bobswworld said:
Hello, I to will have these same issues of moving air around. We have a englander 1500 sqft stove in our basement. the install upstairs would have been alot more costly. The stove is located just across from our stairway, no insulation in basement ceiling so it should warm the floors nicely. But it is only a half basement, possible problem???
Good luck with the ac/furnace blower idea, keep us informed as I was thinking the same. Can't wait for winter here in VA want to burn our new stove. Good luck to all
How's the winter in VA so far? ;-)
OK an update on my setup. Finally got it connected and have been testing it for a bit now.
What I did was to add another thermostat to our AC/Furnace.
I place the thermostat on a beam about 8" from the ceiling in the basement, wired it up normally. But I did removed/disconnect the one wire, the AC wire, from the upstairs thermostat on the furnace that would normally turn the AC on. (Not 100% sure if that was necessary though). and turned the breaker off for the AC condenser unit outside so it would not come on.
I then cut an opening in the intake/return side of the duct work, which was easy since it's a fiberglass square duct system that hangs on the ceiling.
So now we have three thermostats in our home, one in the living room the main one that controls the heating and AC, one in the hall way (upstairs) that is connected to the pellet stove, and then new one in the basement.
What I do is set the main one on Heat at 65* just in case the pellets run out or if the pellet stove for some reason or the other doesn't keep up. The one connected to the pellet stove is set to heat like it should be to about 68*. The basement thermostat is set to AC at 72*.
So here's how it works, when the pellet stove heats the basement to 72 or above the basement thermostat calls for AC, kicks in the fan and the hot air is drawn in through the opening I cut in the return and circulates the air through the house.
So far it has worked well, the tricky part has been the setting on the basement thermostat to keep the fan from running too long, and then that all depends on the pellets I am using since the various brands vary in output temperature and then I have to adjust the low temp feed rate accordingly to be able to keep the pellet stove on the 1 - low setting.
The one thing I wonder about is the extra cost of electric from running the AC fan pays for the 4*-6* difference in comfort upstairs. But the house is nice and more evenly heated now it seems.
Going to be testing this a bit more and if it seems feasible I will get one of those firetrap vent things to put in the duct work for sure.