# Question about moving heat to upstairs of house from wood stove?



## westernmdlawn (Dec 7, 2008)

Hello,

Recently installed an Osburn 1800 wood stove in my living room. It is working great. I have an upstairs also which I would like to move the heat to at night a little better. I wanted to get input from you guys on whether my idea is safe or not.

I was thinking of some type of vent with a fan mounted in the ceiling of the living room where the stove is. This would be a ceiling / floor vent with a fan in the middle of some sort. Do they make such a thing? I'm guessing they they definitely do. I am thinking that the warm air on the ceiling of the living room above the stove can be pumped to a room upstairs. From there, hopefully it will distribute on its own to the other rooms. The stairway could be the cold air return in this scenario. 

Thanks in advance!


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## papossefan (Dec 7, 2008)

If you have forced air heat, you can run the fan on your furnace to circulate the heat from your wood stove through the entire house.


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## treemandan (Dec 7, 2008)

I would not waste my time with fans. Try to find the naural flow and work with that. I got 2 degrees hotter upstairs by cutting 1 new hole and 2 more degres by switching from louvered vents to Victorian vents on the old holes. Louvered vents are for force air ans its what was there when I bought the place. They really slowed the flow.
You are actually not supposed to have vents in the floor above a stove for safety reasons. Fireblock is supposed to be used. So keep that in mind cause if you cut holes you are weaking your defense against a fire and should do something else to help your defense. They do have vents that close up when they sense fire I think.
I have been wanting to run a pipes for a supression system and think when I start to fix my house I will do it then. I have a friend who has a bunch of thos old glass extinguishers which are now illegal cause they can harm people but which is worse? Burning in my sleep?
Right now I rely on the 6 alarms in my little rancher and I can just open a window and hop out of with my family.
I don't have the heart to have a drill cause my wife is up a lot with the baby but soon, very soon they both are going to have a rude awakening and be tossed out in the cold with no warning.
I wondered how I would respond being woke up by a fire alarm. I wondered if I would be foggy. When my wife woke me up one night at 2 am saying" Honey, there is someone..." Well, I was up, alert and armed before she got to " at the door".


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## treemandan (Dec 7, 2008)

papossefan said:


> If you have forced air heat, you can run the fan on your furnace to circulate the heat from your wood stove through the entire house.



I tried that with the air handler from the A/c unit. You can see results but you use energy.


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## westernmdlawn (Dec 7, 2008)

My house only has baseboard electric heat in each room, so no forced hair or heat pumps to use. We do have ceiling fans, and have been playing around with them to see if that will help but don't seem to make much difference.

I was thinking of using a bathroom ventilation / exhaust fan mounted high on the wall at a corner then running the exhaust flex pipe to a vent in our bedroom. 

As for fire safety and suppression, what would be the difference in a bathroom vent fan in the ceiling on the same floor? Seems to me that there would be no more fire safety issues than in a bathroom? The exception would be that it would pump smoke from the fire (if there ever was one) directly to our bedroom - probably not good.

I am also playing with the upstairs master bathroom (in the bedroom) exhaust fan too. I turned it on and shut some doors so all air would be drawn into that room. The exhaust fan pumps air outside. This didn't seem to work too well. I got about 1 degree in 30 minutes, but more importantly this pumps my warm air outside too while drawing air in from downstairs ( I think that is whats happening anyway). Right now my house is 68.8* downstairs and 64.8* upstairs. It is 15 degrees outside, and the fire has been going all day pretty much. It started at 57* downstairs this morning (fire was out overnight). Primary air controller on my stove is set to wide open all day. Any suggestions?

Also, I find that my burn times are not very good - about 2-4 hours. This is terrible for overnight heating. My fire is reduced to a few embers by early morning if I don't put wood on overnight. This wouldn't be such an issue if the heat were transferred to the bedroom upstairs. 

I hear people warning of overheating their stoves.... it doesn't seem like mine would do that if I tried. I always run it on wide open draft and it burns good, but doesn't seem to be too overly hot. I have a magnetic BBQ grill thermometer stuck on it, but not sure where to best locate it for a temp reading that is useful.


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## westernmdlawn (Dec 7, 2008)

OOPS.. Stove is an Osburn 2200, not an 1800 by the way.


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## Spotted Owl (Dec 7, 2008)

All we did was cut a hole in the floor/ceiling. We found a place upstairs that wasn't in the way, or in a high traffic area. Made sure nothing was in the way down below and the we cut a 2'X4' hole. Use some 1X? to frame in the hole a bit. Then we went to the local heater/furnace shop and bough some sheet metal. Give them dimensions and the will cut and bend the metal for you then all you have to do is screw it down to your 1X? framing. Then the MRS. had foo foo covers made for the openings. I suppose plain ole vent covers would work as long as the opening is a standard size that you can find.

If it is "cold" up there she will set a box fan next to the vent and that will suck up all the heat you need. Mostly the heat will just rise up thru the vent and that is mostly more than enough.

This is what we did and will be doing again now that we have moved. 


Owl


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## treemandan (Dec 7, 2008)

westernmdlawn said:


> My house only has baseboard electric heat in each room, so no forced hair or heat pumps to use. We do have ceiling fans, and have been playing around with them to see if that will help but don't seem to make much difference.
> 
> I was thinking of using a bathroom ventilation / exhaust fan mounted high on the wall at a corner then running the exhaust flex pipe to a vent in our bedroom.
> 
> ...



Anyroom that has a house heater is supposed to blocked off with a firewall with no holes. That's code. Any hole would aloow flame to lick up.


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## Wife'nHubby (Dec 7, 2008)

I believe any hole you cut in your floor would be in violation of fire codes. 

We have a ranch so we have different issues than you. In playing around with trying to 'move' heated air we just put a fan on the floor in our bedroom and pointed it towards the other end of the house where the fireplace is. Works like a charm. 

Cold air is 'heavy'; hot air is 'light'. You have to get the 'heavy' cold air downstairs and when it moves out of the way hot air will replace it. On a two story think of cold air like a flow of water (someone on another list used this terminology and I think it is great). Put a fan at the bottom of your stairway pointed towards the room where your heat source is at. Try this, see if it helps - but don't cut any holes in the floors!

Shari


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## Dalmatian90 (Dec 7, 2008)

House I grew up in woodstove was in the basement and my dad put a vent in hallway closet (south side of living room). Had a grate over it, kept the carpet that was cut to put it in and placed that over in summer.

Open the door to the basement (north side of living room), open the closet door, remove the carpet cover and you had a way for warm air to rise and cold air to fall in a circulation pattern.

Before we built that house, I just barely remember living at my grandmothers (moved out when I was four), but that house had a grate from an upstairs bedroom to the living room, too. I remember lowering toys and such on strings through it 

These may not be up to code, with concerns about providing another (and unexpected) path for a fire to travel. I'm not sure they're that dangerous if you have an open interior stairway or if you keep the basement stairway open anyway...fires gonna come up those pdq.


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## westernmdlawn (Dec 7, 2008)

Well, the hold I was thinking of installing would actually be on the upper wall, not the ceiling. Not sure if that is any different. Hmmm........ has to be a way to do this.


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## Wet1 (Dec 8, 2008)

You do know they make vents with fusible links (which close the vent) in them for just this application, don't you?


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## ASEMASTER (Dec 8, 2008)

cold air moves the hot air, if your going to use a fan place it at the bottom of your stairs and push the coldest air to or at your stove , I have a stove in my upper level of the house and heat my lower floor by moving the cold air to the top of the second floor cealing blowing down on to the stove, this also helps to cool the stove as it is to big for the house. the heat trys to go down the stairs.


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