Okay so the short question is how do you move heat from your stove around??? Mine is centrally located and I use the ceiling fan...I don't have a blower on my Fisher so I use the ceiling fan. Just have a one story/ranch. I know there is both radiant heat and convection heat that will naturally come off a stove. I have heard some people say put a fan behind the stove and have it blow outwards...some say aim a fan at the stove...??? Of course a lot has to do with room size, door locations, one vs two stories. Personally I thought a blower on the stove was too noisy. And for me I think the ceiling fan does a good job....now with putting on an addition next year I am starting to think ahead a little. I don't really want to add a second stove...well, yeah I do, I just don't want to spend money on another chimney...lol Thanks.!
The best way (imo...) is to not blow very hard; the turbulence from that mixes the air. That's fine in a tall (vaulted ceiling) room where you want to get heat down from the peak. But if you want to get heat in other rooms, you want to create a air circuit. I.e. stratified air flows. The best way to do that is to *slowly* blow the coldest air towards the stove. I.e. have a fan on the floor, running slow. It'll be replaced by air that flows the opposite way along the ceiling. That is the warm air. For moving heat to another floor I do this: I move heat from the basement where the stove is to the rest of the house above it by having one register in the living room, a metal duct between the joists to a side wall of the basement, an elbow, a fire damper, and then flexible duct down to an inline fan mounted on the concrete slab (less vibration in the joists and studs). This fan *sucks*.the coldest air from my living room floor and deposits it on the basement floor That pushes the hottest air along the basement ceiling up the stairs to my living spaces.
If you are trying to move heat to another part of the house (let's say to the other end, bedrooms maybe) put a fan on the floor at the furtherest point away, pointing back toward the stove, running on low...the cold air pushed out (cold air is denser, easier to move) will be replaced by warm air. If your house lends itself to doing this with a short duct/fan then even better...but at the same time many have tried just leaving the furnace blower run constant to move the heat, unfortunately it doesn't seem to work very well for most...the heat just seems to be lost in the (often not well insulated) ductwork. We have a center stairwell cape cod and a fan running on the opposite side of the house circulates the heat pretty well, as long as all the doors remain open.
It took me a while but I learned fast. Yes, blow (softly so as not to create a cool draft for your body) cool air toward the stove room. However, rather than placing said fan at the farthest point, place it at the entrance to that room. Don't place a fan against a wall as that makes the fan work too hard drawing the air. One example might help. Picture the house laid out with a hallway leading to bedrooms or other rooms. Placing the far at the beginning point of the hallway will tend to warm those rooms. Another is that I prefer small fans over big fans. True that big fans more air but you really do not need to move much air; just low speed and low volume. The fan I always used was only about a 3 or 4 inch blade.
Tried it several ways. L-shaped open floor with stove at the “little” end of the L. Good box fan in floor blowing right at stove distributes the warm air best for me. Low during day if it’s cool enough, then to hi with stove fan on when going to bed. Otherwise, that end of the L gets hot enough to make bread rise. Ceiling fan for us didn’t cut it.
Set the fan away from the stove, pointing towards it and blow that cool/colder air to the heat source at floor level. Let the hot air travel from the stove (and up) across the ceiling, where it already is, to replace the air being pushed away by said fan.
On my one story section of my house (1500 sq ft), I put an 8"x16" main duct down the center of the attic. I ran three 6" circular lines off that and suck hot air off the ceiling in the living room and kitchen area where the stove is located. To do this, I mounted a direct drive blower to a 2"x12" board cut down to fit tightly inside the 8x16 duct. This creates a suction on the blower side to suck heat into the ceiling vents and then blows that heat out ceiling vents in each room on the other side of the board/blower. My temp in the back rooms of the house is never more than 1° different than the temp on the kitchen counter. I leave that blower run 24/7. Works phenomenal. My attic duct is very well insulated for minimal heat loss. I believe a person could likely achieve the same results by running the blower on a furnace, but not sure this would be as effective because the cold air return would not be drawing heat from the ceiling, the hottest air in the room. I set this up years ago when I had a wood stove in the living room and used it this way for probably 10 years before removing the stove and installing an outdoor wood boiler. Having just reinstalled the wood stove last year, I just installed the blower again two weeks ago (I had removed that from the duct when I installed the boiler). The difference moving the heat to the other rooms is night and day difference.
When I was running my pellet stove and heating a little over 4k sqft I found two things. One was already stated move the cold air toward the stove Two was I had a thermostat that I was able to program to run the fan on the furnace xx minutes every xx minutes. The floor plan of the house allowed the furnace fan/ return duct to efficiently distribute the warm air thru out the house.
I as well have a stat in the living room which controls the blower in the attic. I have it set as if it was controlling an air conditioner, so, if the fire were to go out and the room temperature dropped below 70°, the blower will shut off so as not to be moving cooler air.
Are you able to explain your cool air return location to help me and others understand how you got your system to work so good? I don't have a furnace myself, but I've discussed this topic numerous times with others.
I have read on multiple forums not to run a furnace blower to circulate heat if your ducts run through a crawlspace or through the attic as the heat loss makes this counter productive. I've not found this to be the case. Seems a bit strange that you would be comfortable losing this much heat by running this configuration burning propane, fuel oil, or natural gas just because it is heated to a higher temperature by the furnace. Heat loss is heat loss! If you're losing heat, insulate!
Many folks have very poorly sealed ducts (I had in my home in TN) in their attic, and indeed loose a lot of heat with their conventional heating. It's less noticeable though than with a wood stove and a return that's located low. Running the central heat, maybe they loose a few degrees from 90-ish air. Running a wood stove and having a return low and not near the wood stove, they are pumping 70ish degree air around. Have that loose a few degrees in the attic is noticeable. That is how my home in TN was set up. Indeed it depends a lot on where the return is. But losses are losses indeed. Kudos for having a well sealed and insulated duct system (a clear need being in MI..!)
Like Dennis and Brendy mentioned (Dennis told me here years ago), fan blowing from bedroom on low towards the heated living room made a huge difference for me. Our only sources of heat are wood stove, pellet stove. My husband doesn't like noise while sleeping, the Vornado fans are super quiet.
Here in central Michigan, we prepare for the cold like those in the south deal with the summer heat. It's currently 15° outside, and unfortunately winter hasn't even hit hard yet. Thank God for the Blaze King 40! It just keeps pumping out the heat!
The house was a V shape, the entire center of the house was a 2 story atrium, the cold air return was on the lower level so all the cold air went down and was circulated from there.
