A different kind of heat.

[bore_pig]

The recent propane thread got me thinking. When friends who heat exclusively with propane/natural gas ask how warm the house is I tell them. They often respond "Well, that's only a couple degrees warmer than my house. Why does it always feel so warm". I simply tell them that it's a different kind of heat.

I know that part of the "warmer" feeling is because the area around the stove is actually warmer than the rest of the house. Makes for a good place to chase off the winter chill. I figure the rest of the "warmer" feeling is because the floors are warm.

Any other ideas on why the wood heated house seems warmer? And how do you explain it? I grew up with wood heat so it's all I've known.

 

[Labman]

I don't know. Our brains have great control over our bodies. Maybe it knowing there is a real fire right there. We depend on a gas furnace, but have a recreational fireplace. Unless it is really windy out, likely we lose ground having a fire in the fireplace. it also seems to make a big difference in those cloudy, damp, drizzly days.

I grew up in a house with a big old convection coal furnace. Again, real flames and a register you could stand on, maybe not in your bare feet.

 

[Stihl here]

Its a "dry" heat!!!

 

[jcappe]

Its a "dry" heat!!!

I think the dry heat and just a "hotter" heat makes the difference. As someone said on the other thread the air coming out of the register with propane feels cold compared to wood.

 

[HuskyMike]

our stack got pretty clogged up and we could not run our stove. for a week we used our propane forced hot air heat. even though the thermostat was set higher than the temp is when we run the stove, we were cold. I never thought that I would hear my G/F, a city girl that is wicked affraid of fire say

"Dude I miss the wood stove"

 

[bore_pig]

I just have a free standing stove, nothing that feeds into the duct. That being said, the stove is in the basement. The floors upstairs are always warm. Also, there are a couple barstools and a halfwall by the stove. I really like sitting there for a nightcap or seven!

 

[AOD]

Probably warmer air temps. High efficiency gas furnaces can barely make air over 115*, where as air from a wood furnace can easily be 150*+.

If you have a stove, especially a cast iron one, you will get tremendous radiant heat from it, which is not heating air, but heating objects directly, just like standing in the sun.

 

[bore_pig]

Which is why it is hard to stand on the concrete floor in front of the stove?! Never thought of that aspect I guess.

 

[KsWoodsMan]

I figured it seemed warmer because the radiant heat was warming the walls of the room where it's located as well as the air in the room. The warm walls and the hot stove just give better heat.

 

[MATTYB11]

a city girl that is wicked affraid of fire say

I can tell you live around here. Whenever I travel somplace else, people always laugh when I say "wicked"

I agree wood heat feels warmer than the natural gas but maybee its just the feeling of $30 dollar gas bills in the middle of winter that make me all warm and fuzzy inside.

 

[husky455rancher]

glad im not the only one who gets laughed for saying wicked too lol.

 

[Marc]

Ah, heating with wood is wicked nice.

Some posts above have touched on the reasons heat feels different from different heat sources. It's all on the way it is transferred to people from the heat source, and partially influenced by how ambient temperature is measured commonly in a home.

While standing in line of sight to a radiant source like a woodstove, we feel often much warmer than the ambient air would have us think we should. Why? Because it's radiant heat. Humans, being opaque gray bodies, absorb many wavelengths of incident electromagnetic radiation. We are very poor reflectors (good absorbers) of EM in the infrared spectrum, which is most of what comes from the stove. Sunlight feels warm because we also absorb a fair amount of the visible spectrum as well.

Air, on the other hand, absorbs and reflects very little radiation, most passes through (generally speaking, in the infrared, UV and visible spectrums). So the ambient air temperatures around a stove may remain low, especially soon after start up, while a person standing there absorbing all that radiation will heat up quite fast.

Radiant heaters also heat surfaces in the house, as mentioned above, directly. Walls, floors and ceilings get warm. As they warm above the ambient air temps, they begin to transfer heat to the air via convection (and some conduction, sort of). This is one of the disadvantages of a point source radiant heater... to get the heat transferred to distant areas of the house, they practical way is via air convection currents. Before you can get any hot air to transfer via convection, you have to heat the room surfaces first which takes time, and even when you do, natural convection currents are not very efficient on the same floor (but work well between floors).

Forced hot air, on the other hand... may take some time for things to feel warm. Air is a good insulator, so heated air won't warm humans or home surfaces as fast as radiant heat will (generally speaking). Also, even as the air heats up, the walls may remain cool. This means a net radiation loss from a person to the surrounding walls/foor/ceiling which will make us think the ambient air temperatures are cooler than they actually are.

Ok, sorry, I could go on for a while about this but I'll quit now. I took A LOT of heat transfer in college.

 

[leftovercrack]

i think its the wicked hot ceiling temp. sometimes i get a head rush if i stand up to fast.

 

[Tesen]

i think its the wicked hot ceiling temp. sometimes i get a head rush if i stand up to fast.

You need a ceiling fan

Tes

 

[CowboyAndy]

I live in Upstate NY but grew up in Mass and get made fun of all the time for saying "wicked"... glad I am not alone!


I have noticed 2 things in our house:

70 in our house is warmer than 70 at my in laws.

The kids used to complain they were cold when it got below 66 while heating with oil, now they complain when the mercury drops below 73...

 

[KsWoodsMan]

You need a ceiling fan

Tes

or remain seeted and send someone for beer.

 

[leftovercrack]

You need a ceiling fan

Tes

we have eight of them

 

[Coldfront]

I have a forced air combo wood/gas furnace, and the heat coming out of the vents is a lot hotter when burning wood. You can almost burn yourself touching the metal vent, but when the gas is on, the vents are only warm not hot. The bottom line is wood cranks out a lot more heat than gas. And when the floors, walls, furniture, etc. all gets up to temp. it doesn't take much for wood heat to keep it warm, where gas has to run all the time to do the same. With wood the heat is constantly trickling up through the vents even when the blower is not on, but when the gas is not on, the vents feel cold. Wood heat rules.

 

[MJR]

This morning it got down to 65F. The kids almost wined. No one likes it under 72F. Most gas systems are set around 66F. Turn it up to 74F and it does feel warm (and expensive).

 

[chainsaway]

I think Mark nailed that one real good, all that radiant heat absorbed by our surroundings is partly radiated back to us, warm air= warm summer day in the shade, wood stove heat= warm summer day in the sun...