Basement Woodstock Ideal Steel and insulation?

We had an insulation contractor out today and he told me it's not possible to insulate a basement once it's finished, unless it's spray foamed. Spray foam is expensive!

Here's what we have. 1100 sq ft ranch, 1100 sq ft basement that is half finished. The other half is bare, poured concrete walls. We are having the walls dense pack insulated upstairs on the main level. We are also having the house air sealed and the attic insulated. My plan was to install the IS at the end of the house, in the finished side of the basement, about 15' away from an open staircase that's centered in the house. I know there's a lot of controversy centered around basement installs. With the walls being framed out with 2x4's, set away from the concrete about 4" and completely dry walled, will I stand a chance of getting adequate heat? I'm concerned the basement will suck up a lot of it, but the walls should hold some in I'd think. Or at least help funnel it upstairs.

The house is a rectangle, about 24x46 I think. The room in the picture shows the end wall where the stove would go. The chimney would exit left of the window. This room is the length of the house, but half the width. Don't mind the mess, I just painted and we moved in 10 days ago. It's a work in progress. What are your thoughts?

We do have a brick fireplace upstairs but that will leave us with a very cold basement.

 

Throw it in there and don't look back. You can tweak things as you go.

 

fortydegnorth, are you sure walls are NOT insulated? they did one of 2 things strapped walls meaning put the 4 of 2 by 4 on wall and put SR up or or built a regular wall in front of concrete and rocked it. if built a wall he's a liar.. cut hole in SR and blow in cavity. most people that put up rock put vapor barrier and insulate because on concrete wicks moisture. If you have been there a while throw your Moisture meter in sheet rock if it's dry it's insulated .. moreover you can put blue board on outside also..

 

If the staircase is open, heat will absolutely RACE up the top of the staircase, and cold air will race down the steps of the staircase. Also, a lot of the heat produced by the stove will 'leak' through the ceiling above and into the house through the floors, assuming you do not have insulation in the cellar ceiling.

You will lose some heat overall to the walls of the cellar but I do not believe all that much, and overall I think a woodstove will perform well in a sealed basement (no garage doors, no large air leaks, etc.).

Another problem with most cellar wood stove installs is carrying the wood down the stairs and the ashes up the stairs. Not insurmountable but a fair amount of extra work IMO. Then again, some say wood is supposed to heat you several times: cutting, splitting, stacking, carrying, burning and cleaning out the stove.

Brian

 

BDF, has good points as always! for the price the contractor gave you for insulation consider a set of bulk head doors! and some tile for when you trash that carpet.. how do I know that

 

When you go into the unfinished side of the basement we have a concrete staircase that goes into the garage. It has an exterior door at the staircase. The wood will come down the unfinished side. I'll have to cross about 12' of carpet to feed the stove. That's what rugs and runners are for.

 

I have pretty good access to see behind all 3 sides of exterior finished walls. Behind the upstairs chimney wall. They framed it out pretty far. The second picture is a water shutoff on the front wall of the house. I can see down the wall and feel the adjacent wall cavities. No insulation. The house was a flip so it's not a surprise they'd cut corners when they could.

 

When I was thinking about finishing the basement I was told to build the walls 2' away from the basement wall. This was mainly so termite inspector could get back there to inspect. It eats up all the space so I just never did do it. Its a good thing I didn't because the cable company bored a hole through a tile for my basement drain and i ended up with 3' of water down there. That would have been a mess... It's nice to have that space but I can come at a cost.

 

fortydegnorth, is there any 2 inch blue board on outside of basement? with the walls I see you could do blown cell use in cavities with a little sheet rock work but my answer would be throw stove in there.. A Ideal steel would heat it anyway... trust me...

 

Something else to keep in mind. Yes the heat will rush up there and the cold air will fall. The problem is when you open the stove door the smoke will want to do the same thing. You begin to develop a strong convective flow to the upstairs. That is good for getting the heat up there. However, when you open the door that convective flow is going to fight your chimney because of negative pressure in the basement. I have a similar setup and I've had to extend my chimney and some other measures to keep the upstairs from pulling the smoke out of the stove. There is a big difference in how a stove acts in negative vs the neutral plane of the house.

My upstairs stove is on a masonry flue short 15ft outside chimney and I get no smoke opening the door. The Ideal Steel in the basement is on a 25 ft liner with 3 ft extension and I barely get a whiff of smoke now if I'm not careful. 25 ft didn't cut it.

Just something to keep in mind. What is your chimney plans and height?

 

Well, that is certainly better than coming down the finished stairs. Still going to take a fair amount of work to carry 150# of wood down stairs and across to the stove each day. This assumes you will be using the woodstove for most or all of your heating needs; if using it more casually, that problem will fall off but then too will the problem of the heat leaking into the cellar walls.

Again, I am not saying it cannot be done or even that it is a bad idea, just that the work required will be substantially greater with distance and height differences between the wood supply and the place it is burned. Just another consideration I thought might be useful to you given the questions you asked about a basement stove install. And of course you could build or buy some type of firewood rack with wheels on it and roll it into place near the stove; this will both reduce the effort to use the stove and provide a place for at least one day's wood storage inside.

Brian

 

Well, you know how I deal with smoke spillage and it totally eliminates the problem. A draft inducer is about $150 and the stove will not spill any smoke into the room anymore- problem solved rather than reduced.

Brian

 

I'm not sure how tall the chimney will end up being. Off the top of my head I'd say around 21-23'. It will be Class A up the outside of the house, but it will have the 90 degree bend to get out of the basement and to the T before it goes up another ~16-18'

 

Something like this would ease the pain of hauling firewood, and should help reduce any mess.
http://www.amazon.com/Northern-Indu...qid=1457443107&sr=8-26&keywords=firewood+cart

 

My new chimney is somewhere in that range, a DuraVent 6" (ID) insulated chimney, also with one 'T' connection and one 90 degree elbow (so two 90 degree turns in the smoke). It works well but is not enough to prevent smoke spillage into the room even being careful to open the door slowly, closing the draft first, using the smoke flap and being uber- careful. That said, it actually provides a bit too much draft when the stove is running and I had to put a damper in the smoke pipe above the stove. So the moral of the story is not enough draft (flow really) to open the door and too much draft to run the stove efficiently.

Brian

 

On my last insert I always opened the air all the way before opening the door. Instead of closing the air, maybe try opening it and see if it helps. If I get a little smoke spillage I'll be okay with it. Not the perfect scenario but it will be fine. Now, my wife may not agree!

 

Yes! Open the air first to increase temperature and draft.

 

Well I solved the problem 100% by installing a draft inducer in the smoke pipe. Basically it is just a fan and when running, it actually forces a large volume of air from the stove to the chimney above. Once I turn the fan (draft inducer) on, I can fully open the door on an Ideal Steel and there is no smoke spillage into the room. Also, I use the inducer when raking ashes through the grate and it entirely prevents that very fine, white ash from coming out of the stove- you know, that layer that coats everything, everywhere in the house.

Brian