Englander 30-NC Heating From Finished Basement

As far as I can tell the walls are insulated but the floor is not.

 

Honestly, I haven't lit a stick in it yet this year. Just been burning the zero clearance insert upstairs. I have burned some in it in the past while working in the basement and I can tell you it will heat that 500SF area from the mid 40s to 70 in a few hours on one full load. However, room temp starts to cool off rather quickly once the stove temp drops to about 300. I think it is because the concrete floor absorbs a lot of the heat (floor isn't insulated, walls are insulated well). If I burned it continuously and got the floor up to temp, things would probably be different. It's still a work in process for me with some trial and error to do yet. I do like the stove. It's a tank and a very capable heater that's simple to run and I got it on sale for $600 delivered so I can't complain . I'll keep you posted when I get a chance to let'er rip for a few days to see exactly how capable she is

 

This sounds a lot like my situation with the Osburn. My basement gets hot and some heat transfers up the stairs but by the time the air really gets rolling the stove is cooling. I've found I actually get better air movement with a fan behind the stove blowing across the top towards the ceiling and stairs. I tried putting a fan at the bottom of the steps on the floor. That works but doesnt seem to do as well. I also have a fan on the floor above the stairs which helps flow.

My thinking was with the bigger 30NC I could keep the stove hot longer meaning more hot air flow up the steps. Fortunately my stairwell is only about 10 feet from the stove.

 

Marvin I have been looking for the resource, to back up what I'm saying and I cannot find it anywhere. I thought I read it in a placement of your chimney brochure. It basically says, that an concrete floor and wall without a thermal break, will consume thousands of btus before significant heat is obtained. Floors can be achieved but the 3 feet above grade before insulation. Is equivalent to opening 2 standard sized windows for every xxx sq ft of uninsulated concrete.
So extra insulation might provide better results than bigger stove.

 

I just looked at the specs for the Osburn. It looks like it's about 1 cubic foot smaller than the 30NC? I don't think you could go wrong with the larger firebox but I'm not sure how much of a benefit it may be. Everybody's situation is different and insulation and air sealing can go a long way too. How well are your basement walls insulated? Are the rim joists insulated and air sealed?

 

The walls are insulated pretty well. I'm assuming everything is sealed up pretty good other than the floor. I was pretty young when the place was built so I dont remember for sure. I guess I'll have to start poking around and see what I can learn

 

I dont doubt that concrete sucks heat out. It's crazy to think the floor would take out that much though. I'm not doubting what you're saying at all. I'm just saying....wow!

 

It's concrete above the frost line and especially above ground level in extreme cold weather that is a huge heat loss.
It's typically R 1, which isn't much.
Even earth will act as an insulator, especially if it is dry.

 

I also think a good convective loop, in most cases, is essential to make a basement install work. However, I don't think there is a direct answer on how to achieve this convective loop other than trial and error.

 

I know this has been discussed in the past but I'm trying to save time and a lot of reading. What's the rule when it comes to cold air return/venting in to the basement stove room? How do you make it or is it even code compliant?

 

From what I understand, registers have to be > 10ft from the woodstove and have to be fusible link registers meaning there is a little "link" in there that melts and closes off the floor register opening to the upstairs in the event of a fire. I'm in PA too but it may be different from area to area so you may want to check with your local code officer, person, whatever they are if you want to stay code compliant. I'm not too concerned about being code compliant because I won't be going anywhere for a long while. However, I wouldn't do anything I thought was unsafe for my family.

 

I'm in the same boat. I'm not worried so much about the coding but I am concerned with my family's safety.

 

If your stove is at one end of the house, it may work well to allow the heat to go up there, and then have a way for the cold air to return back to the basement at the opposite end of the house. People that have stairwells at both end of the house report this working well. I remember one guy talking about running up the front stairs and down the back stairs a few times to "jumpstart" the loop after building a fire!
And don't forget, whenever you are trying to move air around, it always works better to move cool/cold air...in other words, don't try to push the hot air up, push or pull the cold air down...

 

I was thinking about this issue. Maybe I'm way off base so correct me if that is so.

I was wondering how well it might work to place 2 returns to the stove room. Mine is centrally located in the basement. I thought if I put a vent in the floor on each end of the house, run 4" (or 6" if that would be better) ducting above the drop ceiling and empty it in to the stove room that would really help the warm air move better. I thought I would dump it just below ceiling height in the stove room to help displace the hot air. Now for the kicker. In the stove room I would put a fan in the line blowing the cold air toward the stove room so that it would pull the cold air from the upper level.

I thought I would also figure out some way to close them when not in use to try to eliminate the chimney effect in the case of a fire or smoke spillage in the stove room.

Hopefully in the next year or two we will be replacing windows and such to help seal up some drafts. The place got a new metal roof on it last year.

Does this sound feasible or am I just pulling ideas out of my......

 

Sounds reasonable to me as long as you put an inline fan in the ductwork which I think is what you are saying. It should help displace the warm in the basement with cold air from upstairs forcing more warm air up the basement steps.

 

Yep that is what I meant just didn't know how to word it for sure.

 

Update: Been running the 30-NC in the basement for the last 4 weeks and I'm surprised at how well it is doing heating the house and I haven't been using any other supplementary heat. It hasn't been terribly cold though, with lows one night in the low teens. We're about 7 degrees colder up here than a 20 min drive towards town. I have a small box fan at the bottom of the basement steps blowing towards the stove and I'm getting good air movement (better than I thought I would) up and down the stairs. Difference in temps between the basement and upstairs is usually about 8 degrees and the house feels more comfortable overall. However, I've been going through a lot more wood than I anticipated. I do a full load at 5:45 am, a 1/2 load at 5:00 pm when I get home from work, and another full load around 8:30-9 pm before bed. Maybe I just need to get used to the wood consumption of a bigger stove and I'm also heating more SF.....

In the future I still plan on removing the insulation in the basement ceiling before putting in a drop ceiling. I'll vent the drop ceiling in a couple spots for better heat transfer through the floor to the upstairs. I also plan on adding a convection deck to the 30 and maybe one floor register as shown in the picture. It will be on the stove side of the boxed in beam that separates the basement. My thought is the heat rises from the stove across the ceiling and stratifies near the beam will get sucked up the register.

Just wanted to post an update. Any input is always appreciated. Also, if I re-use the insulation as additional insulation in the attic, should I remove the vapor barrier? Lay it opposite direction as the other insulation? Thanks!

 

Good news! I’m just running a small fan on the floor near the steps also and it works well, about like yours.
Added insulation in the attic is always a great idea, and I would lay it perpendicular to what’s there. As far as removing the vapor barrier, probably a good idea but I’ve read both ways. If the ceiling barrier is really tight it might not be as critical.

 

If you end up putting a floor register in, you could place it where you want it upstairs and then put the vented ceiling tile in the basement closer to the stove in the same floor joist bay so that the warm air from the stove would flow up into the joist bay and over to the register. The point of this is it will pick up more heat closer to the stove and also by offsetting the locations of the penetrations, the sound from the two areas will be somewhat dampened by the offset.

In my basement stove heating adventure, the trial and error was greatly assisted by using a heat gun (cheapo from HF) to "see" where the heat was, and a piece of incense on a long stick to watch the smoke. This way you can clearly "see" the air movement and get a much better feel for what is going on and what you can do to "adjust" it. I know that some of what was actually happening in my install was kind of counter intuitive and being able to see what the heat and air movement were actually doing helped me a lot. Our home heats much better after using these aids to adjust our "system".

 

Thanks, all great ideas. I haven't thought about using a joist bay as a channel. I wouldn't be able to put a vented ceiling tile directly above the stove since the 6' x 6' area above the stove where the flue pipe penetrates the floor is finished at actual ceiling height with 1x6" pine boards boxed out to what the height of the drop ceiling will be but I would be able to put it pretty close. Also, there will be a 5.5" gap between the drop ceiling and bottom of the floor joists. I guess I can use some insulation or something else to fill this gap and create the channel. I like the idea and it may work well in my situation. It would be easy to give it a try since I'll be able to move the vented drop ceiling tiles anywhere I want.