My experiment with wood burning and trying to get heat to the main level from the basement stove room (Moved from thread "Took some rough measurments") Took some rough measurments | Firewood Hoarders Club First year when I put the wood stove in, the basement would get to about 75 degrees but no heat would go upstairs. My wood stove is in the basement in the area where the steps are. So I sectioned off this area so that the stove would only heat a 16'x16' portion of the basement. I used furring strips and foil backed foam board insulation for the dividing wall and continued the insulation around the foundation walls. (except for directly behind the stove) Then the stove room easily gets up into the nineties. I put a pedestal fan at the bottom of the steps to move air up and opened the returns for the furnace duct into the stove room and this worked ok the first 2 years. I put cardboard up both sides of the steps to force the air upstairs. This year I bought the large floor fan and drilled holes in the stand and screwed it to the floor joists right at the bottom of the steps. You can feel the air blowing up the steps, down a short hallway that is central to all the rooms on the main level, and into the bathroom that is in the back of the house. A look down the steps from the hallway above I also put a small inline duct fan in the return from the hallway that returns air into the stove room Now I can have a 650* SST and the 16x16 stove room stays about 75 degrees Tells me that the heat is all going upstairs. I don't like to be hot, so when my whole first floor is 69* I'm happy I still let the furnace turned on and set at 68* and it will kick on when its in the teens and single digits or when its windy. Last three years I have used less than one tank of heating oil. But I do not light a fire till the week of Thanksgiving. I think I could cut it down to half a tank or less if I would start burning in October. On a typical year before the wood stove I would use 3.5 tanks
I believe the reason you weren't initially getting heat up stairs is called a "cold air blanket" in basic terms. You have a Cape home, so using your duct work as a CAR is great. I would build a dedicated CAR from the upper most rooms all the way back down to within 6-8, maybe even 12" off the basement floor. Heated air will easily migrate up the stairwells, and once it reaches the second story it will "push" the cooler air down this dedicated chase/duct, completing the natural convection. It would be great for you to not have to pay the PC to circulate your wood fire heated air, yes? I do salute your effort to get the job done tho TurboDiesel I love the ingenuity
Full basement is about 900 sq ft, same as main level. So now I'm heating the 16x16 stove room = 250 +/- + the 900 sf main level. Total 1150 This is a cape cod style house and I keep the doors and vents shut to the 2nd floor. It is poorly insulated.
I have all the returns from the hall and living room floor vents opened into the basement and the cold air flows down very well. Heat goes right up the steps. Aided by the fan of coarse. The fan is pretty large. (and a bit noisy.)
The uninsulated block basement is 3 sides under ground and one side walk out. It usually stayed about 60* down there. The wood stove brought it up to about 70 or so. But we don't use the basement, so the experiments started right away trying to get the heat upstairs
1/3 of my home is cement block, its the coldest part of the house. Nice job on moving the warm air around! Also, I bought a "can fan" from Amazon to replace the exhaust vent on our very cool but very old Jenn Air cook top and it works great if that gives you any more options.
Our basement basically mimics yours, TD.... And like sections of your home, so ours is under insulated too.... We let gravity pull that denser air down and it works very well for us. There's plenty of dense air in the basement- especially when I'm down there "tinkering"
Resourceful ideas! It's all about the results and it's sounds like you have the results you're after.
Thanks, schlot It is a work in progress, the big fan was the best improvement so far, I would like to get all my ideas worked out before any remodeling starts so I can figure everything in that I will need later
