Moving the heat around

[jcayer]

This year we added a Harman Advance to help heat our house. Our family room is an old small family room and a converted 2 car garage mashed together, so it's 700ish square feet with a cathedral ceiling over 500 of those feet. There is a ceiling fan helping circulate the air.

After doing a little tweaking, and some learning, the family room can hit 80 degrees without the stove going crazy. What I really want is the stove to help heat the rest of the house. It is pointed toward the opening to my kitchen, a 3 foot wide opening. The kitchen does seem to be getting some of the heat(around 68 or 70), but I want more. The stove is rated for 2500 square feet. I know I won't heat my whole house, but I would like to try.

I tried adding a couple computer fans I hot wired and temporarily mounted in the opening. No increase in kitchen temp. I then added an 18 inch fan. Minimal improvement. It's like the Harman can't penetrate the wall of cooler air in my kitchen.

Any ideas?
Thanks.
Josh

 

[phatfarmerbob]

try a fan on the floor of the kitchen blowing low cool air into the family room, its not pretty but it should work

 

[bluedogz]

+1... you'll be surprised. Try it for a day and report back.

 

[jcayer]

I will give it a try, but I don't know that my house is tight enough to benefit from that. I'm afraid I'd just draw more cold air in from the bedroom end. The fact it's a ranch isn't helping me.

I will add, I'm very happy with the stove and just going for extra credit at this point.

 

[John97]

I'm still experimenting, but I can attest that moving the cold air towards the stove does in fact work.

I am able to get my downstairs level to almost 70 by pushing the cold air up to the living room with a fan on the floor at the base of the stairs.

However, it didn't seem to work as well upstairs. I had a fan in the upstairs hallway on the floor pushing cold air towards the stove but that didn't make it any warmer upstairs. I have since relocated that fan to the top of my stove and have it blowing air towards the upstairs. That seems to be quite effective. I was able to get it to 74 upstairs.

Testing will continue.

 

[jcayer]

This morning I set a fan up in the doorway between my kitchen and family room. At ground level.
As of right now, the family room is still 80ish degrees. The kitchen is almost 76 degrees(but dinner might have influenced that a bit).

The real interesting part is the far end of my house. The thermostat goes down to 62 for the day and up to 67 around 4pm. It was 69 when I got home from work at 4:30. It's almost 70 now. The baseboard is/was cold, so the furnace hasn't run since this morning. So unless the laws of thermodynamics have changed, I'm suddenly moving heat MUCH further than I expected.

I plan to leave the fan running overnight as a further test, but if it really kept the far end of my house warm, the oil baron is going to be deeply saddened.

More info to follow. Thanks for the suggestion.

 

[John97]

Good luck. Keep us posted.

I got permission from my wife to wall-mount one of my fans which should work even better to get some heat upstairs. I also got a 20" Lasko fan that I am going to break out if/when we get cold weather again to try and really move the air around. Since getting my electric bill, I am more determined than ever to keep the heat pumps off because my killowatt hour rate just doubled.

 

[pjonthemount]

If you can, try one of the 'Vornado' fans.
Those little things REALLY move the air! It's hard to believe how much air they move in relation to their size.
We have our P-43 out in the laundry room. It stays at about 80. Then, a fan to blow the hot air into the kitchen. Then, the Vornado to circulate the air in the kitchen.
Using this method, the kitchen stays at about 74.
I haven't tried the cold air return method, yet. Think I'll give that a try and compare the results.

On another note...I was thinking about running a short length (5ft. or less) of 6" insulated duct stuffed inside hard pipe from the laundry room out & up into the living room.
I was going to install one of those in-duct blowers inside the duct.
I'm thinking this will pull some of that really hot air from the laundry room (ground floor) and distribute it into the living room (2nd floor) to help reduce the tempurature drop in the upstairs.

Like I said, the ground level stays at 80 where the stove is to 74 all thru the rest of the downstairs. The upper level stays around 68.

Any thoughts on this???

 

[slls]

The key is, run the convection fan as high as you can stand.
I run mine on medium heat, high fan, fan runs 40 to 45 minutes. Pulls all the
cold air across the floor and replaces it with warm air, evens out the house.

 

[jcayer]

I was thinking something similar. After starting this thread ans trying the fan on the floor suggestion, I've had decent results.
Now I'm thinking of taking it over the top.
I have a ranch, The stove is 60ish feet from the far end of the house. I have an open basement.
If I put a return duct in the farthest bedroom floor, with a blower fan, that came up by the stove, would that circulate the heat enough to get it through most of my house?
If this isn't clear, let me know and I'll draw a quick diagram. But basically, I want to blow the cold air, from the farthest part of the house, through a duct in my basement, and have it come up by my stove. My expectation is this would help to circulate the air and pull the heat to the far end of the house.

Thoughts?

 

[Wachusett]

I was thinking something similar. After starting this thread ans trying the fan on the floor suggestion, I've had decent results.
Now I'm thinking of taking it over the top.
I have a ranch, The stove is 60ish feet from the far end of the house. I have an open basement.
If I put a return duct in the farthest bedroom floor, with a blower fan, that came up by the stove, would that circulate the heat enough to get it through most of my house?
If this isn't clear, let me know and I'll draw a quick diagram. But basically, I want to blow the cold air, from the farthest part of the house, through a duct in my basement, and have it come up by my stove. My expectation is this would help to circulate the air and pull the heat to the far end of the house.

Thoughts?

I have thought of doing the same thing, I would think removing air from one end of the house and forcing it back to the other end would create a nice air cycle.

 

[mrjohneel]

The funny thing about trying to use a small fan is that they're hard to find right now. I went to Target, Sears, HD to specifically buy a Vornado but really to pick up any small fan, and they're not on the floor -- wrong season for them. Everyone is just selling space heaters. Anyways, I ordered a small Vornado (#573, I think) online.

 

[pjonthemount]

Yep, had to order my Vornado from Sears...$40 and free shipping for store pickup.
It's the little 8" model and it ROCKS