Does heating the basement even make sense?

This is one of many in the flood of heat-related questions I'm asking about the new house we're moving to. The house a large ranch with a full basement. In the basement, there's an existing (ancient) wood stove that's venting into the masonry chimney and out to the roof. I'm not wild about the setup and I'm not wild about carrying firewood down the extremely steep steps a couple of times a day. However, given where the basement is, I'm pretty dammed sure I could devise a way to pour pellets into a funnel in the garage and have them end up in a bucket in the basement, kind of like an old coal chute. Since it would be in the basement, the constant blower noise also wouldn't be a problem.

But does it even make sense to heat the basement? It's not intended to be a living space. The only thing I think will be down there will be my reloading bench and a darkroom. I am wondering, though, if at least some of the heat would conduct through the floor and make the floors in the whole house warmer (which my wife would LOVE). The furnaces and hot water tank are also down there, so I'm wondering if keeping the air temperature in there a little higher would give the other appliances a boost as well.

 

Short answer is, don't waste your money on heating the basement unless the walls have some kind of thermal break (insulation) on them to the ground. The walls will act as a heat sink, and then the ground will "suck" the heat out of the walls. I'd definitely keep the basement at a decent (50 - 60F maybe) temperature but I wouldn't keep it at the same temperature as the house.

 

I know our floors were sooo cold when we just had the fuel oil furnace (didn't really heat the basement per say) but with the radiant heat off the wood furnace keeping the basement ~65*, upstairs the floors feel much nicer!

 

So I now have a ranch I heat with NG, I keep a NG ventless wall heater running in the basement, costs pennies a day. The basement is now comfortable, and the floors are warm on the first floor and the main furnace barely runs as the heat rises and keeps everything heated evenly.
I have always found keeping a low heat source constant is a lot more comfortable, everything in the house gets to the same temperature. Right now it is 8 degrees out and the house is at 68 with only the basement heater running

 

My grandparents lived in two different ranch houses when I was younger, both with full basements, and Grandad heated both almost exclusively with a woodstove in the basement. The heat will indeed radiate up through the floors, and sometimes he would open the door at the top of the stairs (which was in the hall and roughly in the center of both houses) to let the air circulate better. So it does work, in some cases. Virginia is probably generally warmer than Ohio, but we're in the mountains and the winters, especially when I was younger, brought plenty of cold.

Is the basement ceiling insulated, and is the basement open or divided up? Both will impact how well and evenly the heat will spread. Best case is an uninsulated ceiling and an open basement. The heat will rise off the stove, mushroom against the ceiling, and spread considerably, warming the floors and then the upstairs. Not much different than radiant heat in concrete floors.

So, my suggestion would be try a few fires and see, before you go whole hog and develop a pellet chute, etc. It may work better than you think, or you may find it just doesn't work in your house. I think it's definitely worth a trial run, but you'll have to burn a couple days in a row to be able to judge the full effect. As others have already pointed out, there is a lot of thermal mass in block walls and heat sink in the outside ground that has to be overcome at first, so one stove load probably won't tell you much.

I guess you must not have a walk-out door in your basement? That makes it easy to bring a days' worth of wood in with a wheelbarrow, and you can park it within reach of the stove (assuming an unfinished basement, of course).

Good luck!

 

Ever check your CO levels? We used to have ventless gas logs...they'd choke us out after an hour or two (main floor)

 

It really depends on the house dynamics.

When I first moved in this house, Thanksgiving of 2013, the only heat was on the main floor using FHW. The basement was kept warm enough for the pipes not to freeze by the old boiler's residual heat and pilot light, plus a bit off the water heater tank and its pilot light. The basement stayed in the low 50's and the floor of my living area was cold. (note, I tend NOT to wear shoes or slippers - socks at the most). I even insulated the heck out of the basement ceiling, but that was ineffective.

When I put the P61a in the basement and tried to heat the whole house, I also tore down the insulation on the ceiling (except around the perimeter I kept about 2'), and boy howdy, were the floors nice and warm.

When I put in the P43 (main floor), I kept the basement stove at 55-60*. Found I really didn't care for the cold floors, even thought they weren't THAT cold. So now, once the floors start bothering me, I set the basement stove at anywhere from 67-69 once winter sets in. The living area floor is warm enough I don't freeze my tootsies off. Some of that heat also comes up the stairs, so it does take a bit of load off the P43 - and I have to carry less bags of pellets up the stairs.

A couple of years ago I replaced the old boiler and water heater with a combi-boiler (with on demand DHW) that is direct vent. Since there is no pilot light or open flame, it doesn't create the heat like the old boiler did. I also don't use the FHW function, so the pellet stove is effectively the only thing keeping the basement warm.