Moving hot air

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jeff123

New Member
Jun 28, 2008
60
eastern,ct
I have my new stove in my unfinished basement about 10 feet from the stairway leading to the first floor. I can't cut registers in the floor so I'm considering running a 6" flex metal duct from direclty over my stove to entrance door to my cellar. At the door end of the duct i was going to setup a 6" fan at the end of the duct hose to suck hot air from over the stove, pull through the pipe and deposit on first floor. Not a pretty installation but seems functional to me.

Should this help get warm air to the first floor ?
 
From what I've read simply having your stove in the basement will be good because of the heat rising and keeping the floor warm. This in turn will warm the room like radiant heating. Your duct idea is a good one as long as you have Carbon Monoxide sensors installed. You don't want to have a vent dumping poisoned air into your living space.
But the warm air from the vent will be nice, I am doing that in my ranch home to get the warm air from one end of the house to the other.
 
This seems to be discussed a couple times a week. There are many posts on heating from the basement. It is at best inefficient, especially with uninsulated walls. Figure on losing about 25-30% of the stove's heat output to the earth surrounding the basement foundation. Second, the setup proposed is illegal and potentially dangerous. Generally a successful system will be in an insulated basement, with excellent natural air convection via a wide opening like a big staircase, near the stove. Otherwise, the best success is met by putting the stove where the heat is needed, usually on the first floor.

Here's a thread on the topic from last week:
https://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/forums/viewthread/23330/
 
Thanks for all the feedabck and pointer to past discussions, they all make sense. I have added the stove to my cellar to "help" with heating, by no means to I think I can heat the house. I'm looking at it more as a hobby with hopes soem hear does rise and maybe brings the temp up 5 degrees upstairs. After this winter I'll see how much heat I got, how much work it was and how much it cost to see if tehre will be another winter with the stove.

thanks to all
 
If you just reverse your thinking on the duct scheme, I think you'll find that if you move cool air from low upstairs to low downstairs (away from the appliance), you'll significantly encourage the flow of warm air from high downstairs to go up and repalce the cool air you're bring down. If you move the cool air down toward the heat source, the warm air will find its way up. Good luck with it. Rick
 
A nice stove could be the focal point of your living space, don't hide it in the basement. Enjoy the heat where it's needed.
 
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