updating heating system in a log cabin

  • Active since 1995, Hearth.com is THE place on the internet for free information and advice about wood stoves, pellet stoves and other energy saving equipment.

    We strive to provide opinions, articles, discussions and history related to Hearth Products and in a more general sense, energy issues.

    We promote the EFFICIENT, RESPONSIBLE, CLEAN and SAFE use of all fuels, whether renewable or fossil.

felix0685

New Member
Apr 13, 2020
4
Bonney Lake WA
Hello Everyone.

My wife and I recently bought a log cabin in the greater Seattle area. We are very happy with the cabin and there are no bad surprises. We knew from the beginning that the heating system is something we want to change.

The cabin:
The cabin sits on a concrete basement and has two stories, so three stories in total and about 3,000 sqf almost evenly spaced over the three floors, so about 1,000 sqf per floor. The basement is divided in three rooms. The ground floor hosts the living room right at the main entrance with a den on the side. The living room is open above with the staircase going up/down. Also kitchen, dining room, a bathroom as well as a pantry is located on the ground floor.

The upstairs has 4 bedrooms, a bathroom as well as the master bathroom/walk in closet. See floor plan below.
floorplan.png
The current heating system:

Currently there is a Propane space heater in the basement, next to the basement door. There is a gas fireplace in the living room which acts as the main heat source and a small propane stove in the dining room for additional heating. additional there are baseboard heaters (which most of them don't work).

The problem:
The back room in the basement can get quite humid as there is no ventilation, also the propane space heater produces a lot of humidity. The gas stove in the living room, which acts as primary heat source is undersized for the house I think. currently it doesn't get overly cold at night but it cant keep up with heating and runs all night. It also is quite noisy (I already cleaned the fan from an infestation of dog hair, but there might be more in there). As the stove sits in the open space the heat is rising into the roof, where we have comfortable temperatures but it barely spreads into the bedrooms or bathrooms, which on colder days might be not so comfy.

The idea:
Our idea was to move to a pellet stove system, as we could get a pellet mill and next to unlimited amounts of free sawdust, also our neighbor is using a pellet stove and we could bulk buy pellets possibly, or share work for making our own pellets. Our first idea was to place a large pellet stove in the back room of the basement and cut some vent holes in the floor to allow for hot air to rise. this would heat the basement and take care of the humidity/ventilation issue in this room (the floors are 2x6 boards so fairly easy to realize). We would remove the gas stove and use the existing exhaust pipe as the new stove would be more or less below the existing one. if possible I would like a stove/furnace with an external holding tank, as the room offers enough space to put a tank in and we would have the possibility to refill it from the outside of the house and therefore not having to carry pellets inside.

The questions:
1. is an idea like this feasible or will the heat just disappear into the basement and the heat would not get up into the living area?
2. if this works would it overheat the basement?
3. how to get the heat in the upstairs bedrooms? we can cut vent holes in three of the bedrooms upstairs, but not the master bedroom as the kitchen is below and I don't want all the cooking smells coming up as well. I also see issues with the bathrooms.
4. to fix the issue with the bathroom I thought about a furnace to hot water boiler to radiator solution, any ideas here? (forced air is not an option)
5. would we be better of replacing the gas stove where it is with a properly sized pellet stove and add smaller pellet stoves in basement and master bedroom?
6. any other ideas or advice?
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Twigster
Some people have good luck heating their homes with a pellet stove
Most are open-concept
Others not so much.
I BIG thing to remember is a Pellet Stove is a space heater not a furnace
and from your floor plans, I do not feel that one stove will do it
Two maybe one in the basement the other on the first floor
 
Sounds like some research needs to be done first. What is the price of propane vs pellets in your area? If you had to buy pellets, what would be the total cost per season? Is this less than propane? In the least, it sounds like an unventilated propane heater is being used in the basement. That should be replaced with a vented unit.
 
Up at arrow in Buckley propane is 2.09 per gallon today. Pellets there are quite cheap during their once per year sale. Might want to check with them for pellet price too.

A 3000 square foot “cabin”? That’s huge!
 
Last edited:
You almost certainly won’t be making your own pellets and we don’t have bulk pellet delivery here yet either. Unless you mean buying a lot of bags at a time. Up at arrow in Buckley propane is 2.08 per gallon today. Pellets there are quite cheap during their once per year sale. Might want to check with them for pellet price too.

A 3000 square foot “cabin”? That’s huge!

May I ask why you think I wont make my own pellets? Do you think it is not possible? if it is about the work related, trust me I will.

we payed about 2.40 per gallon of propane. And according to the previous owner they payed about 2500 $ in propane per year. Pellets I have not done too much research on price, I know our neighbors run through a bag of pellets a day (similar sized house) and pay 5$ a bag, makes 150 $/month, and the previous owner said they have 400$ in propane for the cold months.

Personally I would not mind a wood stove to heat, but the wife...and I do like the idea of not having to carry firewood into the house daily.

Main problem is though that we have to rework our heating system. the current propane stove doesn't seem to be properly sized, and annoyingly loud. The basement is not easy to heat...and I would like to get away from propane.

Felix

PS: the cabin part is only about 2000 sqf, the basement adds another 1000 sqf
 
Felix0685; How much will the pellet mill cost? How much will the binding agents cost? What quality of sawdust fines and what is the source? Will there be a weatherproof storage area for the pellets you manufacture once they are created in bulk (or do you have a plan for storing bulk pellets) assuming the pellets will be made during the off winter months? How much time will be spent procuring/handling the materials for making the pellets? Anything special needed to gather/store the materials for making the pellets? What will you have invested in the stoves (I'm betting one will not suffice) & piping for them. What will you be using for a back-up power source for the stoves? How much inventory of parts will be needed if using pellet stoves as the primary source of heat (most pellet stove users use a pellet stove as a secondary source of heat, even if it is used as the primary most of the time) for emergency repairs? What happens if (heaven forbid) you get injured or have to go through a major surgery, will someone else know how & be able to handle the steps involved to manufacture your pellets or will you be purchasing them under those circumstances (then start at the top again and work your way through the questions that would apply) ?
There is much to be considered when thinking about a primary heating source that may get overlooked, just sayin.

While I uses my stoves as a primary source, I do have Central Heat & AC, unfortunately, we aren't young forever (the thought of the three level cabin had my knees screaming when reading this from the start, I'm not very fond of steps already)!
 
  • Like
Reactions: moresnow
Forget about making your own pellets. That is a losing proposition before you even make a bag. If you need further convincing, try to find someone on here that does it.

When you say gas fireplace, do you mean LP? No NG, right?

I would install cold climate mini-split(s). Along with giving cheap heat (guessing the climate there is fairly moderate?), they also dehumidify very well & very cheaply. You could also do a wood stove (a plus in a power outage) or pellet stove along with those, but splits would be my primary. No matter what you do, with those chunked up living spaces (our house is also chunked up - wish I had a full appreciation of open spaces when we planned it), anything short of a fully zoned (very expensive) central system will have compromises. So I would spread around space heating as much as I could, different types is fine and can even be advantageous.
 
Thank you for the answers I will do some more research into pellets and what goes into making them.

Storage is not a problem, we are on 1.25 acre with plenty of space (covered space as well) so either storing pellets or Firewood is less of an issue.

@maple1 : yes it is propane, not natural gas, so we have a truck coming in to fill the tanks. not so sure about mini splits though, my wife has already respiratory issues. In the old house she had a hard time sleeping with the dry air due to the forced air. and here she sleeps really well so far. the humidity issue is basically only in the back room of the basement.

@Nitro-Fish : as mentioned storage is not an issue. I can access the basement from the side, so no issue carrying stuff up or down stairs. and the way the house is built we could be able to put an opening in the side wall which connects to the back room in the basement. Therefore we had the idea of a holding tank for the pellets in the back room and we could fill it from the outside.
 
Mini-splits filter the air also, to some extent. And they should only dry it to what you want it dried to. They also move air around fairly well, which helps with trying to get conditioned air to chunked up spaces, better than most any other space heater. But there is a limit to how far they can move the air.

I was also skeptical, until we got 2 installed a year and a half ago. Highly recommended. You should get way more heat out of $5.00 of electricity with a mini-split than with $5.00 of pellets with a pellet stove.

Although don't know what your rates are.

Another consideration for you is how often all your rooms actually get used. Eg., are all 4 bedrooms always used? If some are only rarely, an electric baseboard would be good for those rooms.

$2400 is a lot for LP. I would likely either look to getting rid of it all together, or replacing the heaters you have. Sounds like they have inefficiencies.
 
@maple1 : Yes there are definite deficiencies with the current set up.

I guess I will look into mini splits. still not absolutely convinced. Baseboards for the other rooms sound OK to me, two of them will be guest rooms and one we might rent out
 
I would suggest getting a pro to look at the house and get some suggestions for heating.
If your furnace was drying out the air excessively then you had a lot of air infiltration from the outside.
A mini split looks like the best answer to me, you can get units with multiple heads to heat different areas of the home .
A pellet stove won't do that, a pellet FURNACE with ducting would work,
Mini splits are extremely efficient , You put in $1 of electric and would likely get $3 of heat out of it. They don't dry out the air as much as fossil fuels. Also they do a better job of dehumidifying in the warm months.
I have some experience with both types of heating setups and have switched from corn/pellets to mini splits, couldn't be happier. We left the gas furnace installed as a backup, our small 110 Volt generator will run it in a power outage, It takes 220 to run our mini splits.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Ssyko and maple1
I'm curious about your mini-splits, Arti, as I'm possibly going to have some installed in my 1800 sq. ft. ranch in a few years. May I ask what brand and model you have?

I own a P61A Harman I use as my primary heat source with a fuel oil boiler that is now used as my back up source....However, in the years to come I'm thinking of going the mini-spit route mostly for the AC as I'm growing tired of installing window units every summer and removing them in the fall. But also for a back up heat source.

My concern with the heat output of a mini-split is that I live way up in upstate, NY (near Watertown, NY) and we typically endure very cold and windy winters along with very large amounts of lake effect snow. I'm curious if a couple mini-splits could keep the house relatively warm on a 30 degrees below zero winter night....Or a week of below zero weather .
 
As far as the poster's issue:

I would first determine if the LP wall unit in the basement is vented. If not, replace it with a direct vented wall unit that can heat maybe 1500 square feet or larger....A little excess capability in other words. As was mentioned earlier, that might solve the humidity issue (if not, get a dehumidifier).

Second, maybe install a second such vented wall unit or floor unit (if you have access to some space between floor) on the 3rd floor somewhere where the heat can hopefully move around all the bedrooms and/or bathroom.

Third, I'd replace the main floor gas fire place with a freestanding wood stove to benefit from the radiant heat such a stove can generate. If you can swing it, I'd pull the trigger and install a high quality masonry heater so as to cut down on the wood you need. They aren't cheap and you need the right floor to support one, but they're ultra efficient and low maintenance and most important, quiet.

Here's an example of a good masonry heater:
http://norskkleber.com/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIh6fB1cjq6AIVxtSzCh2ofQMQEAAYASAAEgK0vPD_BwE

While they have their advantages, pellet stoves require constant maintenance, cleaning, and are not quiet. Some are more so than others of course but they all create noise that can be very distracting in a living area where you spend significant time.
 
Last edited:
Hello Everyone.

My wife and I recently bought a log cabin in the greater Seattle area. We are very happy with the cabin and there are no bad surprises. We knew from the beginning that the heating system is something we want to change.

The cabin:
The cabin sits on a concrete basement and has two stories, so three stories in total and about 3,000 sqf almost evenly spaced over the three floors, so about 1,000 sqf per floor. The basement is divided in three rooms. The ground floor hosts the living room right at the main entrance with a den on the side. The living room is open above with the staircase going up/down. Also kitchen, dining room, a bathroom as well as a pantry is located on the ground floor.

The upstairs has 4 bedrooms, a bathroom as well as the master bathroom/walk in closet. See floor plan below.
View attachment 259304
The current heating system:

Currently there is a Propane space heater in the basement, next to the basement door. There is a gas fireplace in the living room which acts as the main heat source and a small propane stove in the dining room for additional heating. additional there are baseboard heaters (which most of them don't work).

The problem:
The back room in the basement can get quite humid as there is no ventilation, also the propane space heater produces a lot of humidity. The gas stove in the living room, which acts as primary heat source is undersized for the house I think. currently it doesn't get overly cold at night but it cant keep up with heating and runs all night. It also is quite noisy (I already cleaned the fan from an infestation of dog hair, but there might be more in there). As the stove sits in the open space the heat is rising into the roof, where we have comfortable temperatures but it barely spreads into the bedrooms or bathrooms, which on colder days might be not so comfy.

The idea:
Our idea was to move to a pellet stove system, as we could get a pellet mill and next to unlimited amounts of free sawdust, also our neighbor is using a pellet stove and we could bulk buy pellets possibly, or share work for making our own pellets. Our first idea was to place a large pellet stove in the back room of the basement and cut some vent holes in the floor to allow for hot air to rise. this would heat the basement and take care of the humidity/ventilation issue in this room (the floors are 2x6 boards so fairly easy to realize). We would remove the gas stove and use the existing exhaust pipe as the new stove would be more or less below the existing one. if possible I would like a stove/furnace with an external holding tank, as the room offers enough space to put a tank in and we would have the possibility to refill it from the outside of the house and therefore not having to carry pellets inside.

The questions:
1. is an idea like this feasible or will the heat just disappear into the basement and the heat would not get up into the living area?
2. if this works would it overheat the basement?
3. how to get the heat in the upstairs bedrooms? we can cut vent holes in three of the bedrooms upstairs, but not the master bedroom as the kitchen is below and I don't want all the cooking smells coming up as well. I also see issues with the bathrooms.
4. to fix the issue with the bathroom I thought about a furnace to hot water boiler to radiator solution, any ideas here? (forced air is not an option)
5. would we be better of replacing the gas stove where it is with a properly sized pellet stove and add smaller pellet stoves in basement and master bedroom?
6. any other ideas or advice?
If you are interested in a gently used pellet stove I am selling one. Only have average of 16 ton through it total. I am north of Seattle
 
I'm curious about your mini-splits, Arti, as I'm possibly going to have some installed in my 1800 sq. ft. ranch in a few years. May I ask what brand and model you have?

I own a P61A Harman I use as my primary heat source with a fuel oil boiler that is now used as my back up source....However, in the years to come I'm thinking of going the mini-spit route mostly for the AC as I'm growing tired of installing window units every summer and removing them in the fall. But also for a back up heat source.

My concern with the heat output of a mini-split is that I live way up in upstate, NY (near Watertown, NY) and we typically endure very cold and windy winters along with very large amounts of lake effect snow. I'm curious if a couple mini-splits could keep the house relatively warm on a 30 degrees below zero winter night....Or a week of below zero weather .

As far as brands I would only consider Mitsubishi Fujitsu or Daikin. I have a Daikin in my residence ( I live in Missouri). Also a cheap one from Ebay in my weekend cabin. I wish i would have spent a bit more and put a Daikin in the cabin. I am a retired hvac contractor and a bit out of the loop however I still understand heating and cooling basics.

You will need some type of backup heat below Zero. Our cabin is in upstate Wisconsin and we use a Natural Gas furnace for most of our heating needs. They have mini split Hyper units that work fairly well to about -5 F.
A word of caution on putting these in cabins, They don't heat quickly so if you use one in a vacation home and turn up the heat when you get there it won't heat up for a few hours. In a residence it is a very constant heat much like a wood stove or pellet burner. The cooling part works extremely well in these units as they dehumidify well.

Common sizes are from 9,000 btu to 50,000 btu's

Here is a web site that gives some useful info about mini splits, I'm not affiliated with them.

 
Thanks for the info., Arti....I see more and more of these mini-splits installed in homes here in upstate, NY...It seems Fujitsu is a very popular brand. I wasn't familiar with the brand Daikin. So it would seem it's one of the best available.
 
Ours are Daikin. Two completely separate units. Even though it was a good layout situation for one outside unit for two inside ones, the installer said we'd be better off this way. Some googling indicated that also. Dont think its unanimous though.
 
Ours are Daikin. Two completely separate units. Even though it was a good layout situation for one outside unit for two inside ones, the installer said we'd be better off this way. Some googling indicated that also. Dont think its unanimous though.

That's what I ended up doing in our Main residence 2 idenical units.
2 units are about the same price as a multi head setup and if one quits then you still have some cooling. Also you could change parts from one unit to the other for trouble shooting. Haven't had any repairs in the 3 years they have been running.

I put a Hair brand in the cabin only use it 2 months a year however it isn't near as good of quality and doesn't work as smoothly as the Daikin's. Also parts are non existant if you get a cheaper unit. My wholesale distributor sold Mitsubishi which cost a bit more however they are of good quality. My competitor in town sold Fujitsu and they seemed to be of good quality also. Have worked on some that are sold on ebay and parts were very difficult to find and tech support is non existent. Just my 5 cents worth.
 
  • Like
Reactions: maple1