Wood Stove Installed in my Basement: Best way to get heat upstairs

[MTBSully]

Finally got my woodstove, Vermont Castings Encore, installed in my unfinished basement. Did a quick little test fire last night and the chimney drafts great, no problems so far.

I havent burned it long enough to see how well the heat makes it upstairs, but what are you guys with similar setups doing? Obviously I will be leaving the basement door open. The ceiling is not insulated so I assume some heat will make it though the subfloor as well. Would anyone recommend adding vents to the floor? Maybe a fan or two? Open to any suggestions.

 

[kborndale]

The best way to get heat upstairs is to insulate the walls and floor of your basement. A fan at the top of your stairs blowing cold air down works well.

 

[MR. GLO]

Im still testing...I don't know if it is the best way but I have door open top of basement stairs and fan blowing cold air to the stove from other end of basement...I don't have room for a fan at top of stairs.

Two Bedrooms, dining room, and living room get 72 but the other end of basement isn't getting above 63...

My last option is now a return vent in 1st floor to basement on far end of house.

If I don't shut off the fans before reload sometimes I get smoke smell.

Insulating is not an option especially near the stove room.

 

[stoveliker]

Yes, shut of fans before opening the door of the stove.

If you want hot air to go up,.it works best if you can make cold air go down. It'll be replaced by the hot air.

I would not blow.cold.air from one side of the basement to the stove; it mixes the air, makes that cold side warmer (more heat loss there). Instead, let the warm stove air rise to the ceiling, and it'll convect from there up the stairs. If you mix the air in the basement, the air at the ceiling of the basement will be less hot, and you'll get less heat upstairs.

 

[MTBSully]

Bump. Any suggestions for putting registers in the floor? I assume one should be directly above the wood stove to allow the heat to come into the 2nd floor.

 

[Dan Freeman]

I have my stove in the kitchen. To facilitate moving more heat up to my second floor, I cut a vent in my kitchen ceiling (doesn't have to be directly over the stove) to my 2nd floor landing and installed a register booter fan with thermostat and variable speed. Don't worry about noise of the fan; not that bad at all. I only hear it if I am standing on the 2nd floor landing.

They make several sizes and models.
Amazon product ASIN B07T929DXL

 

[DuaeGuttae]

Bump. Any suggestions for putting registers in the floor? I assume one should be directly above the wood stove to allow the heat to come into the 2nd floor.

I would actually recommend not putting one directly over the stove in case of foreign objects falling (or being dropped by children) through the vent onto the stove surface.

My husband and I used to heat a raised ranch home from the finished basement with a somewhat open stairwell to the main living area. We at first bought our insert to deal with the problem of a cold basement, and it was undersized for our entire home. It did so well, however, that we switched our goals to whole house heating most of the time. (We had a gas furnace that could pick up the slack when necessary, and we were fine with that.)j

After a couple of years we did decide to cut three vents in our floors. Two were near the stove but not directly over. They were beside a beam that tended to trap hot air at the basement ceiling so that it couldn’t get over to the stairs. Putting the vents there allowed heat to rise from where it was trapped, and upstairs the vents were against a wall outside a doorway, and it was not where anyone was likely to step directly. Our third vent functioned more as a cold air return and was located on an outside wall as far from the stove in the basement as we could manage. We occasionally put a doorway fan in that vent to blow cold air down. It worked in our setup, but we had spent a lot of time measuring temperatures upstairs and downstairs and experimenting with airflow before committing to cutting into our floors upstairs.

Your stove is so new that I wouldn’t even think of cutting holes in your floor until you’ve taken other steps first (especially insulating the walls and/or basement floor). The fact that your ceiling is not insulated should give your toasty floors above, and that will be very nice. We loved that about our old stove. (It doesn’t work in our new home sadly.)

 

[Woodsplitter67]

Bump. Any suggestions for putting registers in the floor? I assume one should be directly above the wood stove to allow the heat to come into the 2nd floor.

What I think your looking for is a gravity heat set up .. like before forced air. I grew up in a house that was set up for this and my brother has an older farm house thats set up for it. You will need an opening in the floor front the first floor to the basement the stairs to the basement is normally the cold air return. Its best to have the vent in the floor near the stove and the floor vent in my brother's home is at least 2x2.. maybe 2.5x2.5.. heating like this works well if set up correctly. You will need a decorative grate for the floor. Doing some basic insulation down in the basement is a great idea as you don't want the heat to be absorbed by the walls ect..

 

[Mtea]

@MTBSully how is the basement stove working out for you? We have a similar situation and I’m curious if it’s worth the install

 

[marty319]

2 45s instead of that 90 would work better as well

 

[kennyp2339]

Basement heater myself, biggest thing is providing a pathway for cold air to sink back down into the basement, doing that warm will fill the void, this works well for me most of the time but I did buy a 4x10" floor register, a boot that goes to 6" round and a 80cfm duct fan, Thats mounted in the ceiling chase almost above the stove, I will turn the fan on occasionally to boost the hot air into the kitchen dinning room area upstairs, work pretty well, you'll feel luke warm heat coming out of the register.
FYI I live in a raised ranch, the stove is in the basement, non-insulated block wall, the upstairs is about 1200sqft sorta open floor plan, basement area is about 500 -600 sqft. I able to keep the upstairs livingroom about 70deg when its about 10deg outside, obviously the basement is much warmer.

 

[MR. GLO]

Basement heater myself, biggest thing is providing a pathway for cold air to sink back down into the basement, doing that warm will fill the void, this works well for me most of the time but I did buy a 4x10" floor register, a boot that goes to 6" round and a 80cfm duct fan, Thats mounted in the ceiling chase almost above the stove, I will turn the fan on occasionally to boost the hot air into the kitchen dinning room area upstairs, work pretty well, you'll feel luke warm heat coming out of the register.
FYI I live in a raised ranch, the stove is in the basement, non-insulated block wall, the upstairs is about 1200sqft sorta open floor plan, basement area is about 500 -600 sqft. I able to keep the upstairs livingroom about 70deg when its about 10deg outside, obviously the basement is much warmer.

Have you ever left the fan on during a reload or get any smoke out of stove upstairs?

 

[stoveliker]

I have my fan reversed, so it would only help against smoke (and moving cold air rather than warm air): sucking air from the floor of the living room and (via a duct) deposit it on the floor of the basement. Warm air then rises through the stairs.

 

[kennyp2339]

Have you ever left the fan on during a reload or get any smoke out of stove upstairs?

no smoke

 

[Jigsaw]

Following this thread for the great ideas!

 

[Mtea]

For those with block walls and concrete floors... any issues with cracking from the heat?

 

[Woodsplitter67]

that is not going to happen.. your heating air.. not the walls and floor.. will it absorb the heat.. yes.. You'll louse BTUs for sure.. but your not going to get it so warm that your going to crack it..

 

[Sono]

You could get a "in duct fan" and run that near the stove to a small opening in your floor to push hot air to wherever you want it to go. A buddy mounted one on the ceiling by the stove since hot air rises, ran the flex duct ( all metal dryer vent ) to a register boot he installed in the floor in a great room, central to the house, the upstairs ceiling fan did the rest. He used the wood stove in the basement to heat his entire house, furnace only ran when they werent home to watch the wood stove. Always comfortable at their house when I went there.

 

[stoveliker]

Be careful with fans thru floors; you not only provide a path for air, also for fire, smoke, and CO. Check your local code about floor penetrations; need to add a fire damper?

I have a register in the living room floor, then a metal boot, then a fire damper, then a flex duct down to the basement floor and an inline duct fan there. Sucks the coldest air from my living room and deposits that on the basement floor. The hot air at the basement ceiling then goes up the stairs to the living floor. I have smoke and CO detectors "on the way" (of warm air) from the stove towards the stairs. So I'm not sucking all CO or smoke up near the stove before it might reach a detector. Instead I push it along detectors to the stairs.

 

[BigJ273]

Why didn’t u put the stove upstairs?