Heating insulated basement from 1st floor stove

I used a similar setup for my bedrooms upstairs. I put a Tjernland register booster in the upstairs bed room and used the floor joists as the duct to pull the air from the stove room below. Just had to cut a hole in the ceiling in the stove room and put a ceiling vent in then had to cut the floor in the bedroom and dropped the register booster right in. It works perfectly and keeps the upstairs much more comfortable now

 

When we first moved into our house (2700 sqft finished walkout ranch built in 1992) 4 years ago it was configured with the Lopi Answer in the living/room kitchen which was added on in '94 as a short ell off the normally rectangular ranch style. As a consequence pretty much every other part of the house is a long ways from the stove; main floor bedrooms, bathroom and especially the downstairs bedrooms and bathroom. The first year here I tried heating the entire house with just the Answer and the furnace fan. That failed, according to the wife and kids, and the furnace proper had to be allowed to turn back on. The next year I installed a second line-level thermostat in the basement and set it to 66 and ran the furnace fan constant. The burner itself would kick in if it got below freezing outside but otherwise we were good so close but no cigar. Last year when LP prices sky-rocketed I traded an old Ski-do RV snowmobile for a Daka furnace style woodstove and installed it outside on the walkout basement deck in front of the french doors in a little enclosure made from walk-in freezer panels. This worked well and we reduced our LP bill to about $500 for the entire winter. This year I got serious and rebuilt the walkout enclosure into a 6x16' room complete with windows and another set of french doors. This has proved to be a very very nice setup so far although it doesn't look all that "finished" from the outside it serves the purpose and then some.

So all that being said, I've had little to no success pushing warm air down. The coolest the basement ever got was 58 though so that might still be alright for your purposes. Since you're insulating the floor anyway the very least I'd do is to have the hydronic tubing installed from the get-go even if you never plan on using it. It just leaves so many options open and it's damm hard to install after floor is poured !

My new and improved plan is to try and pick up an Englander NC30 this spring, put that in the living room, move the Answer to the basement, and move the Daka furnace to the shop!

 

Thanks for all of the comments. It seems to support our initial thoughts...the IS is going in the finished basement at the bottom of the stairs. This will work well with the R10 floor, R30 walls, and the relatively small stove room with 8' drywall ceilings. The HVAC room is directly behind the stove, so the perfect place to put the clean out T. The stove will be enclosed in a chase up to the attic. Total pipe run will be around 30', should have an excellent draft. We will use an OAK, and run that pipe straight out the back of the stove, to the outside (about 10'). The warm air should rise up the stairwell very well and keep as much of the basement heated as we want (as we open/close doors, and use at least one AirShare vent to move air to an adjacent room, seen in the picture). The bonus, for my wife, is that this keeps all the wood mess downstairs and she gets wall-wall carpeting in the Family room!. As they say...happy wife=happy life. All I can say is that PHYSICS RULES...let the warm air do most of the work...instead of pushing cold or pulling warm air

 

PCRit,
Sounds like a GREAT plan to me! The only downfall is you won't have the ambiance of the stove burning in the mail living area.... Heat wise it sounds great.

What are you using for the home design? Are you using the "Home Designer Software", and if so, which version (Essentials, Architectural, or Professional) and are you happy with it? The reason I ask is I have a home design sketched out in Visio, that is designed around heating with a wood stove, with the stove in the focus point of the main living area, and all bedrooms... above it with easy access to the hot air via an open loft type design. I want to do a better drawing of the design and have been researching the different home design software packages available. Your image looks pretty good....

 

Do you have/have you planned outside access from the basement, so you don't have to carry all your wood through the first floor of the home?

 

Yes, that is the downside, but we're more concerned with cost/efficiency of heating than having a showcase stove.

I've been using the Home Designer Suite 2014 (Architectural version). It's about 2yrs old now, and it's been well worth the money. I've drawn our house plans with it and the company which sells the house we're going to build (a Kodiak Steel Home) has already approved my drawn plans, with no additional cost for producing the blueprints from our plans.

 

Yes, its a walk out basement, the camera in the above pic is positioned as you walk in the door from outside. The HVAC room is behind the stove (the door to the left of the stove), where I can store lots of wood.

 

Awesome, thanks. That is exactly what I'm hoping to do. I'm thinking of selling the home design as well, I showed it to my buddy who is an architect and he said he could sell the design easy, he loved the house and best of all it is very cheap/easy to build.

I would suggest putting a 4' garage type overhead door (1/2 size of a regular garage door) to the outside, from the HVAC room directly. You could open it up, load that room with wood and never have to carry the wood across the stove room either...

(that is one of the cool design idea "secrets" in my design)

 

We think alike I also have a small garage type door (or wood chute) in the HVAC room for bringing in wood.

 

PERFECT!!!