Moving heat to bedrooms

[Serdroid12]

Hello everyone, I've searched for two hours but nothing making sense to me.

I have a classic split or raised ranch home in CT. Bedrooms are above garage, opposite of where stove is. Garage ceiling is insulated, garage itself is not. Floor plans are attached.

Stove is pointed to sliding doors drawn. I've gotten the room to 90 (too much lol), and the upstairs living/kitchen/dining/hall to 75, but the bedrooms stay cold! Doors are closed, but is there a way of getting them warm even if using thru-wall fans (where would I place them?).

Entryway/stair area has tall ceilings with a hanging light right above the door. I was thinking of placing a hang ceiling fan here for looks and may help with convection by blowing air down?

Any ideas/suggestions appreciated!

 

[jetsam]

• Floor fan at the top of the stairs blowing down
• Remove the closet between family room and staircase. Leave that area open and insulate the garage wall.
• Through the wall floor vent from downstairs bedroom to stove room, a few feet away from the stove.
• Thermal blinds or curtains for patio door.

 

[Serdroid12]

• Floor fan at the top of the stairs blowing down
• Remove the closet between family room and staircase. Leave that area open and insulate the garage wall.
• Through the wall floor vent from downstairs bedroom to stove room, a few feet away from the stove.
• Thermal blinds or curtains for patio door.

Thank you! Although, forgot to add that area in the family room is actually a bathroom, not a closet (I reuploaded the correction). I have planned to add insulation where you suggested.

Should the wall vent be low at mattress height? (the bed headboard is right on that wall) Or should it be somewhere up higher near the door?

How will this heat go upstairs down the hall and to the rooms? Any vents up there? Can I add a floor register/vent on the corner of the bathroom and family room right above the door? That will technically be where the hallway is.

Thanks!

 

[jetsam]

Hm. Can you make the bathroom a few feet shorter (are there plumbing fixtures on the side of the bathroom nearest the stairs) ?

I just noticed that the garage is also a laundry area, so you may not want to insulate that wall, and spend the time adding insulation to the exterior walls and roof of the garage instead. If you insulate the interior wall it will get real cold in there (fine for a garage, not so much for a laundry room).

The idea with moving heat around is to provide the biggest possible open area for airflow, and allow for a convective loop that sends cold air back to the stove room.

Your current floorplan is exceptionally difficult because the stove room vents to the house via one small (presumably ~30x80) door.

The wall vent isn't important overall and would only help the bedroom when the door was open. Cutting down the door a little so it has a larger space underneath it could help.



Warming up the upstairs hinges on opening up airflow from the stove room to the stairway.

As you can see if you search for sunroom threads here, thermal curtains or insulated vertical blinds will save you a lot of radiant loss through the patio door.

 

[jetsam]

Actually, this one avoids all the problems with plumbing and tile. Shoulda thought of that first.

 

[barnaclebob]

I don't think you are going to have much luck without opening the bedroom doors. Even then it will be a battle. That stove is in the worst possible place to get heat to the bedrooms.

 

[Serdroid12]

Actually, this one avoids all the problems with plumbing and tile. Shoulda thought of that first.

Appreciate the response.

I had to whip out the Photoshop to make this easier and faster for me to explain. I've drawn the exact plan in the lower floor. The blue circle is a load bearing post/pole and because of how the structure of the upstairs stairs is, cannot move that wall.

Laundry is inside Garage and garage is all open. No laundry "room". Garage gets to like 50 degrees on the coldest 0 degree day. We're fine with it in the garage. Ceiling is insulated in garage, but not in the rest of the lower floor (family/bathroom/bedroom). This is probably why the upstairs was starting to cook when downstairs was 90 degrees.

The bathroom wall cannot be moved because the shower is right in that side/corner.

If you see my drawing, there's basically another 30" of wall that I can remove (next to the current door which I am thinking of removing anyway). That would be 5 feet of open space that could blow toward that staircase.

Would the wall vent be better at knee level or higher level? What about venting or getting heat to the bedrooms that are above garage?

Thank you!

 

[DuaeGuttae]

Are the bedroom doors always closed? Can you keep them open and run small floor fans blowing cold air out to create some negative pressure to move warmer air in?

If your thinking of through the wall fans, I would personally put them above the transoms of the doorways as long as you have reversible ceiling fans in the rooms to get the heat down.

If your stove room is 90 and the kitchen is 75, have you considered registers in the floor, if your jurisdiction doesn’t forbid such a thing? We heated a raised ranch from a finished rec. room in the basement and had some similar difficulties. Our stairway was more open, but we had a large structural beam across the ceiling which trapped the hottest air away from the stairs. We cut two vents alongside that beam (in the upstairs dining room alongside the doorway that led to the kitchen to be out of the way of furniture and foot traffic; we also didn’t want a vent directly over the stove in case children decided to drop something through). We put a third vent behind a chair in our living room near an outside wall to act as an additional cold air return. I understand that for some people vents don’t help at all; in our case they got the upstairs living areas noticeably warmer (though probably not even 75), and that helped us move heat to the bedrooms. We did sleep with doors open for overnight heating, though. We also weren’t reluctant to use our natural gas furnace to help out.

 

[dtaylor628]

Hello everyone, I've searched for two hours but nothing making sense to me.

I have a classic split or raised ranch home in CT. Bedrooms are above garage, opposite of where stove is. Garage ceiling is insulated, garage itself is not. Floor plans are attached.

Stove is pointed to sliding doors drawn. I've gotten the room to 90 (too much lol), and the upstairs living/kitchen/dining/hall to 75, but the bedrooms stay cold! Doors are closed, but is there a way of getting them warm even if using thru-wall fans (where would I place them?).

Entryway/stair area has tall ceilings with a hanging light right above the door. I was thinking of placing a hang ceiling fan here for looks and may help with convection by blowing air down?

Any ideas/suggestions appreciated!

View attachment 240351
View attachment 240360

This could help,

(broken link removed to https://www.ebay.com/itm/Whole-House-Circulation-Fan-Relay-For-Wood-Stove-And-Pellet-Stove-Fan-Furnace/163531247245?hash=item261338ce8d:g:lkMAAOSwVh9cXLo-)