Wood stove heat

There is one stairway to the upstairs, where it is colder. No ceiling fans. The fan blowing on the insert is to try to gain more heat in the room.

I"ll try assisting cold air to sink, with a fan on the bottom step, blowing downhill. Thanks.
 
My stove is in the basement at one end of my house, under the living room, with our bedroom upstairs at the opposite end. Bi-level setup, split staircase near the middle on the front wall, closer to the stove. I cut vents in our bedroom floor and put a 2 fan window unit on it, blowing the cool air into the basement. The heat reclaimer that I put on the older wood stove (Vermont Castings I think) blows toward the stairs, makes a nice circuit. Moving the cold air made a bigger difference than trying to push the hot air. I tried to run the loop the other way our first winter here, that did not work as well.
 
Just dont forget to have a CO detector too. People sometimes forget that wood burning stoves can still be a source of CO in your home.

Oh yes, winter time is a bad time for house fires too. Check your smoke detectors, or buy some if you dont have them!

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Three fires in preschool family houses recently. Somehow someone got a little water in the electrical fan area. I forget about the other two causes. People didn't know where their fire extinguishers were! They put them out when small. Mine is near the stove. If I can't get to it, the fire is probably way to big already for me to stop it, from what I can tell about house fires.
 
I run multiple(4) smoke detectors and a co detector too. My house isn't even that big but two detectors up and two down. Every fall my wife and daughter get a refresher from me on what to do in case of alarms, smoke, or fire. Basically get the f-ck out, but I also review where the fire extinguishers are and how to use them. Obviously a checking over of all batteries and if the extinguishers are still properly charged.

Heh I'm a safety conscious mofo. Raging fire in a steel box within your home is a big deal as far as I'm concerned. Not to be taken lightly.

I'll add I keep my stove area spotless, shop vac nearby and I suck up all the little bits of debris as I go.
 
Do any of you wood burners use a dedicated outside air intake to the fire box? If not, give it some thought as it makes a big difference in both efficiency and safety.
 
Altissimus said:
...1962 construction , doors and windows do a fine job
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You know, I have read lots of papers that attempt to prove that natural house leakage is the best and safest way, so you are not wrong and it does work.
We built our house around a wood cook stove and that is all we use for cooking and heat. Our house is also very tight and well insulated. The stove has a 6" air duct into the fire chamber and it works great.
All the negatives that I've read have used poor design to make their point. So it is like most things, done well it works but do it wrong and you will have problems.
 
I just installed a pellet stove for mom. It is perfect for her, compared to the double barrel stove in the basement, because she can easily handle the pellets and push a button to light it up. It is programable and can be set to turn on and off automatically at pre-determined times, and set to heat to a preset temp. It has an outside air ducted intake, and once it is burning, there is no detectable smoke or even heat waves coming out the fireplace chimney, as the hot air is fan forced out into her living room. Some drawbacks are that it will not function if the electricity goes down, and you have to buy the pellets, plus the double walled vent pipe is very pricey, but we still have the barrel stove for backup.
 
A friend of mine is a wood heat stove dealer. He keeps telling me that with the improvements in pellet stoves, they might well be the way to go for a lot of people. Aside from the positives that surveyor mentioned, I think the pellets produce a lot less ash than firewood.
 
woodworkingboy said:
Aside from the positives that surveyor mentioned, I think the pellets produce a lot less ash than firewood.
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Douglas Fir produces almost zero ash. I'm certain that it produces less ash than any other tree that grows at our latitude. My guess is that the pellets that were used in the comparison were from Doug Fir.
 
Round here pellets are hard to find come February. Corn or rice coal would be the trick. Think I'll just heat ol school.
 
Jed said:
Douglas Fir produces almost zero ash. I'm certain that it produces less ash than any other tree that grows at our latitude. My guess is that the pellets that were used in the comparison were from Doug Fir.
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Agreed Jed, Doug fir is about 95% what I burn. It's the top pick here.

I'd use pellets if the pellets were free and bags of them were just sort of in the ditch and on the side of the road, or five min up the nearest logging road you'd run across full pallets left on landings and whatnot. Until then, I'll stick with firewood.

Pinnacle pellets just built a brand new pellet plant that connects to the sawmill like 3 min from my house just came online this fall. And still I've heard you can't get pellets for free even as a neighbour. WTF has the world come to?
 
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