I just started with my pellet stove this fall but I know a little about HVAC or I thought I knew something. I put it in a sun room that was built onto the end of our 1700 sq.' townhouse style two story home just to heat the sunroom alone and not use the baseboard heaters in a 90% glass room. Immediately and to our amazement the stove showed signs of maybe being able to heat the whole house so I went about mastering the art of movement of heat from one room to another as I know all about that. Yea right. I tried it all, ceiling fan down, then up, floor fans blowing heat to the next room, blowing into the hot room to blow the heat out, use the Hvac system blower, doorway top corner fans. NONE OF IT WORKS, PERIOD. Some may think they are being successful with this or that, but i really doubt it if they factually test the results. Every fan or blower I set up made it colder where it was blowing or had no effect. I have a good bit of high quality test equipment and can check wet bulb temp, dry bulb temp, humidity combustion analysis, I have anemometers, manometers, Psychrometer that can test and calculate cfm through doorways or ducts, you name it, and a new pile of crude thermometers from Lowes that were strewn about the house. I am anal when it comes to data to a serious fault but in the winter I enjoy these kind of indoor challenges. Some here have had their chuckles at my silliness trying to apply science and data to pellet stoves but It all worked to factually prove through the use of data that nothing works.
What I found is simple....and at least is applicable in my house and I doubt if it varies much in anyone else's when it comes to moving hot air around coming off a stove or out of a hot room. blowing it around seems like it should in all logic work but it don't. Our furnaces only do it through duct work because they start out so hot hot and the flow is confined inside the ducts, they do cool the hot air a lot and are very inefficient and it is why the new ductless split systems are replacing ducted heating and air conditioning all over the world when applicable. Here is what I have learned in countless hours trying to move hot air through my house with fans and such.
#1) When you try to move heat with a fan or blower the acceleration of the air through the device cools it as fast as you move it and you gain nothing but a drafty feeling house and it will actually feel cooler within the throw area of the blower or fan. Move it slow (not enough benefit) to measure, Move it fast or faster (cools too much in process and no benefit) other than cooling.
#2) If you want the adjacent room to be warmer, there is one choice, heat up the room with the stove more and the adjacent room will increase. Heat seeks out cold and when you create a temperature differential it will move efficiently on it's own.
#3) The only value a ceiling fan has in the stove room is, to cool the stove room down, if it has been heated up a little extra to move heat into adjacent rooms and the stove room has gotten too hot it can make it feel a bit cooler with no negative effect on the adjacent rooms temperature objective.
#4) If I want my upstairs bedrooms to be 65 and I do, I elevate the stove room until they get to 65 and if I am hot sitting here I turn my ceiling fan on low and make it a bit drafty here in the stove room so i am comfortable even though the thermometer beside me says 79 or 80. For some reason this does not effect the stove rooms ability to push heat out into the adjacent rooms. I can have the fan on in here to make it comfortable and it does not change the adjacent room temp or effect the heat moving through it to the upstairs.
#5) It goes without saying but worth saying again, air leaks can consume a lot of your heat that would otherwise be filling your stove room and then spilling over into other parts of the house. Even just last night I added some more sponge weather seals to the windows I was finding drafty in the stove room and I got hotter sitting at my desk due to stopping a draft under my chair so I am wasting less heat. Search out you leaks on the coldest nights as they are much easier to detect and find smaller leaks in single digit temps that is the 20's or 30's
#6) Keeping my stove room temperature consistent really helps with maintaining the temperatures stable at the farthest points and room from the stove. If I shut down the stove for 10 minutes for a minor cleaning in cold weather, i can loose 5 degrees in the stove room and maybe 2-3 degrees in the upstairs. The stove room will come back up very quickly but the upstairs takes quite a while to come back up to where it had gotten up to. I have learned to get in and out quickly.
This represents about 2 months of experiments by me being bound and determined to move heat by mechanical means and I could only cool rooms down with fans or blowers but never raise their temperature as observed through actual testing. Your actual mileage may vary.
For the people that are trying to blow heat into other rooms, and questioning it's success, just try heating up the stove room a bit more and then if needed try a small amount of fan in that room to change the feel if it gets a bit hot. I often use the ceiling fan in here on low for that reason, up or down makes no difference.
This was all fun in process but frustrating and yet amazing at times. in the end we use only the ceiling fan in the stove room a little and are successfully heating a 1920 sq.' two story townhouse from an all glass sunroom/stove-room that was added on to one end several years ago. All of our heat has to move through the old outside door that now is an inside door into this add on room and find it's way through the house through convection and it is working quite well.
What I found is simple....and at least is applicable in my house and I doubt if it varies much in anyone else's when it comes to moving hot air around coming off a stove or out of a hot room. blowing it around seems like it should in all logic work but it don't. Our furnaces only do it through duct work because they start out so hot hot and the flow is confined inside the ducts, they do cool the hot air a lot and are very inefficient and it is why the new ductless split systems are replacing ducted heating and air conditioning all over the world when applicable. Here is what I have learned in countless hours trying to move hot air through my house with fans and such.
#1) When you try to move heat with a fan or blower the acceleration of the air through the device cools it as fast as you move it and you gain nothing but a drafty feeling house and it will actually feel cooler within the throw area of the blower or fan. Move it slow (not enough benefit) to measure, Move it fast or faster (cools too much in process and no benefit) other than cooling.
#2) If you want the adjacent room to be warmer, there is one choice, heat up the room with the stove more and the adjacent room will increase. Heat seeks out cold and when you create a temperature differential it will move efficiently on it's own.
#3) The only value a ceiling fan has in the stove room is, to cool the stove room down, if it has been heated up a little extra to move heat into adjacent rooms and the stove room has gotten too hot it can make it feel a bit cooler with no negative effect on the adjacent rooms temperature objective.
#4) If I want my upstairs bedrooms to be 65 and I do, I elevate the stove room until they get to 65 and if I am hot sitting here I turn my ceiling fan on low and make it a bit drafty here in the stove room so i am comfortable even though the thermometer beside me says 79 or 80. For some reason this does not effect the stove rooms ability to push heat out into the adjacent rooms. I can have the fan on in here to make it comfortable and it does not change the adjacent room temp or effect the heat moving through it to the upstairs.
#5) It goes without saying but worth saying again, air leaks can consume a lot of your heat that would otherwise be filling your stove room and then spilling over into other parts of the house. Even just last night I added some more sponge weather seals to the windows I was finding drafty in the stove room and I got hotter sitting at my desk due to stopping a draft under my chair so I am wasting less heat. Search out you leaks on the coldest nights as they are much easier to detect and find smaller leaks in single digit temps that is the 20's or 30's
#6) Keeping my stove room temperature consistent really helps with maintaining the temperatures stable at the farthest points and room from the stove. If I shut down the stove for 10 minutes for a minor cleaning in cold weather, i can loose 5 degrees in the stove room and maybe 2-3 degrees in the upstairs. The stove room will come back up very quickly but the upstairs takes quite a while to come back up to where it had gotten up to. I have learned to get in and out quickly.
This represents about 2 months of experiments by me being bound and determined to move heat by mechanical means and I could only cool rooms down with fans or blowers but never raise their temperature as observed through actual testing. Your actual mileage may vary.
For the people that are trying to blow heat into other rooms, and questioning it's success, just try heating up the stove room a bit more and then if needed try a small amount of fan in that room to change the feel if it gets a bit hot. I often use the ceiling fan in here on low for that reason, up or down makes no difference.
This was all fun in process but frustrating and yet amazing at times. in the end we use only the ceiling fan in the stove room a little and are successfully heating a 1920 sq.' two story townhouse from an all glass sunroom/stove-room that was added on to one end several years ago. All of our heat has to move through the old outside door that now is an inside door into this add on room and find it's way through the house through convection and it is working quite well.