Hi!
I'm on my initial learning curve on the new insert and house as a system. My insert is in my basement (daylight rambler, so has a walkout basement). Our thermostat is set to 67 when kids/spouse are home and 64 otherwise. I've looked at
draft - which is excellent, maybe too good, might need to block off the boost air, most everything burns at a clip even when the air is turned down, it's not even really cold yet here. Spouse now refers to the downstairs as Africa (our little lions like to lounge on the savanna there).
air flow - not spiffy (yet) but cracking a window helps move air out of the room naturally, the stairs which are very close to the insert's location are enclosed at the top which we intend to open up but there's a long list of stuff to redo on this house ('57). Some warm air still comes up. We got this for making the downstairs comfortable so having more heat go upstairs will be great when we do that project.
thermal mass issues - our masonry chimney is maybe more than average as there are four flues - basement fireplace, main floor fireplace, furnace (in basement, want to move it to a garage when we rebuild the garage), and a bbq fireplace in the kitchen (which was a thing around here for a while as we had a '68 house not far from here with one and they always have an outlet in them for the rotisserie which I've never seen but the flue is blocked off at the top and the bbq space is a future home of a double oven when we tear out the original kitchen). We don't have a block off plate for the insert but that's probably a great thing as we can get too hot in the basement on larger fires (cracking a window for better ventilation helps, a lot like a properly ventilated sauna). The side effect is the masonry absorbs a lot of heat and that is a surprisingly wonderful thing as the whole house is more comfortable without being hot, the brickwork is exposed right up to the roof. And leaving a few good splits to burn at night might mean the (loud beast of a) furnace does not go on all night, another surprising benefit.
When people go back to school/work during the week, I'll figure out how to get a sweet spot for overnight burning that works well. What other things should I be looking at?
I'm on my initial learning curve on the new insert and house as a system. My insert is in my basement (daylight rambler, so has a walkout basement). Our thermostat is set to 67 when kids/spouse are home and 64 otherwise. I've looked at
draft - which is excellent, maybe too good, might need to block off the boost air, most everything burns at a clip even when the air is turned down, it's not even really cold yet here. Spouse now refers to the downstairs as Africa (our little lions like to lounge on the savanna there).
air flow - not spiffy (yet) but cracking a window helps move air out of the room naturally, the stairs which are very close to the insert's location are enclosed at the top which we intend to open up but there's a long list of stuff to redo on this house ('57). Some warm air still comes up. We got this for making the downstairs comfortable so having more heat go upstairs will be great when we do that project.
thermal mass issues - our masonry chimney is maybe more than average as there are four flues - basement fireplace, main floor fireplace, furnace (in basement, want to move it to a garage when we rebuild the garage), and a bbq fireplace in the kitchen (which was a thing around here for a while as we had a '68 house not far from here with one and they always have an outlet in them for the rotisserie which I've never seen but the flue is blocked off at the top and the bbq space is a future home of a double oven when we tear out the original kitchen). We don't have a block off plate for the insert but that's probably a great thing as we can get too hot in the basement on larger fires (cracking a window for better ventilation helps, a lot like a properly ventilated sauna). The side effect is the masonry absorbs a lot of heat and that is a surprisingly wonderful thing as the whole house is more comfortable without being hot, the brickwork is exposed right up to the roof. And leaving a few good splits to burn at night might mean the (loud beast of a) furnace does not go on all night, another surprising benefit.
When people go back to school/work during the week, I'll figure out how to get a sweet spot for overnight burning that works well. What other things should I be looking at?
