 72deg - or they were not happy campers. He couldn't figure it out, because they were so used to living a certain way, cool house year round, till the little kiddos forced a change

I looked up the cfm for a 14" floor fan.
On high, this one was rated at 1500cfm or so. On low, probably a third of that, so right back to natural convection rates.
So there would be quite an increase in air movement, yet at the expense of - lots of air blowing around, and the noise factor to make that all happen.

 

[Bad LP]

I don't see a fan or duct work fixing the problem.
I'd put a remote wireless programmable thermostat at the BR end of the hallway. If access is available to the plumbing for the HHBB you could zone them and only heat them when needed. I'm a firm believer in having as many zones as possible. That way you are only heating the space that is calling for it.

 

[begreen]

If the ducting can not be put in the conditioned space, I'd look into zoning the hw heating system so that the bedroom half of the system is on its own thermostat and the LR half on a separate thermostat.

 

[Highbeam]

If the ducting can not be put in the conditioned space, I'd look into zoning the hw heating system so that the bedroom half of the system is on its own thermostat and the LR half on a separate thermostat.

This is what I would do if I had water heat. What I did do when I had new babies is set up a line voltage programmable thermostat in their bedrooms to activate the installed electric wall heaters. Same thing really. Babies need heat, just do it. Don’t jack around with fans or ducts. You’ll have plenty of other things to do. Then keep the stove room warm to minimize run time of the heat in those remote rooms.

 

[begreen]

. Babies need heat, just do it.

LOL, my mom would have had a few words here. She always left our bedroom windows cracked open when we were babies, even during New England winters. I think she must have put an extra layer on us. It's recommended that the babies room not be too hot to help prevent SIDS. FWIW, Europeans tend to go for cooler baby room temps than here. I just checked a UK site and they recommend 16-20ºC. (60-68F).

The safest room temperature for babies

The recommended room temperature for babies is 16-20°C because the change of SIDS is higher in babies who get too hot.

www.lullabytrust.org.uk

 

[Highbeam]

LOL, my mom would have had a few words here. She always left our bedroom windows cracked open when we were babies, even during New England winters. I think she must have put an extra layer on us. It's recommended that the babies room not be too hot to help prevent SIDS. FWIW, Europeans tend to go for cooler baby room temps than here. I just checked a UK site and they recommend 16-20ºC. (60-68F).

The safest room temperature for babies

The recommended room temperature for babies is 16-20°C because the change of SIDS is higher in babies who get too hot.

www.lullabytrust.org.uk

I said babies need heat, not that they need to be roasted. Without heat those back rooms might be 50? 60?

I recall us only going to 68 on those thermostats.

 

[begreen]

I said babies need heat, not that they need to be roasted. Without heat those back rooms might be 50? 60?

I recall us only going to 68 on those thermostats.

Yes, I know, just poking fun. It was a pet peeve of my mother when she heard of people thinking babies need to be kept at incubator temps. I like the zoning for this situation.

 

[Sawset]

This is what I would do if I had water heat. What I did do when I had new babies is set up a line voltage programmable thermostat in their bedrooms to activate the installed electric wall heaters. Same thing really. Babies need heat, just do it. Don’t jack around with fans or ducts. You’ll have plenty of other things to do. Then keep the stove room warm to minimize run time of the heat in those remote rooms.

Get it done.

 

[Highbeam]

Oh and if you can’t figure out how to use your central heat for just the bedrooms in time for the baby then just pop in a 15$ plug in space heater. They have thermostats.

 

[Dataman]

Exactly. Just get Oil Filled Heater. Cheap and Safe. Get one that you can control Wattage. I posted link earlier. Cheap to Run too!

 

[fbelec]

when i get a customer with this problem i say the same thing as said here. get a oil filled radiator for a average size bedroom on 900 watts ( usually it has 600, 900 and 1500 ) 1500 will take out a breaker if not on it's own. put it in a corner of the room with a kiddie cornered chest of draws in front of it so that no one gets burnt. and the most important thing is to keep the door closed and use a baby monitor. if the door is kept open even a crack the heater is going to try to heat the rest of the house and the power bill goes way up.