Opinions on Floor Plan with Wood Insert

[MeLikeUmFire]

Hey Everybody...Want your opinion.
See Floor plan below. Have a approx. 2200 sq. ft. (1100 sq. ft each level) 2 story. The house is not open @ all. Am looking to put wood insert into my masonary fireplace. Questions I have for you all:

1. Would it ever be possible to heat my whole house with a wood insert in the masonary fireplace? I do have in the room the insert would be going into a 3 ft wide cold air return vent. I have a new gas forced air furnace with a D/C motor that runs constantly @ a low (adjustable ) rpm to constantly circulate the air. Would this be sufficient to movethe air around enough to heat the whole house, or am I gonna burn everyone out of the family room (main gathering area) in an attempt to heat the whole house?

2. I dont plan on burning 24/7. just want to cut down on LP gas use since I have a lot of free wood. Would a smaller or medium size insert be a better choice since I am not going to burn 24/7?


3. Would putting in another cold air return vent in the insert room help out to draw more air?

Thanks for the advice

 

[MeLikeUmFire]

Sorry. The family room where the insert will go is approx 360 sq feet with 8' ceilings. 8' ceilings thru whole house.

 

[fossil]

I don't think you want to be putting in an additional air return into your existing system, because the systems are supposed to be balanced for airflow, and you would seriously disrupt that by doing so. If your return air ducting runs down through a crawl space beneath the house, as many do, or up through an uninsulated attic, then running the HVAC fan isn't going to do much other than disperse the heat from your insert into the cold crawl spce or the cold attic, because those ducts are typically not insulated well. All you'll get out of the suypply registers is cool air. This is a very common problem faced by folks who want to heat with woodstoves. Woodstoves are space heaters. Homes haven't been designed around wood heating for a long, long time. Use of ceiling fans and portable fans blowing relatively cool air toward the source of the heat, low against the floor, to establish a convection loop of sorts, seems to be the way most folks find some success in distributing the heat. Rick

 

[begreen]

Based on the location of the stove and house design, the living room and master bedroom will probably not get much heat from the stove. However, with a carefully placed fan, there is the opportunity to get some heat circulation like Rick mentioned.

 

[savageactor7]

Would it ever be possible to heat my whole house with a wood insert in the masonary fireplace

Well you don't say how much free wood you can get. But if it were me and I had all the free wood my labor would provide...then I would absolutely try it and save as much LP as possible. Inserts are tricky though some provide more heat than others. Again if I was in your situation I'd forget about the insert...build out the hearth pad and lay in a nice wood stove. Perhaps I'd even cut back that family room wall starting at the doorway as much as possible.

If your family isn't committed to this don't even bother. Some folks grow up with the notion that they must have a house with a fireplace...and that's that. My hat goes off to the folks here that tear down those absolutely gorgeous works of art fireplaces and put in a stove. Because they have correctly concluded fireplaces are the worst appliance to heat a house...and inserts are only marginally better in comparison to a freestanding stove.

 

[Wet1]

Welcome!

You'll certainly cut back on your LP costs, but I think you'll have a hard time keeping the entire house comfortable with just an insert. It will have to be pretty warm in that FM to get the rest of the house up to a nice temp, especially during really cold weather. Opening up doorways would help as would using some form of active air management. I don't think your furnace blower will help much, I haven't heard of many success stories when people do this.

I'd remove the wall between the FM and the stairs (it doesn't look structural, but check). If you do this, I think you'd have a decent shot of doing all your heating with just wood. At most you might need a space heater in the master BR for those really cold nights.

Like Savage, I'd prefer a free standing stove, but inserts are okay. I would not go small on the size, I'd be looking at med. to large fire boxes. Probably 2.5 to 3.5 cu ft would be a good fit. Anything smaller and you'll never get an over night burn trying to heat that much area in MI. Wood burning is very addicting, so don't be surprised if you become a 24/7 addict.

Get seasoned wood yesterday, if you don't already have it!

 

[SolarAndWood]

If it is feasible, you might be better off with an add on furnace.

 

[fredarm]

Go with the biggest insert that will fit (check out the Pacific Energy Super or Summit). If you have the room, you can build out the hearth and install a stove, but remember, you could lose a fair amount of floor space to get the clearances you need. Or, you could go with an insert that sticks partially out of the fireplace, like a Jotul 450 Kennebec.

 

[afblue]

I am in roughly the same situation and layout for my house, and I am going to try my darnedest to leave the furnace off. Your biggest advantage will be if the opening from the Family room to hallway is all the way to the ceiling, That will let the heat slip up ceiling and upstairs. I plan on using the furnace fan to move the air in the house too. People have marginal results using the furnace fan the cold air return on the floor doesnt get much heat out to the house. Either you need to get the cold air into the heating room, and the heat displaces in the house. Other method is to have a cold air return at the top of the wall in the heating room to draw the heat into venting system. If you are to use a fan on the floor it has to push cold air into the heating room, vs trying to blow hot air out of it.