Some 25 or so years ago I lived (as a bachelor) in an old, crooked, run-down, two-story farm house… just me and the several bird-dogs I had at the time. I had a home-made barrel stove in the old dirt floor cellar that would crank out some serious heat… used a lot of wood, but made a ton of heat. The cellar would be like a dry sauna and you could live barefoot anywhere on the first floor… no carpet, wood and tile floors, but never had cold feet. The old oil-fired furnace didn’t work right, you had to go down and manually light it if ya’ wanted to use it… so it almost never ran, but the house was always warm enough for t-shirt wear. The second floor was heated through open grates in the floor, but I blocked them and the stairway off during winter and used the living room as my bedroom… … … … Ahhhh yes, the good-ol‘-days.
Some people say you shouldn’t put the stove in the basement because you end up heating mostly dirt. I’d argue that all day long, dirt is one heck of a good insulator. As a young bachelor I lived a handful of places where I put the stove in the cellar/basement... get that cellar heated up and the floor above it would be toasty warm… it was like having radiant floor heat in every room in the house.
