I am about to purchase my first pellet stove and am looking for advice as to the best location for it. I have 2 options for locations (rough sketch below).
For reference, this is a 1600 square foot single story ranch in Connecticut. My goal is to use the stove as my primary heat source for at least the living room, kitchen/dining area, and 4 season sunroom and supplemental heat for the bedrooms. It would be great if it would provide the majority of the heating for the bedrooms, but if it can’t that’s not a deal breaker.
The bedrooms are on a separate zone for our existing system (hydronic baseboard heaters). For heat distribution, my plan is to either run our central air conditioner on fan only mode or run small fans to send cool air down the hallway toward the kitchen and warm air down toward the bedrooms.
Option 1 is in the corner of the dining area. This location seems like the best bet to get heat to the bedrooms, but I’m concerned that the kitchen/dining area will overheat too quickly before enough heat is distributed to the rest of the house. The sunroom is south facing and gets a ton of sun, which helps keep the kitchen warm. Even in the winter on a day that’s only partly sunny, the sunroom will easily get up to 70-75 degrees, and it breaks 80 in full sun. I’m concerned that I’d be left with either a lot of cold rooms or an unbearably hot kitchen if I leave the stove on long enough to get decent heat to the rest of the house.
Option 2 is in the corner of the living room. There is a wall separating the kitchen/dining area from the living room, but there is a pass through window that takes up about half the length of the wall (marked by the vertical lines in the sketch), so plenty of air moves between those rooms. My concern with this location is that it would be more difficult to get much heat down to the bedrooms. I’m leaning toward this location because I can live with using the existing heat for our bedrooms, but it would be great to avoid that if possible.
![[Hearth.com] Stove location for ranch home](https://www.hearth.com/talk/attachments/img_4197-webp.350112/ "[Hearth.com] Stove location for ranch home")
For reference, this is a 1600 square foot single story ranch in Connecticut. My goal is to use the stove as my primary heat source for at least the living room, kitchen/dining area, and 4 season sunroom and supplemental heat for the bedrooms. It would be great if it would provide the majority of the heating for the bedrooms, but if it can’t that’s not a deal breaker.
The bedrooms are on a separate zone for our existing system (hydronic baseboard heaters). For heat distribution, my plan is to either run our central air conditioner on fan only mode or run small fans to send cool air down the hallway toward the kitchen and warm air down toward the bedrooms.
Option 1 is in the corner of the dining area. This location seems like the best bet to get heat to the bedrooms, but I’m concerned that the kitchen/dining area will overheat too quickly before enough heat is distributed to the rest of the house. The sunroom is south facing and gets a ton of sun, which helps keep the kitchen warm. Even in the winter on a day that’s only partly sunny, the sunroom will easily get up to 70-75 degrees, and it breaks 80 in full sun. I’m concerned that I’d be left with either a lot of cold rooms or an unbearably hot kitchen if I leave the stove on long enough to get decent heat to the rest of the house.
Option 2 is in the corner of the living room. There is a wall separating the kitchen/dining area from the living room, but there is a pass through window that takes up about half the length of the wall (marked by the vertical lines in the sketch), so plenty of air moves between those rooms. My concern with this location is that it would be more difficult to get much heat down to the bedrooms. I’m leaning toward this location because I can live with using the existing heat for our bedrooms, but it would be great to avoid that if possible.
