Idea for a wood stove in an uninsulated/unfinished basement.

Hi all,

Im not sure if this is the right section to post this in so let me know if I should post it elsewhere.

I recently bought a 1400 sqft home with an uninsulated, unfinished basement. Currently there is a wood furnace/oil furnace (with ducts blowing to each room) in the basement hooked up to the chimney. We would like to get rid of these furnaces because the configuration of the furnace exhaust is not to code and is highly susceptible to creosote buildup (exhaust pipe goes 90 degrees from the furnace, then almost horizontal for 5 ft and then has a ~ 60-70 degree elbow to the chimney)

We were thinking of putting a regular wood stove in place and then cutting vents in the floor for the hot air to rise into the house. After reading up on this, it would be useless since most of the heat would be absorbed by the cement walls unless we insulated the whole basement (can’t do this because it’s an older foundation that leaks in some areas and also we can’t afford to insulate the whole basement.)

My idea is this: install a regular fireplace in the basement and hook it up to the existing chimney. Then build a 10ftx10ft (or whatever minimum size that would still have safe distances from the fireplace) insulated room around the chimney/new fireplace and install a vent in the ceiling (upstairs floor) for the hot air to rise into. I would of course need a grate/vent somewhere on the walls near the floor in that fireplace room for passive air to enter.

Does this make sense? Any thoughts or inputs?

Extra info: This is not our primary source of heat. We have ductless heat pumps that heat the house and we would like a wood stove for extra cold days and because I just like to cut and burn wood. This does not need to heat the whole house, just the living area above where the furnaces are now.

 

I put a woodstove in our "un-insulated" basement and did some work on the existing ducts and use the furnace blower to heat our whole house and it's almost twice that square footage. Cheap bubble insluation with the relective coating on one side is great stuff. Main thing I figured out was to reflect heat away from places you don't want it and where ever you do want heat, paint it black to absorb the radiant heat. A temperature gun (cheapo works fine, it's not a laboratory) and incense sticks are great tools for figuring out heat / air flow.

My journey a few winters ago to greatly improve the heat output from our woodstove: Relflecting the heat back into the house

Hope this helps. Keep us posted.

 

Put your new stove on the main floor. Problem solvedIf possible?

 

Think more about using your existing ductwork system for heat distribution as opposed to cutting holes into the floor.

 

Any vent holes cut into the floor would need to have a fire damper installed...and a hole in the floor doesn't always do as good of a job distributing heat as you might think...and if it doesn't work, then you are stuck with a hole that allows noise to transfer readily.

 

I have a smoke dragon in my unfinished basement. I originally thought I was going to augment my forced hot air oil furnace. Turns out when I remove the blower access door from the furnace and let the basement door open, I can run the furnace fan and heat the whole house. Circulation pulls the air from across the basement "roof" where the hot air rises, and pulls it into the duct work. Couldn't have planned it any better. My basement is also unfinished, and yes the stove warms the foundation block. We have about 1700-1800 sq.ft. of finished living space and go through about 5-6 cords/season on average.

 

I started out heating from the basement with a Ashley Wondercoal...that didn't work out very well for me at all...basement was hot, upstairs was NOT!
I think it depends a lot on the layout of the individual house...and what the basement walls are made off...and even how the foundation was backfilled...if it has clay right against the outside of the block, that will absorb heat from inside more readily than gravel, or sandy soil...best case would be that the walls have insulation panels on the outside.

 

Mr. Green from the red green show but I could be mistaken.

 

New piece of artwork titled...…. (ready for this?)

"Piles on Piles"

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Next piece of work will be instruction on how to remove splinters from delicate locations.

 

That's why they call it a "Woody"

 

I wish! the space upstairs is minimal so we wont have room for a wood stove upstairs without making the layout awkward. Its either wood stove in the basement, or no wood stove at all :'( (EDIT: or keep the existing forced air furnace and just re arrange it so the chimney is safe)

There is actually already a hole in the floor right above where the wood stove would. Currently its for the air intake for the blower system on our furnace so I was just going to leave that.

That's an interesting idea actually. We did think about just keeping the wood furnace and just re-positioning it so the chimney is more direct with less bends. But then I found out that the blower is part of the oil furnace(?) so we'd have to keep the oil furnace as well for the blower. I'll have to do more research as to whether we can keep the wood furnace and blower without having to keep the oil furnace.

 

How will you vent the new wood burner ? In my neck of the woods you can't hook up wood and oil to the same chimney.Insulating the room is a plus.

 

Right now the forced air wood furnace and oil furnace are vented in the same chimney. Whether that is allowed or not I don't know for sure (There are lots of things in the house that were not done up to code) but I have had a few chimney sweep/Wood stove/fireplace installers in the house to look at the set up and give me some feedback and none have mentioned any problems with it.

 

It's weird they didn't say anything.To be safe have the fire department answer the question.Don't have them come out in case they say shut it down too dangerous.Just call and ask them what they think.If it's cool with them then you'll know for sure.

 

That was done commonly back in the day...and is not actually "illegal"...just not recommended by the manufacturers these days.
It looks to me like just swapping the pipes would help a lot...put the wood furnace pipe where the oil goes now...since the oil burner is power vented I would have less qualms about making it "round the corner"...and I think wood is supposed to enter the chimney "above" another fuel anyways...unless I have that backwards, I need to doublecheck on that one.
The issue with doing it now, is that all heating appliances have gotten more efficient, so the chimney doesn't get/stay as warm...and almost nothing has standing pilot lights anymore...so the chimney can cool when nothing is running, to the point of no, or even worse, "reverse" draft...then when there are multiple appliances connected to the chimney, that is just a convenient "hole" for fumes and/or CO to get into the house...so when something kicks on, chimney has no/reverse draft, bad deal.
But that setup you have was really common (wood and oil furnace to the same chimney) and usually worked fine.
I would still try to swap those pipes though...

 

Above posted edited heavily, after the original posting...just FYI.

Another option to look into is the possibility that you could run 2 flues in that one chimney...that is the plan on my chimney.
I have a 13" x 13" chimney with no flue liner, so I had to put an insulated liner in it...at the time I had a wood/oil combo furnace so I bought what I thought was the "best" liner for it...a 2 ply 316TI insulated liner...big $$. (turns out those are not great liners)
Then I bought a new wood furnace, and installed a standard oil furnace as my "backup"...I ran out of time (fall turned to winter) and I didn't get the liner situation remedied, so I decided to try running both into the one 8" liner...my wood furnace is 6", the oil is 5", so the total area of those two pipes is about the same as my 8" liner. (the 6" pipe is ~28 sq. in, the 5" pipe is ~20 sq. in, the 8" round liner is ~50 sq. in...so, 28 + 20 = 48...very close to my 50 sq. in liner)
And I have a manometer hooked to my chimney too...always keep and eye on that and there has been no issues at all.
But anyways, back to my point...an insulated 6" liner, and an insulated 5" liner will both fit up through my 13" square brick chimney (diagonally) Separate liners is really the best way to run two fuel types into one chimney.

 

An oil furnace typical as the one shown in the pic usually has an induced draft. A induced draft should not be confused with a power vent which is also available for the same type of furnace.

What is induced draft furnace?
Induced-draft. An induced-draft burner uses a blower to pull air into the burner, and through the combustion chamber and heat exchanger. The fan then pushes the flue gases out through the vent. This creates negative pressure in the furnace, and may create positive or negative pressure in the venting systems


Power Vented Furnaces. ... In a “natural draft” furnace a chimney creates suction and pulls hot gases through the furnace's heat exchanger. However, if you don't have a chimney you need to use a fan to pull those gases through the furnace and out of the building — such a furnace is called a “power vented” furnace.

The insurance companies now a days typically want only one appliance hooked up to chimney. water heater or furnace or wood stove) although for many many decades, vent systems such as the one pictured have worked just fine.

Hope that code gestapo doesn't show up and twist this thread around into a pizzing match.

 

Would be nice to have some more pics of the two furnaces and how they tie into the ductwork.