need to move heat downstairs

[jason d]

Hi! I just moved into a house that is super insulated and passive solar. It is a two story with the downstairs a daylight basement (about 650 sq ft up and 600 down). The gas heaters (one upstairs and one downstairs) did good till the temp dropped below freezing. Then they could barely maintain 60 deg. I also burned about $250 worth of gas the first month of cold weather. The BTU ratings for the heaters add up to about 10,000, not enough. Being a life long wood burner I added a Jotul black bear (too big, but I got a good deal and if I ever want to add on ...) Anyway, now its 85 upstairs and 60 down. I know that heat rises, duh, but I ran a 6" duct (temporary) from the ceiling upstairs to the floor downstairs, in it I put a small circulatory fan(unknown cfm). It moves air pretty well and did add five degrees to the downstairs. What I'm looking for advice on, is if anyone knows of a good fan/system and or if a homemade water jacket to a furnace downstairs would be a good idea. I don't want to burn fuel/gas and adding a chimney to the downstairs is not happening. Also when the sun comes out it heats the upstairs much more then the downstairs... Any ideas or advice would be greatly appreciated(except the ones that involve lots of $) I'm fairly crafty and am not afraid to cut holes etc... Thanks!

 

[Renovation]

Hi! I just moved into a house that is super insulated and passive solar. It is a two story with the downstairs a daylight basement (about 650 sq ft up and 600 down). The gas heaters (one upstairs and one downstairs) did good till the temp dropped below freezing. Then they could barely maintain 60 deg. I also burned about $250 worth of gas the first month of cold weather. The BTU ratings for the heaters add up to about 10,000, not enough. Being a life long wood burner I added a Jotul black bear (too big, but I got a good deal and if I ever want to add on ...) Anyway, now its 85 upstairs and 60 down. I know that heat rises, duh, but I ran a 6" duct (temporary) from the ceiling upstairs to the floor downstairs, in it I put a small circulatory fan(unknown cfm). It moves air pretty well and did add five degrees to the downstairs. What I'm looking for advice on, is if anyone knows of a good fan/system and or if a homemade water jacket to a furnace downstairs would be a good idea. I don't want to burn fuel/gas and adding a chimney to the downstairs is not happening. Also when the sun comes out it heats the upstairs much more then the downstairs... Any ideas or advice would be greatly appreciated(except the ones that involve lots of $) I'm fairly crafty and am not afraid to cut holes etc... Thanks!

Welcome!

Search the threads, and you'll find lots of discussions on this.

The short advice is to move cool air, not hot, with a fan or duct, from remote locations to your stove. Moving cool air seems to yield much better results than trying to move hot.

HTH, and welcome again!

 

[LLigetfa]

My "downstairs" is actually down the hatch to a 4 foot high crawlspace with insulated, sheetrocked walls and a concrete floor. My stove is up at ground level and I push cold air up to the stove by pulling it up from the crawlspace floor. The air at ground level then gets drawn down to the crawlspace to replace what is drawn out. This heats my crawlspace and keeps the floor and ground level quite warm. No need for slippers anywhere in my house.

 

[Green Energy]

I am researching the same thing - level to level transfer of air. As said, it is almost always better to move the cold air towards the stove.

Here is what I found for a neat kit for level-to-level air transfer:

http://www.tjernlund.com/Tjernlund_Aireshare_Lit_8500730.pdf

But this is only 75 cfm which I do not think is enough volume transfer to move the amount of heat that I need. I also found duct booster fans that will move significantly more air, but I will need to put together the grill registers and fan-to-register transitions. Anyone have done this that can provide tips?

Duct booster fans info at: http://www.tjernlund.com/Tjernlund_8504057.pdf

I have to do some calculations, but I am thinking that I want 150 or 300 cfm which is a 6" or 8" fan.

 

[LLigetfa]

My central heat option blower is rated somewhere around 650 CFM but I have a prefilter before it and a high particulate 3M Filtrete filter after it and suspect that reduces the CFM throughput.

RSF designed the central heat option to move hot air by sucking it from the stove and that was how I had it setup in my former home but it didn't work very well and it spread dust around the house. In my current home, I wanted to filter the air and so reversed it to blow cold filtered air to the stove instead which worked out better than expected.

 

[Seasoned Oak]

Hi! I just moved into a house that is super insulated and passive solar. It is a two story with the downstairs a daylight basement (about 650 sq ft up and 600 down). The gas heaters (one upstairs and one downstairs) did good till the temp dropped below freezing. Then they could barely maintain 60 deg. I also burned about $250 worth of gas the first month of cold weather. The BTU ratings for the heaters add up to about 10,000, not enough. Being a life long wood burner I added a Jotul black bear (too big, but I got a good deal and if I ever want to add on ...) Anyway, now its 85 upstairs and 60 down. I know that heat rises, duh, but I ran a 6" duct (temporary) from the ceiling upstairs to the floor downstairs, in it I put a small circulatory fan(unknown cfm). It moves air pretty well and did add five degrees to the downstairs. What I'm looking for advice on, is if anyone knows of a good fan/system and or if a homemade water jacket to a furnace downstairs would be a good idea. I don't want to burn fuel/gas and adding a chimney to the downstairs is not happening. Also when the sun comes out it heats the upstairs much more then the downstairs... Any ideas or advice would be greatly appreciated(except the ones that involve lots of $) I'm fairly crafty and am not afraid to cut holes etc... Thanks!

If you house is superinsulated and solar 10000 btus should be enough to heat to 72 deg.Esp[especially since it is so small) Im guessing your super insulation is not so super or the design is flawed somewhere. Also if your propane is drawing air from inside the house you are pulling cold air from outside through the house to supply it.If they are ventless thats another problem. Anyway you need a strong fan to move warm air to a lower level. Try it both ways and use a strong fan.

 

[jharkin]

$250 worth of gas to heat 1200 ft2?? Are you sure?

My house is 1400ft2, 200 years old, drafty, and minimally insulated. And I have steam heat with 140,000 BTU boiler that is only 83% efficient. Even with all that working against me the most gas I ever burned in one month was 200 therms last January... or around $220 worth at this years low NG prices.

Something doesnt add up. There is no way your superinsulated house is loosing more heat than I am. And mathematically If those 2 heaters add up to 10,000 BTU and they run 24/7 you cant physically be burning more than about 100 therms a month even if they are low efficency. Are you sure about those ratings? Anything else in the house that uses gas (water heater, stove)?

 

[jharkin]

Oh I missed that your heaters are propane not NG. that would make a big difference in cost.

 

[begreen]

Hi! I just moved into a house that is super insulated and passive solar. It is a two story with the downstairs a daylight basement (about 650 sq ft up and 600 down). The gas heaters (one upstairs and one downstairs) did good till the temp dropped below freezing. Then they could barely maintain 60 deg. I also burned about $250 worth of gas the first month of cold weather. The BTU ratings for the heaters add up to about 10,000, not enough. Being a life long wood burner I added a Jotul black bear (too big, but I got a good deal and if I ever want to add on ...) Anyway, now its 85 upstairs and 60 down. I know that heat rises, duh, but I ran a 6" duct (temporary) from the ceiling upstairs to the floor downstairs, in it I put a small circulatory fan(unknown cfm). It moves air pretty well and did add five degrees to the downstairs. What I'm looking for advice on, is if anyone knows of a good fan/system and or if a homemade water jacket to a furnace downstairs would be a good idea. I don't want to burn fuel/gas and adding a chimney to the downstairs is not happening. Also when the sun comes out it heats the upstairs much more then the downstairs... Any ideas or advice would be greatly appreciated(except the ones that involve lots of $) I'm fairly crafty and am not afraid to cut holes etc... Thanks!

Getting heat downstairs is hard. Hot air wants to rise.

If the basement is unpartitioned and insulated, it might be worth a try creating a thermal loop. To do this you will want to force cold air down into the basement and have a supply vent near the stove. With a fan blowing air down at the end of the basement that is opposite of the stove, air will try to replace the negative pressure created by the fan. This will pull air from the supply vent near the stove which will be heated and then sucked toward the fan to repeat the loop again.

 

[Renovation]

I am researching the same thing - level to level transfer of air. As said, it is almost always better to move the cold air towards the stove.

Here is what I found for a neat kit for level-to-level air transfer:

http://www.tjernlund.com/Tjernlund_Aireshare_Lit_8500730.pdf

But this is only 75 cfm which I do not think is enough volume transfer to move the amount of heat that I need. I also found duct booster fans that will move significantly more air, but I will need to put together the grill registers and fan-to-register transitions. Anyone have done this that can provide tips?

Duct booster fans info at: http://www.tjernlund.com/Tjernlund_8504057.pdf

I have to do some calculations, but I am thinking that I want 150 or 300 cfm which is a 6" or 8" fan.

Thanks GE,

That looks like a great resource--I bookmarked it.

Please post your experiences if you try them. Good luck!