My name is Dave and I may have a problem hoarding firewood. We moved in to a house from the 50’s that had a sweet fireplace insert stove installed recently... like in the last five years, by the previous owners. I am guessing it is EPA, because it is newer, but I don’t even know the model until I locate the manual, which is around here somewhere. I like to heat the house up and try to save $ from the gas HVAC bill in the winter, but we don’t have zone anything, so when the stove w blower gets the top floor nice and toasty, the finished basement/den gets really cold to the dismay of anyone staying in our guest room down there. Any tips for getting the blower to help circulate the air from downstairs? I think there is a ash chute that drops down to the basement from the old fireplace. I gather, ducting to the hvac is a terrible idea, but maybe I could pull air from the ash chute for the blower so it could come back around in the open stairwell? I have plenty of time to think about it as I’m out of seasoned wood and I am going to try and scavenge and split next year fuel rather than purchasing. Thanks, MrFancyPlants
Welcome to the club, mrfancyplants! I think you're gonna like it here! you'll probably find getting warm air downstairs is about impossible, but! this downstairs den sounds like a great place for a free standing woodstove!... (or even a pellet stove)
Welcome mrfancyplants! I agree with TurboDiesel 100%. Sounds like a perfect application for a wood stove to me. Just curious, what kind of fancy plants are you into?
Is your primary heat source a boiler or a furnace? If it is a furnace (forced air) there would be a little benefit gained from letting the blower motor stay turned on and help circulate air..... that is if you do have supply and return air registers/grilles down in the basement/den. A little benefit would probably not be enough. (Can't think of finishing a basement without adding supplies and returns down there....) You are trying to overcome the laws of physics by moving the warm air from upstairs to downstairs; but this is why the former owners had the stove installed on the main level-if they had installed it in the basement, you would be asking how to get all the heat from the basement to the upstairs! Think about updating your hvac system if the basement is served by the heat plant.
Using the blower to circulate the air throughout the house usually doesn't work all that well, plus it can be noisy. You have plenums on the furnace because that's really the only good way to move heated air through the house. Adding a plenum to a standalone wood stove doesn't end up looking pretty, nor is it practical. So unless you want to add a woodstove downstairs where the heat is needed or add a wood furnace to your current heating system:
Awesome, thanks everyone for the input and for the warm welcome. The zone hvac sounds like what I should have at least for when we know someone is down in the basement. Unfortunately, i’m not super handy, and the hvac companies and really any sort of contractors charge a lot around here in the metro area. Wiring up a temperature controller for a kegerator is about the limit of my current handiness. I’ll probably just keep on taking the edge off the gas bill when I can. Maybe after 10 scavenged cords, I can say I paid for the zone system.
Forced air gas furnace.. there is a large return register near but off to the side from the stove. I tried boosting the fan frequency and it might have made a tiny difference downstairs. MrFancyPlants is also my handle on a couple bonsia forums. I have some Ficus, Tsuga, Juniper Acer.
Welcome to our Forum mrfancyplants ! Were glad your here. Take a look at Mr. Savages writings here and this will help you in your burning endeavors. Primer on Woodburning by Backwoods Savage Again, welcome and were all here to help!
Scrounge all you can but at this point you need to get your 2-3 year supply split and stacked ASAP. That’s so much wood and you need it so soon that buying a log load may not be unreasonable. Then, in future years you only need to replace what was burned the year before with no real urgency.
Purchasing for this upcoming season and trying to scavenge for the year after is a plan too. Because far too often there really isn't plenty of time as life continually gets in the way sometimes.
Yeah, I read the great primer and am coming around on the three year plan, however my wife is going to need some convincing before I can expand beyond the two 8 foot racks I have. We have some landscaping coming up any she wants to tackle that before considering expanding wood storage options. I have a couple ideas to expand around that limitation, like in and behind the shed. I did just pick up some green rounds that I’ll chop and stack later this week.
I mean, she wants a fire pit as part of the landscaping, so you would think so. I’m fielding ideas for fire pit ideas that may be able to produce more heat than a hole in the ground.
