Wood Stove in Second (Main) Floor Living Room?

[ITL]

Hi all! New member here looking for some guidance. I am currently building a ~1,600 sqft house and would like to put a wood stove in it (Jotul or HearthStone).

The house is built into a hillside so the main living area - living room, kitchen, master bedroom - are located on the second/upper floor. When you enter the home through the front door you are already on the second/upper floor. The kitchen and living room are open floor plan. I am wondering if it would be silly to put the wood stove on the second/upper (main) floor since conventional wisdom says to put it on the first/lower floor so the heat rises up.

Downstairs are two bedrooms (for my young kids) with a family room between them. I could put the wood stove in the family room but there is more floor space upstairs in the living room for it. Downstairs in the family room it would take up a decent corner of the room. Aesthetically it probably makes more sense upstairs, but functionally it probably makes more sense downstairs.

I should also add that our house will also have a traditional duct heat system so we are not relying solely on the wood stove, however I would love to offset heating costs as much as possible. We live on acreage and have plenty of wood.

So does putting a wood stove on the second (main) floor make any sense, or bad idea? Would the downstairs end up being cold all the time? Thanks for the help!

 

[KennyK]

Hi all! New member here looking for some guidance. I am currently building a ~1,600 sqft house and would like to put a wood stove in it (Jotul or HearthStone).

The house is built into a hillside so the main living area - living room, kitchen, master bedroom - are located on the second/upper floor. When you enter the home through the front door you are already on the second/upper floor. The kitchen and living room are open floor plan. I am wondering if it would be silly to put the wood stove on the second/upper (main) floor since conventional wisdom says to put it on the first/lower floor so the heat rises up.

Downstairs are two bedrooms (for my young kids) with a family room between them. I could put the wood stove in the family room but there is more floor space upstairs in the living room for it. Downstairs in the family room it would take up a decent corner of the room. Aesthetically it probably makes more sense upstairs, but functionally it probably makes more sense downstairs.

I should also add that our house will also have a traditional duct heat system so we are not relying solely on the wood stove, however I would love to offset heating costs as much as possible. We live on acreage and have plenty of wood.

So does putting a wood stove on the second (main) floor make any sense, or bad idea? Would the downstairs end up being cold all the time? Thanks for the help!

Heat from a stove upstairs won’t go downstairs. If you can rely on heat from your duct system downstairs, that’s fine. Ideally, you’ll have two zones so you can only use the downstairs zone when heating with wood upstairs.

If you can store your wood somewhere where you are entering it into your house in the second level, seems like a decent idea to have the stove there (as long as you don’t plan on heating the lower level with the stove). A bunch of my wood is stored by my basement, which is half above ground and I have to carry it upstairs to the first floor to the stove, which I’m not that crazy about. For me, I don’t have much of an option as I don’t have much storage elsewhere but sounds like you might not have that issue. Just something to think about.

 

[Mike.O]

My house is a large raised ranch, so very similar layout as what you described. It's a 1500 SF footprint, with approx 2200 living space. Downstairs we have a very large family room (600 SF) and my workshop, which is closed off and not heated, and upstairs a living room, kitchen, dining room and 3 bedrooms. We have a wide oped stairway and a fireplace in both, downstairs family room and upstairs living room.

Two years ago we put a smaller wood stove downstairs, thinking along the same lines, that heat rises. It didn't perform as we hoped. We couldn't get the downstairs above 68* and saw no heat gains upstairs. It would help upstairs maintain and the furnace would kick on much less, but we could get no temperature increase upstairs. Its just asking A LOT of one stove.

This year we added a second stove upstairs and what a difference. We heat the whole upstairs with ease. We spend 98% of our time up here, so it only makes sense to put the stove where we spend most of our time. We burn upstairs 24/7 and still have the downstairs and burn that on weekends and occasional nights. With both going, its awesome!

A little long winded, but I figured I would share because I was in your predicament a few years ago and made the wrong choice. Now I'm very happy and love the flexibility of having 2 stoves, but if i could only chose one, it would be hands down one upstairs.

 

[bholler]

I heat a 2200 sqft of living space in a 1970s ranch with wood only and i do it from the walk out basement. If i had it upstairs the basement living space would be unuseable all winter. To me that is unacceptable.

 

[kennyp2339]

You put the stove in the room or near the room you and your family are in the most, unless you have smaller place.
Thankfully I have a smaller place and I can heat the whole house (like @bholler ) from the basement level and still keep the upper far bedrooms in the upper 60's / low 70's on the coldest of days.

 

[jotul8e2]

Do I understand the total footprint to be 800 sq ft? That is, 1600 sq. ft. combined for both levels? Or is it 1600 sq. ft. per level?

 

[weatherguy]

I have a similar house to what your building, I put it in the lower level family room and just experimented different ways to move it around. Works beautifully.

 

[Woody Stover]

We spend 98% of our time up here, so it only makes sense to put the stove where we spend most of our time.

That's my question, do the kids hang out in their rooms, or does everyone spend most of their time upstairs? And will it be a zoned heating system? That would allow for one stove, with the backup heat handling the other zone.

 

[Rockey]

Our house is also similar to yours. Enter on the second level, open concept with great room, master bedroom, kitchen and dining room. 1st level hss the girls bedrooms on one side and the boys bedrooms on the other with family room in between. We heat with a large insert on the 1st floor and the heat distributes well upstairs. I couldnt imagine trying to heat on the 2nd floor only as it would be too cold for the bedrooms down below, plus we entertain company on the 1st floor. If you have a large stairwell then heat will find its way upstairs well.

 

[xman23]

If you plan on using it a lot, put it where you will be. If it's a open floor plan, that's the room. Make sure it's viewable. It needs a lot of feeding, so climbing stairs to see how it's doing and reloading sucks. Have access to the outside covered wood pile close to the stove. Many let there stove burn out over the night. Besides a bit cooler for sleeping.

 

[KennyK]

It needs a lot of feeding, so climbing stairs to see how it's doing and reloading sucks.

I guess it’s relative, but depending on the stove you have it could need a great deal more or less feeding and checking on. Some cat stoves, like Woodstocks, can go quite a long time on a single load while producing good heat for ~1600 square feet. Fireview and Absolute Steel could give you 12 to 14 hours on a single full load with little to no tending to once they get going.

 

[begreen]

Yes, warm air rises. If building new, one option to consider a good quality EPA fireplace instead of a wood stove. Some have the options of ducting the heat output which would help blow some heat downstairs.

 

[ITL]

Heat from a stove upstairs won’t go downstairs. If you can rely on heat from your duct system downstairs, that’s fine. Ideally, you’ll have two zones so you can only use the downstairs zone when heating with wood upstairs.

If you can store your wood somewhere where you are entering it into your house in the second level, seems like a decent idea to have the stove there (as long as you don’t plan on heating the lower level with the stove). A bunch of my wood is stored by my basement, which is half above ground and I have to carry it upstairs to the first floor to the stove, which I’m not that crazy about. For me, I don’t have much of an option as I don’t have much storage elsewhere but sounds like you might not have that issue. Just something to think about.

Do I understand the total footprint to be 800 sq ft? That is, 1600 sq. ft. combined for both levels? Or is it 1600 sq. ft. per level?

You are correct, the footprint of the house is roughly 800 sqft. The upstairs is roughly 850 sqft and the downstairs is roughly 750 sqft.

 

[ITL]

Heat from a stove upstairs won’t go downstairs. If you can rely on heat from your duct system downstairs, that’s fine. Ideally, you’ll have two zones so you can only use the downstairs zone when heating with wood upstairs.

If you can store your wood somewhere where you are entering it into your house in the second level, seems like a decent idea to have the stove there (as long as you don’t plan on heating the lower level with the stove). A bunch of my wood is stored by my basement, which is half above ground and I have to carry it upstairs to the first floor to the stove, which I’m not that crazy about. For me, I don’t have much of an option as I don’t have much storage elsewhere but sounds like you might not have that issue. Just something to think about.

Yeah my largest concern with having the stove upstairs is that the downstairs will be cold, rendering the stove somewhat pointless, although I hadn't thought of using one zone to heat downstairs while the wood stove is upstairs. (First time building a house.) Since my front door is on the second level (with a front porch) I can easily store wood there, which would be fairly close to the stove, rather than carrying it up a flight of stairs. Thanks for the help!

 

[ITL]

My house is a large raised ranch, so very similar layout as what you described. It's a 1500 SF footprint, with approx 2200 living space. Downstairs we have a very large family room (600 SF) and my workshop, which is closed off and not heated, and upstairs a living room, kitchen, dining room and 3 bedrooms. We have a wide oped stairway and a fireplace in both, downstairs family room and upstairs living room.

Two years ago we put a smaller wood stove downstairs, thinking along the same lines, that heat rises. It didn't perform as we hoped. We couldn't get the downstairs above 68* and saw no heat gains upstairs. It would help upstairs maintain and the furnace would kick on much less, but we could get no temperature increase upstairs. Its just asking A LOT of one stove.

This year we added a second stove upstairs and what a difference. We heat the whole upstairs with ease. We spend 98% of our time up here, so it only makes sense to put the stove where we spend most of our time. We burn upstairs 24/7 and still have the downstairs and burn that on weekends and occasional nights. With both going, its awesome!

A little long winded, but I figured I would share because I was in your predicament a few years ago and made the wrong choice. Now I'm very happy and love the flexibility of having 2 stoves, but if i could only chose one, it would be hands down one upstairs.

Thanks for the suggestions! Definitely gave me some things to think about. Since my house and lower level are substantially smaller than yours, and my upper level is an open floor plan, I wonder if that would make the difference with the effectiveness of the stove. I was planning to get a stove that is advertised as being able to handle up to 1,800 sqft. Since my upper level has high ceilings that seems about right.

 

[ITL]

I heat a 2200 sqft of living space in a 1970s ranch with wood only and i do it from the walk out basement. If i had it upstairs the basement living space would be unuseable all winter. To me that is unacceptable.

Thanks for sharing! I also have a walk-out basement and the downstairs being cold is my primary concern. Nice to know you can heat your entire house with just the wood stove from the bottom floor.

 

[ITL]

You put the stove in the room or near the room you and your family are in the most, unless you have smaller place.
Thankfully I have a smaller place and I can heat the whole house (like @bholler ) from the basement level and still keep the upper far bedrooms in the upper 60's / low 70's on the coldest of days.

We definitely have a smaller house - 850 sqft upper level and 750 sqft lower level.

 

[ITL]

I have a similar house to what your building, I put it in the lower level family room and just experimented different ways to move it around. Works beautifully.

When you say "move it around" are you referring to moving the warm air around the house? Moving the stove around seems impossible since it has to connect to the stove pipe.

 

[ITL]

That's my question, do the kids hang out in their rooms, or does everyone spend most of their time upstairs? And will it be a zoned heating system? That would allow for one stove, with the backup heat handling the other zone.

House is still being built so hard to know where the family will gravitate towards. My guess is upstairs, but who knows? Kids are still very young so right now they hang out wherever we are. HVAC hasn't been installed yet so it certainly could be a zoned system. I was also thinking if the stove was on the second floor there could be a return vent near the stove to "catch" the warm air and then circulate it around the house by running the fan of the HVAC system. In my head this seems like it would make sense but not sure how well it works in practice.

 

[begreen]

I was also thinking if the stove was on the second floor there could be a return vent near the stove to "catch" the warm air and then circulate it around the house by running the fan of the HVAC system.

By code, the return needs to be at least 10 ft away from the stove.

 

[ITL]

By code, the return needs to be at least 10 ft away from the stove.

Good to know! Thanks for pointing that out. 10-feet away should be no problem.

 

[illini81]

We installed a stove a little over a year ago. I did a lot of worrying over whether we’d install it in the basement or on the first floor. At the end of the day, we decided to go with the prevailing wisdom on hearth.com and install the stove in the area we spend the most of our time.

There are people on hearth.com who have basement installs and successfully heat the whole house that way, but for every one of them, it seems to me that there are 2 or 3 who wanted to do that and it didn’t really work out the way they had hoped.

I am really glad that we installed the stove on the first floor for the reasons others have already mentioned. We spend 80-90% of our time in a combined living room/kitchen/sunroom area that the stove is in. From almost anywhere in the room, I can see the fire, which is helpful as well as enjoyable. Also, we can keep that area of the house whatever temperature we want, no matter how cold it gets outside. I was afraid that once it got really cold, a downstairs stove would help the upstairs, but wouldn’t be sufficient to make it toasty warm. If I was putting in all the work I’m currently putting in to find/split/stack/season wood and I couldn’t make my house toasty warm when I want it toasty warm, I’d be disappointed.

Just one more datapoint. Hope this helps.

 

[begreen]

What will be the insulation levels in the house? An investment in good insulation, glazing and sealing can make a big difference in keeping year round bills lower for space conditioning.

 

[DuaeGuttae]

I personally like Begreen’s suggestion of an EPA fireplace with remote ducting if you really want a wood burner on the main level. I think @saydinli may be doing something like that, so perhaps he can comment further. With that said, I’ll share our experiences with heating a raised ranch from the walkout basement.

Our house was about a 1,300 hundred sq. ft. footprint, but part of the basement was unfinished. There was a big rec. room downstairs which we enjoyed in the summer but found uncomfortably chilly in the winter. The thermostat to the natural gas furnace was upstairs, and we didn’t want to heat the upstairs more than necessary to have it comfortable downstairs. Since we had an existing masonry fireplace down there, we installed a medium-sized non-flush insert to heat down there.

It worked well. That room became everybody’s favorite place in the winter as well as the summer. After a couple of seasons when we had had time to collect more wood, we actually started using wood to heat the entire house full-time. In our case we had an open staircase which helped, though we also used small fans and floor registers to encourage the convective loop. During really cold times we did use the gas furnace to bump up the back bedrooms, but we were heating about 2,500 sq. ft. with an insert that had not originally been intended for that job.

In our case we had good access to wood from the downstairs and really wanted the heat down there. If you want the wood fire upstairs, just make provision for separate heat downstairs in your new construction. It will need it.

 

[begreen]

Yes, a good looking fireplace can be a focal point of the room and flexible ducting with some planning can really help with heat circulation. Some modern EPA fireplaces have almost the same fireboxes as their freestanding equivalents.