Ducting Heat from Stove room to other rooms, thoughts?

I just got done installing a WS AS, and I so far I like it. We have it in our family room, which is on the main level of our split level house. The other rooms on that level are the dining room and kitchen. A staircase is in the living room about twelve feet from the stove, which leads upstairs to our three bedrooms, which are above our garage/play room....with three little boys, all rooms become play rooms though. I've attached a picture of the house. I was thinking of running a duct(insulated of course, and with a small in line blower with adjustable speed) from the living room ceiling, up through the attic and coming down into the other rooms, since they don't receive much heat from the stove. I've heard both positive and negative results from this idea, and thus here I am. Thoughts? Past experience? Thanks.

 

Hi Tim,
That house looks familiar...
Essentially you are trying to accomplish the same result as my house which has duct work in the attic. I've done this.
It really sounds good in theory but no matter how well you insulate, you will have heat loss in your ducts. Say the air goes into the blower at 80 degrees. The blower will probably cool it 5-10 degrees and the duct heat loss will probably take it down 5-10 more. Then all your doing is blowing more cold air in your rooms. Plus it will feel drafty as the temperature coming out is lower than your skin temperature. Consider the current temperature. Your attic isn't that cold yet. When it is consistently in the 20's and below that insulated ductwork is going to really drop in temperature.
Say you turn the blower off. Now all your heat is going up in the duct, cooling, and coming down again cold.

Insulation and air sealing are the real way to solve your problem. Make those bedrooms air tight and insulate more above and below them.

 

Have you tried heating the house the way it is now? You may not even need a duct.

My old house was a two story with the wood box in the basement. I only had the duct into the first floor at the base of the steps and it heated the entire house.

 

What were you using for heating of the house (bedrooms) before the wood stove?

Use that system, it is already in place and wouldn't run much, I bet.

 

Hi Jeff... I know insulation is very important. I've heard of the duct idea and for some it has worked, just looking for more experiences, positive or negative.

 

I could see running ducts into the floors in conditioned space working, but taking room heat up into the attic is a long shot.

 

Moving heat up is easy; moving it back down again is a stretch.
It will work better that way if you had a source of return air ducting close the the floor.

If I am understanding you correctly, you want to blow the heat through ductwork placed in attic and then have supply registers in the ceilings of the rooms? The warm air would tend to "puddle" near the ceiling in this case.

Same question though-what type of heating system is in the house?

 

One thing I saw with your house is that part of the rooms that is actually exposed underneath to the outside. The other thing was that part of the rooms are over a garage. I would suggest that you pull down the soffit under the floor of that bedroom and spray foam it if it has not already done. Spray foam does both insulation and air sealing in one go. Also, a bedroom over a garage could be a potential CO entry into those rooms. I would pull down the ceiling in the garage and spray foam it as well so that you get the air sealant so no fumes from cars/equipment can enter those rooms.

 

A good friend's brother has a dedicated duck as you described, with an inline blower on a thermostat. I'm told that it works very well. He has a ranch style house with an insert on one end, the exterior wall. The duct draws air from above the insert and has a drop in each of the three bedrooms on the opposite end of the house. Its his only heat.
I considered doing this when I built my house. I heat from the exterior wall at on end of a rancher. The living/stove room is vaulted. I planned to draw air near the peak of the vault, run very well sealed duct under the 14" of cellulose in the attic, and put a drop in each bedroom. With an inline blower on a thermostat. I decided it wasn't going to be necessary, it isn't in my house.
I have read many posts of people trying to distribute heat with the HVAC fan on to circulate the air. Usually doesn't work for the reasons described above. Duct work is notoriously leaky and there is a lot of it in an entire HVAC system. But I think one trunk line, a inline blower, and a few drops could be sealed and insulated enough to work well. Just my $.02

 

Backwoods savage that makes perfect sense. I'll have to try that. I suppose that an extreme version of that idea would be to run returns from those rooms into the stove room. Extreme depending on the amount of ducting involved. I'll have to try the fan idea. Yooperdave, we have oil forced air, from the basement. Thanks for the tip about the spray foam. Not blown cellulose? Why spray foam? Just curious. There is probably a good reason for that. Thank you all for the suggestions.

 

This should help your situation.

 

Spray foam for flour sleepers such as in that area outside of the garage door provides great insulating properties, goes in quickly, but the main thing is that it seals completely so that no air movement can take place. Inside of the garage you want that area sealed completely; especially if you have cars that you let warm up inside. Remember the college students that rented a room with a garage below? They died from CO. The only downside to spray foam is that it is not a DIY. The foam they use to show on Holmes on Homes was blue.

 

Some people run their forced air circulator without the furnace on. I would guess it works better if you have a wood stove in the basement but it might be worth a shot to get air moving around the house for a more even distribution of heat, including in your basement. It will also ensure that you continue to filter the air in your house.

 

Backwoods is right you blow the cool air towards the warm room. So place a small fan on the floor where the cool air sits and blow it towards the stove room.
Up at ceiling level you can feel the warm air flowing back at you or tape a piece of tissue paper at the top of the door frame and watch the direction it blows.

 

SMaple I am also considering the same adding duct to get the heat off the 17 foot ceilings back to lower levels and then I saw the price from a HVAC guy.. most people size the ducts to small... after looking at your pic my suggestion would be (assuming it's a 3 level house, stove is on left side and you have split level stairs that go from garage to midlevel and back up towards bedrooms over garage) would be to follow backwoods suggestion with fan. if it is not enough in the coldest part of winter shut your air ducts where wood sttove is place your thermostat in farthest room (likely coldest) and set thermostat to a low temperture.. solves your worry until you get a year of experience with it so you know what you need not guessing...

That style of house was very popular in the north east for a long time...town I grew up in had literally hundreds of them.. no one died.. just if you do put cars in there leave garage door open if car is running try minimize exhaust in the garage

 

Now I see it. You already have forced air system in place.
Yeah, just run the blower motor on the furnace to help distribute the heat better. How close is the wood stove in relation to the furnace return air? You could open the return air and let some of the heat from the wood stove to be drawn into the ductwork then distributed throughout the house?

 

Trying to move wood stove heat with ductwork can be the proverbial exercise in futility. The air in the stove room might be 80 degrees, but it's still much cooler than what would come out of the registers if the furnace was making heat. Consider losses in unconditioned spaces, which will happen with insulated ducts or not, and you end up cooling the stove room but not warming the areas you want to. Natural convection, often assisted by a strategically placed fan or two, seems to be much more successful. Like Dennis said, it works better moving cool air towards the heat source.

I found that taping strips of TP in doorways can tell a lot about how you can place fans for maximum air movement. Setting a fan in the floor blowing cool air towards the stove and watching the TP flutter in the breeze created by the warm air moving the other way is pretty cool.