Moving Heat Downstairs To A Lower Floor

[WoodPelletGuy]

Hello,
I'm looking for some ideas on pushing heat downstairs to heat my family room.

I have a Harman Accentra fireplace insert on the main floor of a 2000 sq ft two story colonial. Last season enough heat leaked upstairs to the bedroom to keep it warm enough for sleeping (about 62).

My problem is that my family room is downstairs in a well insulated walk out basement with a suspended ceiling. I'd like to force some heat down there.

Last season I ran my central AC air handler to try to force some heat from the main floor to the family room. The exhaust vent for the central AC is in my living room where the pellet stove is. The AC air handler has a very small return to the family room. I'm think there is an inline damper to this downstairs vent. The family room is usually comfortable in the summer due to "leakage" from the condenser and this small vent.

Running the AC air handler seemed to help out keeping the downstairs warmer but I think I was wasting quite a bit of electricity to run the air handler. I also don't think I was pushing as much heat as I could.

The past few days I was thinking it would be very cool (but not practical) to place some kind of a duct right in front of the pellet stove to capture all the heat coming from the stove and direct it straight downstairs with a duct fan for pumping some BTU's into the downstairs when needed.

A more practical solution would be to remove the duct work from existing floor register and rig up some kind of a duct fan or register booster straight to the downstairs.

What I don't like about this second solution is that I would have to spend a few minutes each season re-configuring the ducts for AC or heating. But if I knew it would work I wouldn't mind.

Anyone have thoughts or experience ?

Thanks !

 

[begreen]

Your right, running the air-handler is really inefficient. A more practical and safer alternative would be to add some heat in the family room. You want heat where it's needed. If it's well insulated, an electric strip heater would work and will give you a lot better comfort not to mention aesthetics.

 

[WoodPelletGuy]

I have two baseboard electric heaters in the family room. They aren't really sized large enough to handle the requirements. I use a portable electric space heater to help out.

 

[begreen]

That's a common issue. It sounds like scavenging heat off the pellet stove wouldn't help much. Reducing the heat loss could be the better way to go. Is this on a slab floor or is the floor insulated? Can the wall insulation be beefed up? Heat sealing drapes over big patio doors and windows might also help.

 

[Quinte]

I have basically the same issue. The lower rec-room is well insulated with a raised floor. Generally when the central furnace kicks in, the basement is fairly well heated. However, with the fireplace running, the furnace of course goes off-line. The original goal was to offset the cost of oil heating, which is working very well.

With the rising price of electricity, I'm wondering if a pelet stove downstairs maybe something to consider or finding a means to redirect some of the heat to the basement. The house layout is centrally open. The sad part is that the BIS CE Traditional does have the ability to tie into the HVAC system, but it was suggested to me at the time that the results would not be of much benefit for the cost. I'm guessing there may have been an issue with balancing the air-flow in the design as well.

Ideas/Suggestions??