Ceiling fan and wood stove

Arborist Forum

Help Support Arborist Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

phil21502

ArboristSite Operative
Joined
May 8, 2012
Messages
257
Reaction score
23
Location
MD
My living room is 15ft wide by 30ft long. There is a ceiling fan on each end as well as the wood stove on one end. My question is which way should each fan be blowing to spread the heat thru the house?
 
Up and up is my take. Easier to move light air with heavy air. Same principle in placing a small fan at the end of the hall pointed towards the stove to heat the bedroom.

Do an experiment with a therm in the room and run both ways for an hour or so and take a look. Every house is a little different but physics never changes.
 
Fans are supposed to rotate clockwise. Thats what I have red.
 
There is a reverse switch on (most) fans for a reason. On reverse and on the lowest setting the blades pull cool air up forcing the warm air down along the walls. If you have the air pushing down you will feel the "breeze" a lot more and which makes you colder. By all means try it both ways and be the judge yourself. I keep one in the loft and one in the Great room on reverse and on speed 1 all winter.
 
I tried one up and one down thinking it would create a good current and move the air quickly, it just made me dizzy when they were both in my field of vision :laugh:

Now I do up and up, it moves the air without creating a breeze.
 
I went around with a bunch of incense sticks early in the heating season, and tried a bunch of things in my house. I have fans on the floor blowing toward the stove from various places in the house. I have an archway to the rest of the house about 2 feet below the ceiling in the room where the stove is, and a big ceiling fan in the stove room.

After smelling up the house for days with those incense sticks, I made a strange discovery. In my case, I got better heat transfer by just using the floor fans, and leaving the ceiling fan off! The ceiling fan tended to mix up the air in the stove room too much. With it off, I only had a five degree temperature change through the house, With it on, it was close to 8-10 degrees...
 
Heat is hard wired to rise, by setting the fan to more aggressively pull the rising heat up you also displace the heat faster all threw the house...

...it worth a try.
 
Hello,
What MotorSeven said is supposed to be true.......by having the fan draw air UP, it then forces the warm air down the walls from the ceiling. I have two ceiling fans in my great room (22' high ceiling) where the woodstove is, however, the room is too big for that principle to work....the air could never reach the walls. So, I run my fans down and it forces all that warm air down off the ceiling where you don't need it. Some people talked about there being a breeze, yes, if you feel anything at all it is nice warm air....not cold !!!!!! I believe you have to determine how to run your fans on an individual room basis.


Henry and Wanda
 
I would mount the ceiling fan a little ways away from the stove instead of directly above it.
For my house I have my ceiling fan 12 ft in front of the stove. And I also have upright fan/blower to push the warm air out of the living room. This greatly spread the warm air throughout the house.
If I could rebuilt my air handling duct work or build a new house, I would have the air intake mounted directly above my stove to suck in the warm air and distribute it into all the rooms.
 
I've tried it both ways in the vaulted den. With it down I feel more heat dissipating from the room into other rooms in the house, but will feel a breeze when we're near it. With it up, we just don't feel much heat at all, as though we lost it through the ceiling. I leave it down. Our thermostats say it works better that way.
 
My take on the ceiling fan physics are down and out. By running it down the warm air is forced out of the room through the other doorways. Another cool trick I have with forcing the heat out of is placing a fan on the outside of the doorway pointed down and in. It pushes cool air into the room and forces the warm out above the fan. I can feel a nice rush of warm air leaving the room. If you push the cold air into the room the warm air has no other choice.
 
Our stove is in the end of the house with a vaulted (17-foot) ceiling. I run a 60-inch fan on low, up in winter. It will move air from the other end of the house, nearly 50 feet away (whether by convection or by the fan, it moves). I can keep the entire house warm (58x28 x 2 story) with only that fan running, but we have a semi-open floor plan.

One reason to have it up is so that it forces the dry warm air down across the windows, and prevents them from sweating...which isn't really a concern with a wood stove or modern windows.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top