What's your set-up for circulating heat?

[vanubee]

Just curious. Trying to figure out the best way to circulate the heat located on one end of the house in the family room.

I've got a ceiling fan and have tried using that. My wood stove has a blower and that's running. Also have one of those heat-powered fans placed on top of the stove. I've tried to crack a window open in the family room. I've also tried small portable fans placed in the hallway and pointed towards the room with stove -- yet, a majority of the heat is stuck in the family room...

What's your set-up and do share any tips/tricks!

 

[CentralVAWoodHeat]

That's about all you're going to get. Heat moves by virtue of being heat but it does so relatively slowly. A blower or fan will move air but not very effectively over long distances. Where are your return vents for your whole house fan? If they are in the room with the stove, you can turn the house fan on to distribute the heat better.

 

[brad wilton]

It's hard to get heat to move into other rooms,myself i don't bother trying .stoves are area heaters . I put my ceiling fan on reverse works well for the area with the woodstove. Most people here are using floor fans with some success.

 

[CentralVAWoodHeat]

It's hard to get heat to move into other rooms,myself i don't bother trying .stoves are area heaters . I put my ceiling fan on reverse works well for the area with the woodstove. Most people here are using floor fans with some success.

Exactly. Wood stoves really won't push too much air into the adjacent rooms unless your home is open concept. Things like low door jams and door ways get in the way of heat moving freely. Those of us who heat our whole houses with stoves typically have centrally located stoves in open concept, one floor homes, where the stove runs pretty much constantly to keep things an even temperature.

 

[NHpelletstove]

So my house is sort of like a split level; living room dining, kitchen on one floor with the pellet stove in the far corner of the living room. Bedrooms upstairs, but they're only about 8 steps up from the living spaces, and they're beside the living spaces, not over them.
So at the opposite end of my house from the stove I crack a window open about 4", and the heat travels beautifully to that end of the house within an hour after my stove is putting off good heat.


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[griam01]

My stove is on one of the house and I have my ceiling fans on reverse and run the central fan on to circulate the heat. It works better than putting fans blowing air i to the room than I thought it would. I can maintain the heat in the other rooms within a few degrees this way. The room with the insert gets the most heat. I have returns half way up in that room of a cathedral ceiling. My thermostat at the other end of the house has stayed at 68 with this setup the last few days where the room I have the insert is between 72-75. I am not sure of the cost of running your furnace fan on all the time though.


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[MisterFixIT]

I don't circulate heat , I circulate cool.

I have my wood stove at one end of the house and bedrooms at the other. It is difficult to push warm air down the hall so what I did was to tee into the central air floor registers in the front room and bedrooms and ran 6" insulated flex ducting between the two in the crawl space below. At the half way point in the ducting I installed an inline fan (FR150 or similar)
(broken link removed to http://www.fantech.net/products/fans--accessories/circular-duct-fans/circular-duct-fans/fgr/fr-150-centrif.-inline-fan/)

The fans runs off of 120VAC and are controlled by 2-4-6-8 Hour push button timers.

Instead of pumping warm air from the stove room to the bedrooms it sucks the cool bedroom floor air through the crawl space and puts this cool air to either side of the wood stove. I have two separate runs for two bedrooms. The pressure differential between the front and back pushes the warm air in the stove room down the hallway to the bedrooms. It works even though the hallway is long and narrow.

I could have pumped warm air from the top of the stove room to the floor of the bedrooms but it would have been a logistical nightmare to route the ducting and I would have lost a lot more heat pumping 80F+ air through 20F-30F attic compared to pumping 60F air through a 50F crawlspace.

The circulation fans radically change the air flow in the room breaking the self reinforcing air loop that normally sets up. With the fans off the warm air flows down the opposite wall across the floor to back the stove and the room gets baking hot. With the fans on the warm air flows down the opposite wall and then down the hallway to the bedrooms. The cool bedroom air gets pumped next to the stove modulating temperature in the room.

The outside air kit I installed also goes a long way preventing cold outside air from being sucked into the back bedrooms through the walls and windows. OAK installs have their own air dynamics.

 

[begreen]

Just curious. Trying to figure out the best way to circulate the heat located on one end of the house in the family room.

I've got a ceiling fan and have tried using that. My wood stove has a blower and that's running. Also have one of those heat-powered fans placed on top of the stove. I've tried to crack a window open in the family room. I've also tried small portable fans placed in the hallway and pointed towards the room with stove -- yet, a majority of the heat is stuck in the family room...

What's your set-up and do share any tips/tricks!

Each house is different. When we did some major remodeling I relocated the stove to a more central spot in our open floorplan and now the heat distributes itself pretty nicely. I only used the blower when I want a more rapid temp change or when it is very cold and I am pushing the stove to burn hotter.

Can you post a sketch of your floorplan, showing the stove location and openings between rooms?