We're not doing something right. I'm always cold.

[serinat]

We're trying out our first season with our new Hampton HI300 fireplace insert. We are trying to heat our whole house with it, and we are mildly successful so far. Our house is a split entry, so long like a ranch, with 1200 square feet upstairs. The insert is upstairs. We have the furnace fan running to circulate air, and so far, it's always in the sixties in the lower level (which is half below ground, half above) and in the sixties in the upper level. (For a floor plan, see this thread.)

The bedrooms, on the end on the house, are cold, which I expected. We are playing around with fans to get the heat to come back there, but it's really just a bad house design for wood heat. I expected that.

What's really getting me is that now that it's down in the twenties outside, we can't get it to be above 66 - 68 inside. I don't mind being a little cold, but it seems like we should be able to get it warmer than that. 66 in the living room means 50 - 55 in the kids bedroom.

We are burning mostly hardwoods, with some poplar mixed in. It is mostly nice and dry, but some has been exposed to too much rain this fall. I'm thinking that we're not loading and/or burning right. What are your best tips for getting it nice and hot and not having to load every three to four hours? I feel like I'm loading wood into the insert all day.

 

[burntime]

1st it iis tough to get heat down. Do you have the top of the chimney sealled well? Is there a block off plate? Is your wood properly seasoned? Are you dampering the stove down?

 

[Jags]

First thing is to shut that darn fan off. See what happens in the stove area then. If your temps come up like you think they should, your answer is probably pretty straight forward. Not enough stove for the house. House ducting can loose lots of heat unless designed properly. Try using floor fans instead of the house fan. Just thoughts off the top of my head.

 

[Chettt]

I go along with shutting the furnace fan off and let the upstairs get hot. Then I would try one of those oil filled electric heaters downstairs.

 

[Henz]

I would definatly say stove using your forced hot air furnace to move the heat. I would never do this in my house cuase my dicting is not the greatest and the air moving through the ducts gets cooled off. Me thinks you might need a second stove in the downstairs with a pre-fab chimney..I would love to have two stoves!

 

[Todd]

Does the insert have a blower? Do you have a metal block off plate at the fireplace damper area?

 

[Rapid River]

How well is your house insulated? Do you have R-49 or R-38 in the attic? Windows okay?

 

[cocey2002]

How hot are you burning that stove? I have a Rutland placed on the top shelf and in the middle. A good temp there would be 275-375. I would imagine that a ranch would be tough. What is the temp in the room with the stove? For me I do load a few times to get the temps up. I might load 2 times in 4 hours. I leave the air fully open. I then get the room where the stove is located at around 82. Before I go to bed I throw some big splits in and leave it open for about 20 minutes then close the air down to about 1/4. I have a boxed shape house though. Easy to heat.
https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/28785/

 

[jpl1nh]

I agree, forget trying to use the furnace fan to move the air. It's a great concept but.. in reality it generally doesn't work to well and you just end up burning out the furnace fan motor from overuse. There is always plenty to learn about burning efficiently and to produce the most heat. Lots of great info on this website, and practice and trial and error will help you there. But there are limitations due to stove placement and house layout that might prevent you from having your whole house nice and toasty with just the insert. If you set your furnace at the temp you want the house at, I think you'll be surprised at how little it will run with you using the insert 24/7 and your whole house might be more comfortable.

 

[kenny chaos]

Serina- I can surely sympathize with you. If you think you may not be burning properly, then read the tips on here and keep experimenting. Do not be dismayed though, by all you read on here. There is lots of good advice but there is also plenty of blatant boasting and bragging which may be justified in some cases but not in others. I have many friends who "heat with wood" but none use it exclusively. I have one friend who is very successful with wood. He has a newer, well insulated ranch with the stove next to his forced air furnace. His furnace does a sweet job distributing the heat through his house. There are so many variables involved.
In my case, the old oil burner could only get the house to 68. I added much insulation to the attic, consulted way too many "experts", and finally agreed to a new, more, efficient, furnace. Guess what. 65 degrees tops. The more efficient burner put off no radiant heat like the old one so now the basement is always cold. Anyway, it's a 1832 medina sandstone house. Prettiest house for three counties (there's one of those brags) around but don't try to keep it warm. We did replace two big old woodstoves with one newer one that does the same job and currently don't use the furnace. We heat just the first floor and can keep the living room at 68, the bedroom at 60. If it gets much colder for a long spell, the kids are gone so we'll throw a mattress on the living room floor and party down!
Like others claim, I can load it and have enough coals twenty hours later to start another fire. Impressive right? But while here during the day, to keep the house up to 65, the stove runs full tilt and needs refilling every three hours or less, to keep it maxed out. The two old stoves needed refilling every hour and a half. That was a full time job.
To sum up these ramblings, do not compare your situation to anyone elses.
A little acceptance goes a long way.
Lots of luck-
More coffee-

 

[Backwoods Savage]

One more thing we have found, and it has been posted already here, is that many folks leave that draft wide open to try to get some heat. That is fine when first starting the fire, but that draft needs to be close part way if you are going to get heat in the house. If left open, most of the heat just merrily flies right up the chimney and you aren't getting much benefit from it.

Also, even though that wood has been exposed to rain, dry wood is dry wood and not a sponge. If you are trying to burn unseasoned wood, you won't get much heat from it....and you'll have to run the stove with the draft wide open or close to it. A nasty set of circumstances. Open draft, heat up the chimney. Partially closed draft, no fire.

 

[LLigetfa]

I setup an 8" inline centrifugal blower to draw air from the floor one level down from the stove and push the cold air up through the ceiling to the base of the stove. By vacuuming the cold air up from below, the warm air spreads through the house quite evenly. Since I'm drawing cold air, it is safe to also filter it with a high quality furnace filter.

 

[drdoct]

I would think it would be darned near impossible to get a lot of heat down. What do you have below the fireplace on the 1st floor? I'd look at putting a stove there and running the chimney up to the chimney on the second floor and doing away with the whole setup and just closing off the fireplace up there. The biggest problem with moving heat around with fans is that you always have a breeze. Breezes tend to be on the chilly side. I've got a few fans myself, but it never feels like it's 72 degrees if you've got a whirlwind swirling all the time. One other thing which would be completely rigged would be to somehow duct your blower off the insert and deposit it downstairs directly. You could get some good hot air down like that. Blown air has to be really hot to not feel cool on your body. All of this is just my opinion though and probably ill informed at that.

 

[LLigetfa]

I would think it would be darned near impossible to get a lot of heat down...

If there is cold air down low, it is near impossible to "push" the heat down. Think of cold air as being water and warm air as well, air. If you blow air down into water, it just springs right back up, but if you pump out the water, air takes its place.

Push the cold air up to the stove.

 

[daleeper]

Serina

As for air circulation, I encourage you to keep trying different things, as your house will heat differently than anyone else's house. It will be a matter of experimenting with fans and air flow to get your warm air distributed as best as you can.

Moving air with your furnace fan is usually not very effective or efficient. One of the problems with the furnace system moving air, is that unless it has a variable speed fan set to run slow, (IMO) it will be moving the air too fast, creating a feeling of cold air draft even if it is raising the room temperature up a few degrees. Try getting your upstairs warmed up nice without the furnace fan running, then turn the furnace fan on for about 5-10 minutes, and see what rooms warmed up and which ones cooled down. If running the furnace fan intermittently seems to help, there are thermostats and add-on electronic gadgets available that will control this for you. Most people on this forum will advise that common circulation fans placed properly will move air much more effectively than using the furnace fan, my preference is to run any of them slow.

The other problem in your case is that the furnace will be moving that air into both levels of the house, and I really cannot see that size insert heating both upstairs and lower level even with perfect conditions (can't see a big one doing it well either from the upstairs). If you don't need heat in the basement, then closing vents in the basement and forcing the air from upstairs to circulate into the upstairs rooms only might work to help warm up the upstairs bedrooms. If you only need a room or two heated downstairs, maybe a space heater would work there. If you get serious about heating with wood, maybe a wood furnace or boiler for the whole house will be in your future. Unless that concrete was insulated properly, a basement is a difficult space to heat.

For tips on burning wood, having seasoned wood is the most important thing, everyone says that, and everyone knows that, but until you have actually burned real seasoned wood, you don't know how good it can get. Mostly nice and dry doesn't really do a good job of telling us whether it has been seasoned. I have burned wood in an old air-tight stove for many years, and never was able to get ahead on my wood cutting until last year. I was able to carry over some wood cut and split the previous year, and when I started burning that wood, it was a total different (better) burning experience. With these new stoves, it is so much more important for the wood to be seasoned. I don't know your experience with wood burning, but it appears that it is your first year at burning, and I would say the probability of your wood being fully seasoned (cut and split for at least a 10 months to a year, oak needing more time than that) is slim. There are various posts here in the forum about using seasoned wood, but that would be first tip, burn seasoned wood.

Second tip for your wood that has gotten wet is to "stage" the wood you will be burning soon in a warm dry place. My stove is in the basement, and we have a place there that I carry in enough wood for the next week. If it has had rain or snow on it, it will dry out by the time I start to burn it by selecting the driest to burn first. I don't keep a cover on my wood pile, but that may be the next best option for you. It takes extra heat to dry that wood in the stove, and may be why you are not getting the heat you need from the stove, as it is going toward drying the wood out.

Another thing, the photo's show large windows next to your fireplace. Unless those are super efficient, they could be sucking a large portion of your heat right out the house before it ever gets in the room. A beautiful view comes at a cost. You might try some sort of insulating window treatments (don't you love the politically correct term for curtains) to reduce energy loss there if you haven't done so already.

I am envious of having your wood head upstairs. My wife would not allow ours up there, where we spend most of our time because of the mess it can create, yet that is where ours belongs.

Don't give up, that insert should keep you warm upstairs where you spend the most time, and reduce your fossil fuel use very significantly.

 

[begreen]

Hi Serina. Most likely the issue is heat loss in the duct work. If some of the basement level walls are uninsulated that may also be robbing a big chuck of the heat. Use the stove for upstairs only and see how it goes. For downstairs, what rooms are you actually using? Maybe close them off and use an electric space heater in them?

Did you get a thermometer for the Hampton? If so, what temperatures are you normally seeing?

 

[carp]

Get an instant read thermometer or cheap digital thermometer and stick it in the air flow at each vent while you run the furnace fan. This will tell exactly what temp air you are blowing into a room.

The part of the house underground is a significant negative gain on that level.

House duct is rarely insulated and you will lose significant heat. Remember, you are not pumping hot air through the ducts like a furnace. You are moving cool-luke warm air and mixing it with the cold air in any assumed cold air returns.

I have a separate, insulated duct system for my wood stove. The inlet temp for the air is about 104 degrees. By time it gets to the farthest bedroom it averages 85 coming out the vent.

Check that lower level fireplace when the furnace fan is on to make sure it is not pulling cold air into the room.

If your central heating system brings in make up air for combustion, then it is introducing even more cold air.

I think you will see better performance with:

1. Ceiling fans to move the warm air off the ceilings

2. Pedestal fan to push air down any hallways

3. Only use it to heat the level the insert is on.

 

[Bill]

I know your trying to save some cash, we all are, but remember the stove is a space heater. Why not turn your furnace on and get the house warm and try to keep it warm with the wood stove. Use the wood stove to compliment your existing heating system. Let the house cool overnight and then turn the furnace back on, get the wood stove cranking, see if your more comfortable that way.

 

[LLigetfa]

Most furnace duct systems are engineered to evenly distribute hot air generated at the furnace. Some duct systems are designed to also distribute cold (air conditioner) air but the two design requirements are somewhat contradictory to how air wants to move. Neither designs are really good at distributing warm air generated in the wood stove but with some re-balancing of registers, it can help. You are better off designing a separate system that takes into consideration how air stratifies.

 

[begreen]

You hit the nail on the head. A system designed for moving hot air at 140 degrees is a lot different than one designed to more air at 85 degrees. Many forced air systems are leaky, uninsulated relics from the age of cheap fuel. And a lot of heating systems are not engineered at all, more seat of the pants designed to be truthful. You'd be surprised how many systems are installed based on general rules of thumb instead of individual analysis.

 

[Redox]

Aw, c'mon BG. That would require effort and knowledge. :roll:

Does the basement get warm if you are just using the furnace? I'll bet not. They can be very hard to heat with forced air. Wall insulation will help, and a simple duct fan to suck cool air off the basement floor and move it toward the stove may help, but it is probably never going to be truly "warm".

Chris

 

[dsell]

Hi, we have the same stove that we installed in October. The temps were from 7 to 30 for 2 weeks in Dec. During that time, we kept our house at 70 to 72 degrees with the HI300 insert and an oil filled electric heater 1500 watt on max. I always keep the central air fan on. We have an Aframe house with a basement and 1/2 upstairs, 2300 sq ft. We were burning seasoned mulberry when these temps hit us. I really wished I had Black Locust when the cold hit. That's the biggest difference that you need to know. Get hedge, black locust, hickory, white oak, pecan, or your local equivelent to them. You will be amazed at the difference. Mulberry is rated around 25.6 btu and black locust at 28 btu depending on the chart. Hedge is at 32. I was really surprised at the btu values of our local wood. Some that I thought would be really good, sucked, such as Green Ash. I thought black locust was trash, it is very invasive. Good luck with your Hampton, we love ours, just wish it had an ash drawer.