Movig air in the house

[John Paul Sanborn]

How do you get air circulation with an insert?

Our fireplace is at the end of a drafty little house and in a 200 sqft room.

Do you set up a fan or two to get the air moving, or just convection?

 

[Adkpk]

We have a 1500' sq ft. cottage with a wood stove. I spent most of my time up there last winter. I never turned the thermostat over 55 (to keep the pipes from freezing when I wasn't there). The stove keeps the whole house at 70 plus no problem without any circulation. Mind you somebody really cut no corners insulating it but the widows are another story. I really never felt a draft. I've actually wondered if I sat outside a drafty window if I would feel heat.

 

[Bowtie]

I have an insert, and ended up hanging a box fan from the ceiling blowing down our hallway to move heat into the bedrooms. This is temporary until I get the blower system installed in the attic. But it works very well!

 

[mga]

i have an "L" shaped ranch. i use ceiling fans religiously...24/7

 

[Bowtie]

Ceiling fans are awesome! I use them, plus the box fan to move air through the house.

 

[logbutcher]

For wood heat think radiation ( direct line to your butt ), and convection (moving the air around an area by natural heat flow). Design the stove location to do it without artificial means. Inserts often need blowers to move the heat out from the fireplace box. Extend the hearth out for better heat. If you can't get by without a fan, then use the quiet small, efficient "muffin fans" like the one on your computer. They can be put in doorways, hung from the ceiling: small silent, use little energy. They're cheap.
Big fans like ceiling ones move air but then you need more heat: kind of a reverse wind chill effect. The blades work for target practice.

 

[allthegross]

im living in a 5200 sq ft house. my living room has a 40 ft ceiling with a ceiling fan. with the fan on med i can keep the downstairs at 80 when it is 20 outside

 

[mga]

im living in a 5200 sq ft house. my living room has a 40 ft ceiling with a ceiling fan. with the fan on med i can keep the downstairs at 80 when it is 20 outside

40 foot ceilings....awsome.

 

[redprospector]

I run my celing fan's in reverse in the winter. This moves the air up, along the celing, and down the wall's. It works better for me in reverse than the standard "blowing the air down".

Andy

 

[Bowtie]

I run my celing fan's in reverse in the winter. This moves the air up, along the celing, and down the wall's. It works better for me in reverse than the standard "blowing the air down".

Andy

I do that too, thats what they were made to do.

 

[allthegross]

40 foot ceilings....awsome.

imagine what my heating bill looked like before the insert...the insert has only gown out for cleaning since the beginning of oct. 20 degrees out today with a snow storm coming should be nice and toasty warm in here

 

[mga]

imagine what my heating bill looked like before the insert...the insert has only gown out for cleaning since the beginning of oct. 20 degrees out today with a snow storm coming should be nice and toasty warm in here

i would imagine your gas furnace gets a workout...or, rather used to. i'm still trying to picture a 40 foot ceiling since i live in a ranch...lol man....how do you get the cob webs? LOL or, even paint the thing???

your air central conditioner must be about 4 tons(?)

sounds like a nice house tho.

 

[RaisedByWolves]

I have my stove in the basement and thought convection would circulate enough air to heat the up stairs, and it does, just barely. With the basement at 76* the upstairs is at 64* which is what we would normaly set our thermostat at.



I put regesters in the floors in the bedrooms furthest from the stairs which is where the heat rises. In conjunction with these I will be adding some "Duct booster" fans in 6" ducts connected to the regesters in the floor.


The fans only draw 35w and they will be on an electronic percentage timer so I dont have to run them constantly. The % timer lets you set how many minutes the fans run out of a given period of time. Im going to start off setting them to run 10min out of every hour and see how it does.



.

 

[allthegross]

i would imagine your gas furnace gets a workout...or, rather used to. i'm still trying to picture a 40 foot ceiling since i live in a ranch...lol man....how do you get the cob webs? LOL or, even paint the thing???

your air central conditioner must be about 4 tons(?)

sounds like a nice house tho.

we have two central air i think one is a five ton and one is a 4 ton. 3 zone hydro air (oil fired boiler) to heat the bed rooms very cold and snowy outside right now and 82 in my living room and kitchen. as far as the cob webs go i bought a very long extension duster for the beams and fan also good for cob webs in the corners.

JD

 

[dave_b_quick]

"Magic Heat" moves enuf air

This stove was $15 at a garage sale. Last winter it was my main heat but I had to run the central gas heat as a backup when the temp outside got below 10°. I was running a ceiling fan above it to try and get the heat to the rest of the house with limited success. This year I put in the "magic heat" flu heat recovery unit (from northern tool) and I haven't bothered running the ceiling fan cuz it's so warm upstairs. The "magic heat" box has its own fan and thermostat and blows enough hot air to the stairwell on the other side of the living room to get the heat upstairs. So far we've only gotten down to 18° outside but I'm still not even close to starting up the central gas furnace. I'm not stoking up the wood fire as hot as I could yet either, saving the driest wood in case it really gets cold. Seems like the magic heat gets a lot more heat out of the same amount of wood, and it's a different kind of heat. The stove is mostly radiant heat while the flu heat reclaimer is hot air which distributes better.

 

[dave_b_quick]

"magic heat" photo

hope this photo posts ok:

 

[Al Smith]

hope this photo posts ok:

That thing has been around for years under a bunch of names,"stack robber" is one.


They work pretty good but the down side is they might lower the stack temp below 300 degrees ,the point where creosote forms.

The air thing,I just use the ceiling fans.The insert has a fan on it.

In a week or so,as soon as the temp gets below twenty degrees I'll fire up the woodstove.It will maintain above 70 degrees in the whole house of about 1800 sg feet,L shaped. Even at zero,if the stove is fired correctly my geothermal seldom comes on.I usually shut it down about mid March .

Much above tweny degrees and it is too hard to maintain the temp other than setting around in your undies and opening a window.It's a brick house with good insulation,windows etc.Around 30,000 btu heat loss per hour at zero,if my calculations are corect.

 

[goof008]

Keep the doors open to all the rooms in your house and turn on any cieling fans, in reverse, and switch on the blower motor for your furnace, that should help spread the heat around.

 

[Wood Scrounge]

I moved my cold air return in the living room up near the ceiling and about 5 feet from being directly over the stove. I use magnetic covers to block all the other returns and I run the furnace fan. Another advantage is I have a humidifier and HEPA filter built into the furnace ducts. My next project is to build a “scoop” and cut a hole in the floor for the blower of the insert to pull air from the basement I will also build a box to place a filter in that as well.

 

[mga]

hope this photo posts ok:

hey man...aren't you worried about that wood being so close to the burner?