Circulating fan opinions ???

[Wirenut2266]

Alright here's my thought. Now that I got this 75k btu wood stove installed, lets try and circulate some air. I have quite a few ceilingm fans, there okay I guess. I put stove on main floor, so 1800' basement will get quite chilly if I don't move a little air down there. I am going to try and not use furnace fan if possible. I want this to run full "auto", when stove fan kick's in from t-stat, start circulating fan. I could easily tie this in to my furnaces DC drive with a relay, and start furnace fan. Those dc boards and motors on furnaces are huge $$$, so I would rather maybe install a duct booster???
Does anyone know if they make a booster fan for lets say 3600 sqr. feet and move enough to actually do anything. Or am I just wasteing time and effort??? There has to be somethin out there that will move a decent amount of air??? Thanks for opinions!!!! Bruce

 

[avalancher]

I have the same problem at my house. My home is a split level with the lower level being a half a floor lower than the rest of house. I first just ran the furnace blower, but with an outside heat pump unit it just cooled the air right off as it went outside and then back in so I had to scrap that idea. I went looking for a duct booster that could move the air from the upper to the lower and never did find anything that was economical. The local shop suggested building a unit using a new blower and home built box and locate it in the crawl space under the upper floor, but it ended up costing big bucks.
I finally ended up using a fan in the stairway, got it cheap enough at Lowes, and it was surprising how well it moved the air down. Temps seem to stay in the low 70's and upper 60's, which is fine for our bedroom area anyway.
Wish I had some better ideas for you!

 

[paladin]

Regular house hold fans work,the problem is that alot of the fans you find today move the air to fast.You really want a fan that is low speed high vilosity fan that move air but not to fast. I have my burner in the basement It is just a free standing Greenbriar stove,I thought that heat would just rise up but it didnt work as well as I thought as we are gone durning the day to load the stove. So I set one fan over the stove in a duct to the living room and one in a chimmney chase up stairs and it heats 1400sf upstairs very well. I also put the fans on timers so they dont run all the time after the fire goes out during the day.

 

[mga]

when i installed my central a/c unit, the blower had 3 speeds. it was factory set at MEDIUM...which is normal for a/c units. the humidity determines the correct speed etc.

so, i installed a 3 position switch above the digital thermostat. that way, i could manually adjust the air speed, especially when i just have the blower running on "manual" to circulate air in the house without the a/c.

when i have a fire going, sometimes it gets a little too hot, so, i turn the blower on to HI and let it run for a while. the nice thing is the ceiling "returns" suck the hot air up and blow it around to every room.

most often, running it on LOW keeps the air warm.

 

[bore_pig]

I used 6" flexable insulated duct from menards with a duct booster fan. Moves about 300cu ft per minute. My stove is in the basement so I put an intake register in the ceiling near the stove. I then used the insulated duct to run into the hallway between the bedrooms. Works pretty good. Fan is a bit noisy though. Total cost was around $85.

I'll be trying a new fan this fall.