For 10 years I ran a wood stove in my un-insulated basement. The stove was beside my forced hot air oil burning furnace, so I removed the blower access cover and ran that fan with my basement door cracked. Works excellent but.. after switching to a add-on wood furnace that ducts into my existing one, I use much less wood. One of the things I’m grateful for is keeping the mess of wood and ash in my basement. Wood it be nice to have it in my living space, yes. But routing the flue and chimney would have cost me a fortune which I could not do at the time. Welcome to FHC btw.
Yeah, kind of a mid sized firebox rated to heat 2000 sq ft...not tiny, not huge...but I had several other issues working against me though too. 1. My home layout just does not lend itself to heating from the basement 2. Back then I thought dry "seasoned" wood was wood that had dried out for a few weeks and "felt dry" (I could have been a firewood seller, huh?! ) 3. I now know that I had high draft, and really needed a key damper to keep some of the heat from going up the chimney!
You’ve only to benefit from burning firewood in your home. People I have known that only use a stove, whether on the main floor or basement, they make sure a return air duct vent is near the stove so they can use the blower on their forced air furnace to move the heated air around the home. Seems to help a lot, and remember that heat in the basement rises
I knew basically nothing about heating a whole house with a woodstove. A friend of mine heats most of his house with one, and he got me into it. Another friend tried to heat his whole house with an old pot belly in his living room, and a wood cook stove in the kitchen. He was always crying about it. Always saying he has to wake up every 2 hours to reload. My wife only took the bad stories to heart, and wanted nothing to do with heating our whole house with wood. 4 years ago when we were looking to buy a house, the one we found and wanted, was electric baseboard with a propane fireplace in the family room in the basement, and a propane fireplace on the first floor in the living/ dining room. I knew that the propane fireplace in the basement was piped into an existing masonry chimney, that was in perfect shape.
Here in NH you have to use a stove with serious horsepower if your walls are not insulated. I went from a large “fisher” style stove this year to a supposed “heat beast” tube stove. The old stove will be reinstalled before next heating season.
We have poured walls as well wont be insulated for awhile prolly until we finish it. I was affraid of exactly what you said the walls soaking up the heat and dissipating it out to the cold ground. Thanks!
Agreed thanks for all the replies. Basement was were the most room is so thats why i was thinking itd be best there but but i think there will be room in the upstairs for one. So ill prolly go that route. I had the idea in my head of hot air rising but also had alot of other theories as well. You have all definitely helped get me straightened out. Thanks!
Its very possible that your poured walls have insulation on the outside...you'd have to dig down a bit to see. Better than having no insulation, but even so, it still takes some serious BTU's to get all those tons of concrete up to temp...
Sorry, didn't get to finish because of an issue at work. So continuing on, I Did some research on wood stoves. I knew I wanted a full view glass window front load, and the quadrafire 4300 flattop was the winner. Installed it in October of 2017, and never really struggled with keeping the whole house comfortable. It is located on the far left side of the house, under the living/dining rooms, with a 8 x12 inch vent on either side, that was already there. The ceiling in the basement is insulated and drywalled, basement is completely finished. The stairs leading from the basement to the kitchen are 2/3 to the far right in the house. The stairs come up to the back door of the house. (Sorry, just trying to paint a picture of the air flow) I originally thought it was not going to work very well. Bedrooms are to the far right of the house, 2 of them being above the unheated garage. Bedrooms get to a good 68 degrees when the stove is running 3/4 open. Downside is the family room downstairs gets above 90. I could have installed a return air vent from the bedrooms, but don't see it necessary now. I burned under 4 cords of mixed hardwoods last season, and never used the upstairs propane fireplace ( mainly because I am too cheap to get the tanks filled), and the wife used the electric baseboard heat for the bedroom maybe 6 times all season. Even if I were to buy 4 cords a year, at 250 a cord, I would still save alot of money. The average electric bill for the house in 2015 was $715 between December and April. That's another good reason I am not a full fledged firewood hoarder.
