Transfer heat to the farthest rooms with a stove?

[DeanBrown3D]

Hello all,

I have a forced air wood furnace, so my house is nice and warm throughout as the air gets pushed around. But I was wondering how you stove users out there get the heat to farther parts of the house. Since I've never had a stove per se, all I can imagine is one hot room with the stove in, and the rest of the house colder. Tell me this is not so!

 

[kevinmoelk]

Hi DeanB. Well, I don't have my stove in yet, so I can't attest to how it's done exactly, but I think there is an article either here or at wood.org that outlines some ideas. The main obstacle it seems are passageways. By that I mean doors, and more specifically the portion of the wall above the headers. Many folks have cut out and installed transom windows above the doors. Some people have placed vents in the walls leading to other rooms, again at ceiling height. Ceiling fans are a huge help to push air around, some folks use regular fans, and there are also specially designed fans that fit in the corners of doors and passageways. Yet another alternative would be to use the "fan" option on your central forced air unit to help circulate the air.

-Kevin

 

[quads]

all I can imagine is one hot room with the stove in, and the rest of the house colder.

That about sums it up, no matter how many fans, vents, etc. you use to help even it out. It's not as bad as it sounds though. Usually the rooms farthest away from the stove, such as bedrooms, are the ones that you want a little cooler anyway.

 

[kd460]

My set up is as follows: A family room with cathedral ceiling is on the west end of the house, sits out from the rest of the homes foot print. This is where my insert is. The next room is the kitchen/dining area that has a 14 ft doorway. On the other side of the kitchen/dining is the living room. At the extreme east end of the living room is the front foyer with stairway leading to the upstairs. Quite a distance to move warm air.
I have a fan that is mounted in the corner of the 14 ft doorway in the family room. It is mounted in a way that I did not have to drill any holes and can be quickly removed. It is just some pieces of metal strips that clip to the edge of the cabinets in the kitchen. They clip to the top lip of the cabinet and the fan. No drilling required. It is a fairly large 3 speed circuliar fan (about 14 inches). It is like those "doorway fans" but larger, and is what I already had. It moves the warm air that hangs out in the top section of the family room and pushes it to the living room/foyer area where the stairway is.


Natural convection takes over from there and the warm air flows upstairs without a problem. It's amazing how much cold air flows down as the warm air flow up.

At the top of the stairs at about the 4ft mark I have a shelf that has a small 9 inch fan that blows the warm air into the bedroom area. It sounds complicated, but it's not. 2 fans that help move the warm air to the sleeping areas in the furthest areas of my house one level up from the insert. In other words, accross the house, up the stairs, then back accross the upstairs to the bedrooms. Basically the warm air moves in a "S" pattern. It works well. The bedrooms are about 6-8 degrees cooler than the main floor when burning wood alone.

One thing I have strongly considered is a ceiling fan at the top of the stairs. My stairway is like a tall (about 16 foot) open alcove. In other words, standing at the bottom of the stairs looking straight up there is nothing till you reach the ceilings of the second floor. Sounds like a good candidate for a ceiling fan to bring more warm air upstairs. KD

 

[precaud]

Since I've never had a stove per se, all I can imagine is one hot room with the stove in, and the rest of the house colder. Tell me this is not so!

Well, it is true. But the question is: how much colder, and how warm does it need to be? Woodstoves are zone heaters, and part of the efficiency to be gained by zone heating is concentrating btu's into the portions of the home which are most often used. My setup keeps the living areas in the 70's and the bedrooms in the mid-60's. I prefer to sleep in a cooler room, so I'm very happy with that.

Transoms and heat transfer vents naturally extend the convection loop and are an effective (and silent!) way to move air to adjacent rooms. Since the hottest air pools at the ceiling, to be effective, the vents should be right up there. I put in one heat vent (about 3 sq ft) between the living room and main bedroom, which made a big difference.

 

[mikenr1c]

I only suppliment my home heat with a small wood stove. So if my gas hot air pops on once in a while I think it is a good thing. It helps move all of the air around the house and rebalance the hot and cold spots.

regards, Mike

 

[danielj618]

I heat up the thermal mass of my body by standing next to the stove, then proceed to (convect myself to) each of the remote rooms and......RADIATE.

yeah..me too :cheese:

but really..we are looking into buying an older furnace today, and thats our dilemna..try to save money and yet we have only one good sized stove up and running and this end of the house is 80 degrees and it is as low as 65 at the far end..while that is NOT terrible in itself..the 10 to 15 degree drop feels like walking outside..your body just says whoo..thats cold..and knowing that the far end is warm..everybody migrates to that room..and there are alot of us

 

[precaud]

we are looking into buying an older furnace today, and thats our dilemna..try to save money and yet we have only one good sized stove up and running and this end of the house is 80 degrees and it is as low as 65 at the far end..while that is NOT terrible in itself..the 10 to 15 degree drop feels like walking outside..your body just says whoo..thats cold..and knowing that the far end is warm..everybody migrates to that room..and there are alot of us

Sounds like a candidate for a second stove...

 

[danielj618]

we are looking into buying an older furnace today, and thats our dilemna..try to save money and yet we have only one good sized stove up and running and this end of the house is 80 degrees and it is as low as 65 at the far end..while that is NOT terrible in itself..the 10 to 15 degree drop feels like walking outside..your body just says whoo..thats cold..and knowing that the far end is warm..everybody migrates to that room..and there are alot of us

Sounds like a candidate for a second stove...

correct..and I have my stoves little brother..I have that furnace thread in this forum where I pretty much spilled my guts out.. ..not to belabor it but I am being fronted money for a job in the spring..and I cannot buy chimney and wall kit or ceiling kit within that budget..

and I found a secondary combustion furnace..15 miles from here..within my budget..all I need it some 8" pipe and a refurbished thimble to use my existing chimney that opens into the basement..all masonary surroundings and a nice 7'4" cellar ceiling height..It supposedly has a really long time inbetween refills and is thermostatically controlled..very good condition

I have been getting thoughts ad-naseum from you all..probably gonna buy the beast

fill it up in the morning and have a warm house when I come home..

fingers crossed

 

[Martin Strand III]

Those "stove users out there" who understand (key word) the limitations of their single supplementary auxiliary local area wood burning stove don't even try to "get the heat to farther parts of the house."

Aye,
Marty

Grandma (and Lt Callahan) always said, "A man's got to know his limitations."

 

[jabush]

My house is a split foyer with the stove downstairs. Main house is just under 1600 sf with a one level addition (850 sf) off the back.
I get plenty of heat upstairs as my furnace ductwork runs "longways" through the house and eats into the downstairs ceiling space a little. The ledge created by the ductwork traps a lot of heat and directs it right into the stairwell to go upstairs. I run a big ceiling fan (on low) upstairs to help pull the heat up.
Downstairs I place a box fan in the addition blowing into the stove room. The addition consists of a full kitchen, master bedroom, a small library, and a "mud room". A sliding glass door separates the mudroom from the kitchen. For some reason I've had better luck blowing cold air into the stove room as opposed to moving hot air out with a corner fan in a doorway.
Overall I am able to keep the heat pretty even throughout the house without running us out of the stove room. If it gets a little hot downstairs, I'll open the slider that leads into the (crappily insulated) mudroom to let some cold air in.

EDIT** Right now it's around 72* upstairs, 70* in the downstairs kitchen, and I'd say it maybe 75* in the stove room. It's hotter by the stove of course.

 

[budman]

Famly room 25'x18' w/cathedral ceiling were insert is ,ceiling fan. Have 2 doorway fans going into
living room , dineingroom and kitchen also in f/r have on east wall a thru wall 10'' multi speed fan
mounted 8' high going to the three bedrooms on east side where this fan is right down hall to 3 rooms
Works very well.

 

[kd460]

Those "stove users out there" who understand (key word) the limitations of their single supplementary auxiliary local area wood burning stove don't even try to "get the heat to farther parts of the house."

Aye,
Marty

Grandma (and Lt Callahan) always said, "A man's got to know his limitations."

But, if the area or "zone" is 80 degrees, and other areas of the home are in the 60's, hmmm, it only makes sense to try and move some of the warmer stuff to the cooler areas. At the cost of a say a 100 watts (if that). KD

 

[Martin Strand III]

That your stove doesn't do exactly what you want it to do; i.e., heat far away other home areas, doesn't change the fact, when the stove is in normal function, it is doing what it was designed to do.

Wanting areas warmed away from the stoves primary location is popular but it is like asking your car to be a boat and a plane too. You can try it, but unless the circumstances are 'just right', you will probably be disappointed.

Aye,
Marty

 

[Roospike]

I guess I'm lucky and the whole house is about the same temp burning wood for 100% of our heat.
My house is a 2 story 1800sf 100+ years old and if you think about it ... most home 100+ years old were built to be heated with a wood/coal stove (cob /chit or whatever ) most chimneys were in the middle of the house and the stove was in the kitchen / front room ( parlor ) , stairs were in the middle of the home and displaces heat nicely.

Frontroom/dinning room 74°
kitchen/ backroom/ computer room/ bathroom 73°
all three bedrooms up stairs 70°-71° ( 74° durning the day when the sun is shinning and not 0° out side )

 

[Gooserider]

We have found a reasonably satisfactory solution. Our house basically divides into 3rds. On one end is the living room third with the stove, which is totally open to the peak of the cathedral ceiling 24 feet up The other two thirds are two story with nominal 8' ceilings - The second floor is the master suite, and a small loft area open to the living room. On the first floor is the kitchen / dining area that occupies the center third of the house, then two bedrooms and the main bath in the far third.

Underneath everything is a full basement, with an open area under the living room and kitchen thirds. There is a half bath, the furnace room and a storage room under the bedroom third. It is a beautiful house, but not a very practical one.

There are large passageways between the kitchen and living rooms, and the stairs to the 2nd floor and basement are very open. The first floor bedrooms are in a sort of "T" hallway.

The stove used to do a good job heating the living-room, dining area and master suite, but didn't do much for the bedrooms. However I've gotten a "Thermguard" from Bear Mountain Design, which is intended for addressing this sort of application. It is a little box that wires in across the fan terminals of your HVAC thermostat, and cycles the fan on a programmable basis. Since we've gotten the box, I typically see no more than 1-2*F difference between the living rooms and the bedrooms. As long as I stay on top of keeping the stove loaded, I can keep the house in the low 70's.

Currently I have the box on its default programming of running the fan five minutes on and 15 off. Haven't seen any real reason to change it.

(The box also advertises itself as useful in hot water systems for periodically circulating the water to keep if from freezing)

The downside is that I seem to be loosing more heat from the living room than I'm gaining in the bedrooms - It used to be the bedrooms would be in the low - mid 60's, and the living room would be near 80. Now everything is closer to the 69-72 range.

I've been thinking about trying to play games with blocking off different registers and returns to see if I can focus the distribution a bit, but I haven't decided which way I'm better off doing it - blocking the intakes in the living room and the registers in the rest of the house, or vice versa.

Gooserider

 

[colsmith]

We are fortunate that our layout works well for the heat to circulate itself naturally. We don't use fans, haven't made holes in walls or ceilings or anything. Our wood stove is located in the middle of the house on the first floor, in the living room. There is a wide opening into the dining room, which is completely open to the kitchen, which has a hall leading north to the family room and a bathroom, and an opening to the front hall, which leads back to the living room, front door, and to the stairs to the second floor, where all the bedrooms are. It is the kind of layout where you can chase a cat in a circle for a long time. The opening from the living room to the front hall goes all the way to the ceiling, whereas the opening to the dining room stops about 2 feet from the ceiling. So hot air prefers to go towards the hallway and up the stairs, and through the hall back towards the kitchen and bathroom. I imagine some kind of circular air flow gets going. Only the family room, off by itself on the north end of the house, stays chilly. But we don't hang out there at all, we have a lot of plants in there, filing cabinets, old furniture, etc. so we don't care as long as it isn't too cold.

We have a basement, haven't noticed it getting too cold, it is about the same temp all year long, 50 something in winter and 55-60 in summer. Upstairs we have doors open to the bathroom, our bedroom, and the adjacent bedroom that the chimney goes through. So those rooms stay a nice temp, about the same as the living room, which is below those 2 bedrooms. The 2 closed bedrooms are chilly, but again, there is just 'stuff' in them so who cares. We placed our woodstove well (we paid extra for having it in the center/tallest part of the house and having a longer chimney) and happened to be lucky with the existing layout. So actually it does heat the house pretty darn well all over the place. I am chillier here by the computer in the dining room than I would be in the living room, but I can always wrap up better. The family room, not having an upper story over it, and being on the north end of the house with sliding glass doors, has ALWAYS been colder than the rest of the house.

 

[MrKenmore]

My house is pretty good. Its a single stroy ranch. The stove is located in a room 30 inches lower than the rest of the house. The ceilings are 9' 2" in this room. The key is that there is no header at this room trapping hot air. It just goes right out. The whole house can be a consistent 70 degrees w/ the stove kicking.

 

[Rhone]

I had a stove and like Marty S, it was a space heater first & foremost but I tried to use it to heat the rest of the house. No manner of vents, fans, ducts, or stairways was effective in transforming it from a space heater to a house heater and I ripped my house apart trying. It roasted me around the stove, kept the main floor comfortable, and the top floor too cold. Todays stoves are certainly better, they're now more hybrids producing larger amounts of convection that moves around and less radiant energy that can make the area around it too hot.

I'm like MrKenmore. Single story ranch with a sunken den with an insert. I think it's probably the best configuration if you want to spread the heat around. The coldest air settles down in the sunken den, where the insert being slightly lower than the main floor sucks it up, heats it, and spits it out only to be replaced by the coldest air in the house which comes from the far side and it flies down the hall into the sunken den to be heated by the insert meanwhile the hot air screams down to the far side to replace the cold going to the insert. There's such a nice air flow arrangement, no tubes, holes, the only fan is the one in the insert. Also, no cathedral ceilings to trap the heat. It's interesting that something as simple as Cathedral ceilings vs. sunken den, that the Cathedral ceilings trap heat but on the contrary sunken dens help spread it. They're nice in summer too, when you have the AC going the sunken den is the most comfortable room as that's where the coldest air settles. Sometimes, if you're borderline turning the AC on, sit in the sunken den it's usually cool enough you don't turn it on saving $. Another benefit the room with the stove/insert is usually the hottest not with an insert in a sunken den. The coldest air in the house coming to the den keeps it cooler so it doesn't overheat, actually the rooms around it are hotter. I can burn more efficiently and not roast myself out of the room doing it and always sending the coldest air in the house through the insert must increase its transfer efficiency a few points. My previous house was the worst, I could not get the heat away from the stove and only chance I buy a house with this configuration and what a difference. I also like the bathroom being on the other side of the fireplace. As the insert heats up, it heats up the bricks in the back which stay hot for hours after the fire dies. Since, that's a bathroom behind it, the bathroom is the warmest room in the house and we feel the effects of a nice, warm wall radiating energy on us in the morning when we get out of our showers.

 

[MrKenmore]

I just redid the room my stove is in and had the option of a cathedral. IMHO, cathedrals look nice but are a losing choice if you're looking to heat the rest of the house or even the space the stove is in.

 

[wahoowad]

I use a small box fan to push cold floor level air into the room with my stove. This forces the warm air to spill out through the doorway and bar area into my kitchen and rest of the house. That dang cathedral ceiling still traps a lot of it up there even with the floor fan and ceiling fan moving it around.

I'm house-planning now and my new house will have the sunken living room and limited headers to impede warm air flow.