Moving the Heat Around

[mayhem]

OK, I've got a nice arrangement with the stove heating about half the living area in the house...now I gotta do a better job of moving the warmer air around. The great room is about half the house's interior volume...26' ceilings and a couple ceiling fans help move the air around, but they don't touch the dead air volume at the peak. Using an infrared temp sensor I've measured surface temperatures at the ceiling at over 100 degrees in the middle of a subzero cold snap last February.

The problem, the door you see at the top of the stairs in the first photo is my master bedroom and nowhere near enough of that hot air gets into the bedroom. I was thinking of just installing a pass through vent/duct right at the peak and let the master bedroom ceiling fan push the hot air around, but maybe there's a better idea out there. I thought it would be a great idea to run a squirrel cage fan inside a duct that runs down to the top of the doorway inside the master bedroom from the peak of the ceiling in the living room.

- The first photo shows the stove in the living room and the back wall where the stairs lead up to the master bedroom.
- Second photo shows the same wall from inside the master bedroom. You can see there's a good 6 feet from the top of the doorway to the ceiling.
- Third photo shows the ceiling arrangement in the master bedroom with the fan.

Thanks for anything you guys might have.

 

[begreen]

Grab a summer table or box fan and put it on the bedroom floor facing the door. Turn it on, blowing cold air out of the bedroom. The warmth should follow.

 

[fossil]

If you've got those two fans running on "updraft", on say medium speed, I've no idea why they aren't effective at destratifying the air in the cathedral portions. Seems like they oughta do the job nicely. Encourage a flow of cool floor-level air out of the master down into the great room, and warm air will find its way up there to replace it. Rick

 

[oconnor]

You will have better luck moving cold air out than hot air in. If you want to mess with duct work, try a passive cold air return to the main floor from the farthest corner of the bedroom to the main floor. Did this in my bungalow when we had the stove in the basement, and got way more heat in the bedrooms, 'cause the cold air trapped in the room now had an escape route. Sometimes it almost felt like a "siphon" effect, with the air dropping thru the vent and down the duct to the floor of the basement.

Try the fan trick first and prove it to yourself, then rearrange your thinking - not move heat around, but move cold air around.

 

[mayhem]

I've been playing with a fan blowing cool air out of the mbr...maybe just not patient enough. I can measure a definite chill in the great room right around the stove so its definitely doing something...maybe just needs to be in more of a high output 24x7 stove usage than running it for an hour or so to really see the effect.

 

[SlyFerret]

Grab a thermometer that you can place in the bedroom (and other rooms) to get a feel for the actual temperature. I realized last year that I percieved a much greater temperature difference than there actually was between the living room and the upstairs bedroom.

In your stove room, you feel both the air temperature as well as the radiant heat from the stove. I think the radiant heat is what fools us the most. We get used to it, and even a 75 degree room can feel cool.

Also, keep in mind that your stove has to warm up your house as well as all of the items in it. Patience may be your friend in the end.

-SF

 

[fossil]

Mr. Ferret is spot on. Collect data and have patience. Moving warm air into a cool room is not going to have an immediate sensible effect...all the "stuff" in that room, especially including the walls and ceiling need time to warm up before the room feels "warm" to you. Rick

 

[crazy_dan]

took us two full years of heating in this new house before we got it all right and still we will fidget with the setup.

Don't forget cold air falls and warm air rises so if you put a fan blowing out of your bedroom it should fall off the ledge in to the room with the stove and get replaced by warm air.

 

[Henz]

I am correct when I say that you want to move the cold air towards the stove. no matter where it is?