Does heating the basement even make sense?

This is one of many in the flood of heat-related questions I'm asking about the new house we're moving to. The house a large ranch with a full basement. In the basement, there's an existing (ancient) wood stove that's venting into the masonry chimney and out to the roof. I'm not wild about the setup and I'm not wild about carrying firewood down the extremely steep steps a couple of times a day. However, given where the basement is, I'm pretty dammed sure I could devise a way to pour pellets into a funnel in the garage and have them end up in a bucket in the basement, kind of like an old coal chute. Since it would be in the basement, the constant blower noise also wouldn't be a problem.

But does it even make sense to heat the basement? It's not intended to be a living space. The only thing I think will be down there will be my reloading bench and a darkroom. I am wondering, though, if at least some of the heat would conduct through the floor and make the floors in the whole house warmer (which my wife would LOVE). The furnaces and hot water tank are also down there, so I'm wondering if keeping the air temperature in there a little higher would give the other appliances a boost as well.

 

Short answer is, don't waste your money on heating the basement unless the walls have some kind of thermal break (insulation) on them to the ground. The walls will act as a heat sink, and then the ground will "suck" the heat out of the walls. I'd definitely keep the basement at a decent (50 - 60F maybe) temperature but I wouldn't keep it at the same temperature as the house.

 

I know our floors were sooo cold when we just had the fuel oil furnace (didn't really heat the basement per say) but with the radiant heat off the wood furnace keeping the basement ~65*, upstairs the floors feel much nicer!