Stove in basement question

[jimmiller2]

I am new to forum and this is my first post. I tried a search of this topic. I have been looking at several ways to add wood heat to my house and have made and abandoned several plans. I have a full daylight basement with the back 50% being a unfinished shop. My current plan is to put a wood stove here with the flue/chimmney going thru concrete block and brick turning upwards 90 degrees and continueing up just clearing the soffitt/gutter. Rising up as necessary to give proper roof clearance. It will be at back of house and by not going thru roof will be a simple installation. Just above the stove on the upper floor I will cut a floor vent which will be fairly close to the central unit air intake (Outside burning propane burning "Gas-pack" furnace/AC unit). My hope is the heat will get sucked into the air intake of central unit and by using Fan Only will get distributed throughout house. Is this a reasonable plan? Any advise appreciated.

Thanks
Jim Miller (Tennessee)

 

[Techstuf]

Not knowing the layout, it's tough to ascertain the viability. I have a basement setup and I use the stairwells of my home to heat the entire home quite well. Any time one considers using the central air fan, they are well advised to be checking that filter often, it's grittier than one might think during burn season. I would first try getting by with small fans to nudge the convection pattern in the direction one wishes. If the vent grate is large enough and positioned directly above the stove, then a robust convection loop will be established, providing the basement stairwell is open. If you've a second story, the stairwell will provide heat to the upper level. When it gets real cold, we nudge the convection loop by employing a small fan on it's lowest setting mounted to the roof of our basement stairwell. In your case, a small fan drawing air down the basement stairwell will augment your convection loop and, if it's anything like my setup, will increase house temperatures considerably. We get noticeable radiation through the flooring in our main level which helps even the heat. By drawing air continually through the basement, even when your stove dies down, the thermal mass of the basement will be pumping heat for awhile into the home. The thermal lag comes in handy, especially if you have a thermostatically controlled fan and don't want to get up to stoke the fire, the fan will kick in at a preset temp as the fire dies down and hold temps higher until you get down to stoke the fire again.


All the best,


TS

 

[Cearbhaill]

The "big guys" will be along shortly to help you with specifics, but I would just urge you to review what is code in your area.
If I understand correctly cutting holes in your floor is a fire hazard and you would need to install the registers that close when they detect too much heat.
I know I thought about utilizing my cold air return too, but you can't have a stove within 10 feet of a cold air return as it interferes with the air pressure and how your stove drafts.

Many of us have tried circulating warm stove air through fan only settings and many abandon it as the air just isn't hot enough to make it to distant points in the same shape.
The best advice around here is to move the cold air towards the stove instead of trying to move the warm air away.
I have a basement insert that fully heats my main floor, and I do it solely by moving the colder, heavier air towards the stove.

Apologies if I got anything wrong- consider this just a friendly bump!

 

[ControlFreak]

I am new to forum and this is my first post. I tried a search of this topic. I have been looking at several ways to add wood heat to my house and have made and abandoned several plans. I have a full daylight basement with the back 50% being a unfinished shop. My current plan is to put a wood stove here with the flue/chimmney going thru concrete block and brick turning upwards 90 degrees and continueing up just clearing the soffitt/gutter. Rising up as necessary to give proper roof clearance. It will be at back of house and by not going thru roof will be a simple installation. Just above the stove on the upper floor I will cut a floor vent which will be fairly close to the central unit air intake (Outside burning propane burning "Gas-pack" furnace/AC unit). My hope is the heat will get sucked into the air intake of central unit and by using Fan Only will get distributed throughout house. Is this a reasonable plan? Any advise appreciated.

Thanks
Jim Miller (Tennessee)

Jim,

Welcome to the forum.

For your own safety, try not to invent a new strategy for venting your wood stove, but use common industry standards and consult with a local installer who can review your setup and give you some on-site feedback.

It sounds like you are trying to avoid extra work, by running your flue up the exterior of your home. Keep in mind that a properly operating flue should never be colder than your home, which means that the best installation is a chimney that resides inside the house and exits the roof. A stove pipe that runs up an exterior wall can cool and have poor draft later on in a fire as it transitions from flame to coals. My primary chimney is on the north side of the house and is outside. I struggle with some very strong down drafting when there's no fire and the chimney cools, requiring special tactics when I first light the fire. Additionally, in the summer time, the downdrafting of the chimney tends to stink up the room, especially when it rains - even with the chimney cap on there.

Cutting a floor vent will definitely aid with bringing heat up from where the stove is, but using your cold air return for your heating system to circulate that heat will lead to disappointing results for you. Forced hot air systems normally push a small amount of hot air and do poorly when pushing a small amount of warm air. Additionally, a floor vent becomes a fire hazard in the sense that it creates a path for flames if you ever have a fire in the lower level. Check with your local fire department to see if they will approve of this. My Dad did this in our farmhouse, and it worked well, but then we never had a fire in the basement, and building codes were not of much concern. I can remember sitting on top of that grate, taking in the heat.

The most common method for helping with heat distribution in your home is to use floor fan(s) to move cold air at the floor from your cold areas to the warmer areas, and that will cause the warm air at the ceiling to be pushed back to the cold areas.

Stay warm, and safe.
Dan

 

[Brian VT]

Mine works fine.
https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/26434/
Happy to answer any questions. I don't want to get into the floor register thing, though. That's been beat to death here.

 

[jimmiller2]

Thanks all for the advise. My other plan was to simply put a smaller free standing stove on the upper level (Was looking at a England 30 if in basement and a England 13 if upstairs). My house is very open (30 by 60 simple rectangle with cathedral ceiling in the middle 1/3. I can stand about where the stove will go (If upstairs) and see all four corners of the house. Heated upper area is only about 1400 sq feet (1800 minus 400 garage). Would the upstairs stove be a better idea?

Thanks
Jim Miller PS To the person from eastern KY-Anywhere near London or East Bernstadt. I lived there many years ago.

 

[awoodman]

As controlfreak wrote: A stove pipe that runs up an exterior wall can cool and have poor draft later on .

Ben their done that and it sucks and not in the right way. To get the cold air pushed out the pipe I opened the stove door and had a pc. of plywood to cover the door opening with a vacume cleaner attached to it blowing the cold air up and out just to get a fire going.

In my opinion outside stove pipe should be never done. Do away with a closet or something, what ever it takes. I speak from years of experience with that set-up.

 

[eernest4]

a couple of thoughts that were not covered here by anyone.

I have my stove in the basement, so i always have too heat the basement weather I want to or not.

The amount of heat that you can get up to the first floor is limited by the capacity of the basement stairs to transfer heat by convection air currents.

This means that when it gets really cold, say starting at 16 deg F and like especially when it goes down to 2 deg F outside, I find that the cold comes in through the cracks, windows, under doors and etc. faster than the heat can come up the basement stairs, even when assisted by 3 fans to help the air circulate.

The first floor ends up being unpleasently cold when outside temps are below 20 deg.

Wood stoves are space heaters and do not heat the whole house. I keep this in mind & use some fuel oil heat to get the whole house warm & then use the wood stove to help keep the whole house warm longer & this cuts my fuel oil bill by 3/4 so I only pay 25% of what I would be paying without the wood heat.

The wood works well on shoulder days , over 20 deg.

Under 20 deg ,I need oil assist if I want to be comfortable. When I try to heat the house with just wood with outside temps below 20 , all I can do is heat the basement(80 to 90) and the kitchen(66 to 70) on the first floor. other rooms on the first floor are 60 to 66 and the second floor is 60 to 48, depending on the room.

The wood stove , all by itself, heats the house so that i don't need to worry about any pipe freezing anywheres in the house, but temps are not comfortable except for the basement & the kitchen.

This gets pretty old and tired after a couple of months.

My advise to you is to put in both stoves, one in the basement and the other upstairs & prehaps you can do away with all oil or gas usage with both stoves burning or at the least, cut your fuel bill by 80% to 90 %.

You are in tenn instead of ct , so you might have milder winters & not have to deal with below 20 so often as I do but when the temp goes into the teens or single digits, you will find out how well your house is or is not insulated and notice that a wood stove is only a space heater not designed to keep the whole house warm.

2 stoves are better than one, just like 2 heads are better than one.

So,if it were me,I would put a basement & an upstairs stove. When you light them up, one at a time , you can compair which stove does the better job of heating the house and find out what you can expect when you have both stoves going.

One thing I am sure of , natural gas & fuel oil will continue to go up in price, year after year and while it is ok to relie on them for assistance heat when the wood stove can't qiute cope,
you don't want fuel oil or NG as a sole souce of heat because they will drain out your checking account in short order.

 

[ControlFreak]

Jim,

It sounds like you have an ideal situation if you locate your stove upstairs with your open floor plan. If you don't have a second story to deal with, then it wouldn't be that bad to punch a hole in the roof. Yea, it's more work than tacking on a pipe to the outside, but you'll be much happier with the performance of the interior pipe. Sounds like the biggest issue is how to run a pipe up to your ceiling without it looking ugly.

As others have said, getting heat upstairs from the basement will be an issue, but then you have an issue with heating your shop if the stove's upstairs. Go with the stove upstairs. You won't get a lot of credit from the family if your shop is cozy, but the rest of the house is not getting much of the benefit.

Be careful of jumping in with two wood stoves. When I started with wood about 11 years ago, I bought two inserts and found that the work involved with one stove is enough of a challenge without having to babysit TWO of them. I rarely ever lit both stoves at once, and eventually replaced one of them with a gas insert that's easy to fire up on rare occasions, like the recent ice storm when we were out of power. So, start out with one wood stove and experiment.

Dan

 

[jimmiller2]

Dan
I think I will go with the stove upstairs. It will be easier to install than downstairs and by being in center of house should heat well.

Jim

 

[Martin Strand III]

Jim:

As I see it, your plan breaks three tried-n-true rules:

1. Outside wall chimney - chimneys work best (are kept warmer) centrally located in the house. Be prepared for poor draft and difficult (smokey) cold starts.
2. 90* offset in chimney - since a basement level is more depressurized (compared to upper levels), chimney offsets (especially right angles) compound the draft problem.
3. Cutting opening in main floor - violates most safety codes and, if it's a smallish floor register sized hole, it won't help heat upper level much.

My suggestion is to change your plan to follow "The Golden Rule" of burning: always burn safe.

Aye,
Marty
Grandma used to say, "Play with fire and you'll get burned."

 

[vtdavid]

I have been looking at several ways to add wood heat to my house and have made and abandoned several plans. I have a full daylight basement with the back 50% being a unfinished shop. My current plan is to put a wood stove here with the flue/chimmney going thru concrete block and brick turning upwards 90 degrees and continueing up just clearing the soffitt/gutter. Rising up as necessary to give proper roof clearance. It will be at back of house and by not going thru roof will be a simple installation.

I had the exact same installation for a PE Super 27 stove. The upturn 90 degree turn outside was done with a T that had the cap on the bottom for easier clean out and it was the support for the chimney outside. I had a few problems starting the fire due to back draft filling the house with smoke more than once. My wife just loved that! I opened the basement door and that helped but not real efficient letting cold air in to start the stove for heat.
That was my last house. This install the stove is more centrally located in the basement with the pipe going straight up through the bedroom closet penetrating the roof close to the peak. Stairway to the basement is open. No back draft issues at all even with high winds. A thought on placing the stove on the first floor; you will need to bring wood to it so closer to the door may be prudent when selecting a location. Keeping all the wood and ash is the basement is nice but takes more heat to get the upstairs warm.

 

[cmcramer]

I am new to forum and this is my first post. I tried a search of this topic. I have been looking at several ways to add wood heat to my house and have made and abandoned several plans. I have a full daylight basement with the back 50% being a unfinished shop. My current plan is to put a wood stove here with the flue/chimmney going thru concrete block and brick turning upwards 90 degrees and continueing up just clearing the soffitt/gutter. Rising up as necessary to give proper roof clearance. It will be at back of house and by not going thru roof will be a simple installation. Just above the stove on the upper floor I will cut a floor vent which will be fairly close to the central unit air intake (Outside burning propane burning "Gas-pack" furnace/AC unit). My hope is the heat will get sucked into the air intake of central unit and by using Fan Only will get distributed throughout house. Is this a reasonable plan? Any advise appreciated.

Thanks
Jim Miller (Tennessee)

Jim -

Just a couple comments:

One advatage of my 'walk-in' basement woodstove is the ease of handling for wood/ashes. I wheelbarrow wood in, got a big old stack on my basement floor nice and dry (2 weeks worth!) , and if the wood has some snow/ice on it ....that's OK. Spill some ashes? No problem.

One disadvantage is the time it takes to get the basement hot enough so that some heat rises up the stairs to first floor. That concrete sucks up lots of heat. I would suggest getting the biggest dang stove you can afford!

C Cramer
Upstate NY





I

 

[jimmiller2]

By putting the smaller stove upstairs the chimmney will be inside except the part that enters the attic. If I go straight up from the stove(the room has a cathedral ceiling) it would exit the roof at the peak which I have been told wouldn't work. I plan to come straight up from stove about 10-12 feet turn 90 degrees and go thru wall into attic over the ajoining 8 foot ceiling room (This part of attic is completely open with a 4 foot wide 6 foot tall storage tunnel built into the 6/12 roof trusses. I can then use two 15 or 30 degree elbows to offset before exiting roof to clear peak and place on back side of house. Would it be best to use heavy gauge single wall pipe for the inside house portion to extract heat or go with double wall all the way. If I use double wall the whole way could I use galvanized inside and paint joining to stainless steel for the atic and roof exit portion? Is one brand of Double wall Stainless steel pipe preferred over another?

Thanks
Jim Miller