Plan to move heat upstairs

[tynman]

Hello everyone, first off, this site is awesome and I've spent countless hours since I started this woodburning lifestyle a couple of years ago gleaning information from this site and am glad I can go to a place where my obsession is understood and loved. There, now that that is out of the way on to my post. We've been heating with a Regency H2100 Hearth Heater 24/7 this winter. We have it in the family room on the first floor of our two story home (2500 sq feet). It's working great and have been very impressed with what I've gotten out of this unit. That said, I have an air circulation problem in my home. Our family room will reach a balmy 85 degrees often, while the upstairs hovers around 68. We have an open stairway on the opposite side from where the woodstove is installed (the stairs run paralell with the woodstove door). I've spent alot of time researching how to improve air circulation on this site and it seems the consensus is to move cold air to the stove. I am looking for some advice/thoughts on the following plan to move the cold air from upstairs to the stove in an effort to even out the temps.

1. Install insulated duct with a duct fan that will run from the bottom of the hallway wall upstairs to the bottom of the wall across from the woodstove. The idea would be to blow the cold air upstairs down to the family room which I'm hoping would not only cool our family room sauna, but push some of that heat upstairs. Would it be better if I terminated the duct directly infront of the woodstove instead? (blowing the upstairs cold air directly infront of the stove?) I thought about doing this, but figured it would cool the woodstove too much and possibly cause drafting issues.

2. Install a small ceiling fan at the top of the stairway and set it to reverse to help pull warm air upstairs.

I'm also open to completely scrapping this plan and trying other methods. I have tried using the fan approach (small fans on the floor pointed towards the stove), but haven't gotten much results from it.

James

 

[woodchip]

We often just leave the lounge door open a crack, the hot air tends to rise up the stairs, and the cooler air tends to come down in a natural circulation.

Something tells us we are just a bit lucky with the design of our old house, as a couple of people I know cannot get the warm air to circulate naturally and have small fans blowing cold air towards the stove

 

[Renovation]

Search the threads, there is lots of information on this.

In short, the secret is to move cool air towards the stove, either with fans or ducting. It is counter-intuitive, but more effective than trying to move warm air directly.

HTH, and good luck.

 

[SolarAndWood]

I'm kind of curious why the fan in the upstairs hall isn't working. Is there a header between the room the stove is in and the stairwell? Seems like if you got the hot air to the stairwell, it should rise and be replaced by the cold air from the upstairs fan?

 

[begreen]

Is the upstairs hallway nice and warm, but the rooms off of it cool? That's the way our house works. The bathroom is in direct line with the large staircase opening, and it stays as cozy as the hallway. But the bedrooms are not inline and are definitely cooler. Fortunately we don't spend much time in them besides sleeping and then I like it cooler, so for us the temps are just right.

 

[tynman]

There is a wall between the stove and the stairs. Our family room will often hit between 80-85, the top of the stairs will hit between 65-70 and the bedrooms adjacent will hit between 58-63. The kitchen area right next to the family room stays between 70-74. It would be nice to keep upstairs consitently between 68-72, but I'd really like to keep from running everyone out of the family room. I suppose I could build smaller fires, but then I'm left with 1 or 2 hour reloads and then, most likely, even colder temps upstairs. Obviously, I'd prefer to push that family room heat to different areas of the house.

I've attached a layout of the 1st/2nd floor. The 1st pic shows what I referenced in my 1st post. Install a ceiling fan and use reverse to pull air up (C/F in red in the pic). Labeled with the blue X would be the cold air duct locations. An inline duct fan would be used at the top of the hallway to push cold air down to the 1st floor and aimed at the stove. It's really the only location I can install ducting with some serious demolition.

The other option I'm considering (2nd pic), shows the same thing, but the cold air duct would terminate infront of the woodstove (running under the family room flooring, but I'm not 100% sure if this would have a negative impact on stove functionality or if it would be more effective or not than option 1.

A 3rd option I thought about (3rd pic) was using option 1, but then putting a pass-through grate/grille between the top of the family room wall and the stairwell. I figured this would give the warm air a better path to rise than trying to get around the stairway wall.

 

[begreen]

First thought I had was to open up the wall to the staircase or at least put a high, large vent on it's dividing wall. This could be a trimmed opening, framed between studs. If you are going to cut a vent I would start with one in the master bath room on the outside (upper wall in diagram) wall. Then test and see how the temps equalize in the MBR.

 

[tynman]

Ok, so here's what I did and how it worked. NOTE: The stairway wall across from the woodstove is actually a 3 ft chase wall that contains the cold return line for the 1st floor HVAC. This return line runs all the way from the 1st floor to the HVAC unit in the attic. It's not drawn up very well in the picture.

So here's what I did:

1. Added a small ceiling fan at the top of the stairwell running on the lowest speed in reverse.
2. Using 6" insulated flex ducting, ran a cold return line. It runs from the bottom of the stairwell wall on the 1st floor to the bottom of the wall on the 2nd floor. It's depicted in the picture with a blue X that indicates the end points of the ducting. Towards the end of the line on the 2nd floor, there is an inline duct fan that helps push the cold air on the 2nd floor to the 1st floor.
3. Using 6" insulated flex ducting, ran a warm air line. It runs from the top of the stairwell wall on the 1st floor to the top of the wall on the 2nd floor. It's depicted in the picture with a red X that indicates the end points of the ducting. Towards the end of the line on the 1st floor, there is an inline duct fan that helps move the warm air on the 1st floor to the 2nd floor.

It was pretty convienent to have the chase wall right there directly across from the woodstove. It allowed me to run these lines and not tear up the house too much.

So here's the results:
With the inline duct fans NOT running, I gained about a 2 degree difference between floors. With the inline duct fans running, the difference jumped to around 4 degrees. So before I did this I was running 82-84 on the 1st floor and 66-68 on the 2nd floor. After the change, I'm running 78-80 on the 1st floor and 70-72 on the 2nd floor which is exactly what I was looking for.

BTW - I did try just using the HVAC unit to push the heat around, but it didn't work for me. I think my ducts being in the attic just cooled the air down too much to make a difference.

 

[Motor7]

Wow, that's quite the improvement....good job.