Heat not reaching whole house

[leftyz]

I'm attaching a crude drawing of the layout of my house, it's a ranch style with a full unfinished basement.

I've inherited this house and I'm having issues with getting the heat out of the living room, and down the hallway to the bedrooms.

When I get the large old box wood stove cranked up, it's unbearably hot in the living room, and quite warm in the dining room as well.

The kitchen is decent and the hallway up to the open transom is usually warm as well. Stepping past that transom you get an instant drop in temperature, and even worse into the bedrooms.

This house was built around 1970, has many drafts and leaks, but is decently insulated as far as I can tell.

I've tried using a pedestal fan where the small arrow is on the diagram to blow air down the hallway, but the difference is negligible.

Any suggestions?

 

[Guswhit]

Cut the transom in the hallway out and cut a ventilation window in the wall from the stove room to the hallway, or get a barn fan set up in the hallway by the front entrance. You just can't expect convection currents to move your warm air around walls like that.

 

[mtfallsmikey]

I'm attaching a crude drawing of the layout of my house, it's a ranch style with a full unfinished basement.

I've inherited this house and I'm having issues with getting the heat out of the living room, and down the hallway to the bedrooms.

When I get the large old box wood stove cranked up, it's unbearably hot in the living room, and quite warm in the dining room as well.

The kitchen is decent and the hallway up to the open transom is usually warm as well. Stepping past that transom you get an instant drop in temperature, and even worse into the bedrooms.

This house was built around 1970, has many drafts and leaks, but is decently insulated as far as I can tell.

I've tried using a pedestal fan where the small arrow is on the diagram to blow air down the hallway, but the difference is negligible.

Any suggestions?

That's gonna be tough. Do you have an oil/gas/electric furnace, or central air? If so, could run the system fan in manual to spread the heat around.

 

[nathon918]

I'm attaching a crude drawing of the layout of my house, it's a ranch style with a full unfinished basement.

I've inherited this house and I'm having issues with getting the heat out of the living room, and down the hallway to the bedrooms.

When I get the large old box wood stove cranked up, it's unbearably hot in the living room, and quite warm in the dining room as well.

The kitchen is decent and the hallway up to the open transom is usually warm as well. Stepping past that transom you get an instant drop in temperature, and even worse into the bedrooms.

This house was built around 1970, has many drafts and leaks, but is decently insulated as far as I can tell.

I've tried using a pedestal fan where the small arrow is on the diagram to blow air down the hallway, but the difference is negligible.

Any suggestions?

take the bedrooms and add them as a second floor any house with closed off rooms like yours is VERY difficult to heat with a stove, thats why they are "space heaters",
i have a colonial salt box style house with a 16x20 addition as my living room, bedrooms on the second floor, pretty much open first floor, except the addition just has a 5ft wide doorway, i heat the whole house with 1 stove and a box fan on the floor in the doorway to the addition, the bedrooms and addition stay within 4-5 degrees of the rest of the house...
i do have a stove in my addition but never run it because as soon as it gets going its about 110 degrees in there :bang:.

so really unless you change the layout of the house its going to be quite difficult to heat the whole house with 1 stove...

 

[leftyz]

Cut the transom in the hallway out and cut a ventilation window in the wall from the stove room to the hallway, or get a barn fan set up in the hallway by the front entrance. You just can't expect convection currents to move your warm air around walls like that.

I posted this same subject on another website in the spring, and those were my ideas to help the heat reach more of the house as well.

There is a very small ventilation vent in the wall between the living room and the master bath, but it doesn't seem to let much, if any heat through, even with a small computer type fan attached.

 

[leftyz]

That's gonna be tough. Do you have an oil/gas/electric furnace, or central air? If so, could run the system fan in manual to spread the heat around.

There is a furnace in the basement that I remember my Dad running when I was quite young. I've asked him about it and all he said was that it was horribly inefficient. The vents have mostly been plugged and/or removed due to drafts coming through (and the wife heard a rodent in there scratching around one night, lol).

I have been thinking about adding another wood stove downstairs, but with all of the insulation in the basement ceiling, I'm not sure if any of the heat would make it through to the living floor.

Eventually I think a new furnace will be in order, but for now, we have to make due with what we were given.

 

[4seasons]

You have several roadblocks to your heat flow. First take out that transom or at least add a large vent above it so the hot air can get down the hall. Then cut a window or a doorway near the stove. Then quite trying to push hot air with your fan. Cold air is much easier to move than hot. You need to put the fan so it pulls cold air out of the bedrooms and the hot air will move in to replace it. You could even do this without moving walls and it would help some. Just set the fan in the middle of the transom pushing cold air out of the back of the house.View attachment 314814

 

[nathon918]

You have several roadblocks to your heat flow. First take out that transom or at least add a large vent above it so the hot air can get down the hall. Then cut a window or a doorway near the stove. Then quite trying to push hot air with your fan. Cold air is much easier to move than hot. You need to put the fan so it pulls cold air out of the bedrooms and the hot air will move in to replace it. You could even do this without moving walls and it would help some. Just set the fan in the middle of the transom pushing cold air out of the back of the house.View attachment 314814

thats also what i have found to work the best for heating my livingroom addition, i have a small box fan blowing the cold air from the living room into the "main" part of the house, works wayyyy better than even two large fans blowing the hot air into the room

 

[Whitespider]

Your stove is a space heater, it's designed and intended to heat the space around it (i.e. the room it sits in), it ain't a whole house heater... that's called a furnace. I know there are some on this board who claim to heat their whole house with a stove... but, if you pay close attention, most of them (I did not say all) do not live in northern tier states. And then to make things worse, you have a ranch-style home... which increases exterior walls area and means you have to move warm air a long distance, through several doors to heat all rooms (it just don't hold enough heat that long). A stove is not ever gonna' heat your whole home to your satisfaction... it-is-what-it-is. You may be able to improve it some with fans and whatnot (which I flat hate)... but the room with the stove will always be too darn hot, and the far end of the house will always be too darn cold. It flat is-what-it-is... a stove is not the correct wood-fired heating appliance for your style home, where you live, you need a forced air wood-fired furnace or maybe a boiler.

I gave-up on the "space heater" type appliances many years ago... I hate sweating bare chested at one end of the house, and shivering with a sweatshirt at the other (it ain't healthy), not to mention sitting down on that porcelain toilet. And I really hate fans running, the drafts they create (it ain't healthy in winter), and the dust they keep stirred up (it ain't healthy) even more. I prefer to be comfortable anywhere in the house, while wearing the same set of cloths throughout it (although I do throttle back the forced air in the bedrooms just a bit)... we prefer our house in the 69° to 71° range during winter.

 

[sunfish]

Take the wall out between the stove and hallway.

Open floor plan is much easier to heat with a stove!

Cool bedrooms are a good thing...

 

[4seasons]

Whitespider brings up a very good point. I can heat my 1400 sqft with a stove because I have lots of insulation and rarely see overnight lows drop into the teens. Most of the winter the daytime highs here climb between 40 to 50 F. My house is somewhat close to your design and I can easily run 78 in the living room and 68 in the bedrooms by simply putting a fan in the doorway to move cold air out of the bedrooms. I also have a stove rated to heat 2500 sqft. There is a huge difference in trying to do this in a mild climate with great windows and 8 to 16 inches of insulation on all sides as opposed to fighting sub zero temps and a lake effects storm coming in thru drafty windows. You may just want to use the stove as a back up to keep from freezing the pipes when the power goes out.

 

[leftyz]

Frozen pipes was the exact reason I was thinking about adding another wood stove in the basement. When it's 10 below zero for a few nights straight I'm pretty sure it'll be a major issue!

I just went down and looked at the old furnace again. I couldn't find any identifying logos or brand names on it other than Honeywell on a few of the control boxes.

I can remember at one point when I was quite young we used to have huge oil tanks in the garage to feed it, but then those went away and we ran it on wood for a while. (I moved away for nearly 20 years and this is my first winter back)

I noticed a couple other things when I was looking at it. It appears to have a LP line going to the blower (I assume its the blower, hanging off the front below the fire door). and I noticed a water line going into the side of the hood above the furnace.

The latch was rusted solid, I had to use a hammer to get it to open, the firebox is quite large with fire brick lining the sides.

I am going to talk to my Dad about it some more. If I am able to use this furnace, or replace it somewhat on the cheap, it would work great for the bedrooms, as there is a vent/outlet going to each of the 3 bedrooms, the bathroom, and also one all the ay out in the kitchen (might it be an intake?)

I need a "wood furnaces for dummies" book!

 

[zogger]

Frozen pipes was the exact reason I was thinking about adding another wood stove in the basement. When it's 10 below zero for a few nights straight I'm pretty sure it'll be a major issue!

I just went down and looked at the old furnace again. I couldn't find any identifying logos or brand names on it other than Honeywell on a few of the control boxes.

I can remember at one point when I was quite young we used to have huge oil tanks in the garage to feed it, but then those went away and we ran it on wood for a while. (I moved away for nearly 20 years and this is my first winter back)

I noticed a couple other things when I was looking at it. It appears to have a LP line going to the blower (I assume its the blower, hanging off the front below the fire door). and I noticed a water line going into the side of the hood above the furnace.

The latch was rusted solid, I had to use a hammer to get it to open, the firebox is quite large with fire brick lining the sides.

I am going to talk to my Dad about it some more. If I am able to use this furnace, or replace it somewhat on the cheap, it would work great for the bedrooms, as there is a vent/outlet going to each of the 3 bedrooms, the bathroom, and also one all the ay out in the kitchen (might it be an intake?)

I need a "wood furnaces for dummies" book!

Heck ya, get that old furnace spiffied back up and in use! winter gonna be here any second like!

 

[leftyz]

Heck ya, get that old furnace spiffied back up and in use! winter gonna be here any second like!

If I do, I'm going to need a lot more wood :-D

 

[blades]

Water line is likely a preheat circut in to your water heater or maybe it is your water heater then runing to some sort of storage. AS Whitespyder said your floor plan is very poor for one stove to heat. The two rear most bedrooms are going to be way short heat wise. as was also said a large vent through the wall into the hall with a fan running on the floor pushing cold air into the stove room would do wonders. If there is indeed an lp line to that furnace in basement it is possible it is a duel fuel unit (lp- that should be black pipe, water line galvinized-silver/grey) Honeywell - that just the name of the control switches/relay for the hot air blower and perhaps forced air combustion as well but not a brand for the furnace. Some pictures of the beast might help - you will need to resize the pictures for web pages- Microsoft picture manager can do that, download pics from device on to computer save in a file. then open that file select a picture look for EDIT click on that and another tool bar will open up scroll all the way down to bottom of that and you should see the resizing functions.

 

[leftyz]

The "LP" line is a small diameter copper line, same as what runs to my dryer and stove in the kitchen.

Water line is also copper, runs straight from the water heater about 2 feet away.

I'll post some pics. thanks for the quick tutorial, I'm pretty decent at computers though (I'm a software developer)

 

[dave_376]

first thing I would try is a fan in the hallway sitting on the floor blowing cold air back to the living room, it looks like you have space for it past the master bedroom. I have a 2 story colonial that was cool on the 2nd floor, I placed a fan on top of the stairs angled down blowing cold air to the first floor. It made much more of a difference than I had anticipated, I can now feel the heat blowing up stairs.

If that doesn't help you out then look for something like this US Stove HotBlast Wood/Coal Furnace — 139,000 BTU, 1100 CFM Blower, Model# 1500 | Wood Stoves| Northern Tool + Equipment

 

[leftyz]

Thanks Dave, I'll try the fan first for sure.

I took some pics of the furnace, but after talking with my Dad, the point is a bit moot.

He says that the furnace would go through a face cord per week, and it just didn't heat the house like it should. I'm not going to even mess with it if that's the case.

He did answer some of the other questions, the water line goes into a coil above the furnace to prewarm the water going into the heater.

The "LP" copper line is actually the old oil feed line. We used to have 2 275 gallon tanks in the garage to keep the furnace going if the wood fire ran out.

He said that when it ran on oil, it used way too much oil too.

I'll try the fan blowing out of the hallway, and I'll just have to run a couple space heaters until I can get it all figured out. I do plan on removing the transom in the hallway for sure, and will most likely put at bare minimum a decent sized vent in the wall between the living room and the hallway. I'm going to try to talk my wife into making that a half-wall to open it up even more. We'll see about that...

Thanks all for the advice, It has definitely been a quick blast of knowledge for me!

 

[Whitespider]

If I do, I'm going to need a lot more wood

Maybe... maybe not.

Now, i don't want to get in a big argument about this (we've already been there more than once) so I'll come right out and give the abbreviated, but complete truth. For years now I've used a forced air wood furnace type, up until last year I was using an old smoke dragon stove firebox I converted to furnace config by building a air jacket/plenum around it. It worked fine, always was able to keep the house warm enough... but winter before last the firebox cracked (and the darn thing was wore out anyway). A shirttail relative gave me an EPA certified stove for a replacement (clean burning, high efficiency, bla, bla, bla...), and the firebox was of the same approximate size. So i figured it was a win/win, I'd convert it into furnace config and get more heat from burning less wood... right?

Well wrong... those EPA fireboxes don't make heat at the same rate throughout the entire burn cycle like the old smoke dragon did. Basically, even though it was a touch larger in physical size, it had less heat output per hour (average) but a longer burn cycle. Yeah, it would keep a fire going for a somewhat longer time than the old one, more heat per pound of wood, but output less heat per hour (on average). The darn thing was undersized for my application (by heat output, not physical size) just like your stove is undersized for the application you want to use it for.

The end result was, even though the new box was high efficiency and longer burning per load, in an attempt to keep my house warm I was reloading before the burn cycle completed and shoveling out burning coals to make more room for fuel. The new-fangled, high efficiency box used just as much, if not more wood than the old smoke dragon did. I was wasting more fuel than the increased efficiency could offset... and we were cold during the coldest part of the year. Hey, live and learn... it was the wrong appliance for the intended application (just as your's appears to be). After one year of use I've removed it and I'm installing a traditional firebox furnace... the proper appliance for the intended purpose.

So I wouldn't be too sure you'll use that much more wood... you may be pleasantly surprised.

 

[philoshop]

Whitespider makes a valid point, as always. If I could add a couple more:
It's a lot easier and more efficient to pull air than it is to push it. Pulling the air from the colder parts of the house to the warmer parts is usually going to work better than trying to push the hot air. But you'll need a way for the warmer air to be pulled into the colder spaces.
If the stove/burner in the basement can be used, or replaced as the case may be, direct vents into the upper rooms may get you in the ballpark. With a return air system pulling cold air from the upper floor to the basement, (and maybe removing the insulation from the floor system), I'd think you'd be good to go.
Just my $.02.