My woodstove is also in the basement. I have the same problem as you did at the beginning. Super hot in the basement (80F+) and relatively warm (71F+) on the main floor. After watching your video, I just turned on the fan in the heating system. The main floor instantly reaches (75F). Thanks so much for your tip.
This is what I use with my 2 year old high efficiency gas furnace. Our wood stove is on the first floor, but with 'circulate' on the furnace fan, the Stove heat reaches the whole of that sprawling floor (3,200 sq ft home) and upstairs too. The furnace fan runs on solar, but even in the winter there is enough solar power in our battery backup to do the job easily (along with other things like the Fridge and Freezer, etc.)
We have an old 60's style rancher. The standard living room and kitchen on one end, a hall with the bedroom other end. When I run our central unit on fan only, it seems to me it's just blowing cold air from the ducts that are down in the cold basement. Does that make sense? Any way to get wood heat from one end to the other?
Recommendations for a 3-floor tiny home in Oregon? I would be putting this on the ground floor (dining room/kitchenette), and the second floor is the living room and third is the bedrooms. Each floor is 15x15 feet. The total height of the home is 22 feet. Each floor is separated by stairs. Could we open windows on the first floor or would that just suck out heat? I wasn't planning on installing an A/C in the home, just fans (whole home is solar powered). Love your channel!
Your best bet would be to put it as close to the stairs as possible. 3 floors will be hard to heat with 1 stove unless it is next to the stairs and it is open
Depending on the layout of each floor, I would think it might be possible for the stove pipe to be run straight up, or with as little angles as possible, through each floor (insulated at each point it would be near anything combustible) to vent through the roof. That should provided some radiant heat to each floor, at least I think it would. Might make cleaning the creosote more of a challenge though. Kudos though, I'm a big guy, not sure I could adjust to a tiny home but who knows.
Love your videos, we have a wood stove in our tiny chicago home and your tips on keeping the fire hot, moving air around with fans have really helped. One question I have is should I be putting my humidifier close to the stove or more away? I have it next to it atm and I think it might just immediately be evaporating it.
Thanks you! The faster it evaporates the quicker the air will gain humidity. Higher temperatures gives the air more capacity to carry water so having the humidifier in a room that is warmer would, in theory, help evaporate water more quickly in turn raising the humidity of the air in the house quicker. I think the difference in having it near the wood stove or further away is negligible when it comes to how effective the humidifier is. I would put it where it is most convenient and you’d be most apt to keep it full because, for me, when it is not convenient I forget to fill it and then it does nothing for me 🤪
@@portercreek 100%! I wanna try out your method for the ac, but with my furnace setup idk if it’ll work… we have it in the loft where we rarely go and our ducts are poorly distributed… But hey I’ll give it a try
I was able to wire just the fan on my furnace. I use that a lot when I just want air circulation but not heat or AC. Once I get my wood stove going I want to run a return from near the top of the wood stove and put a sensor in there, if temp reaches over 35C or some other predefined temp I'll have it run the blower. For good measure I'll probably put a smoke sensor too so it turns it off if it detects smoke.
Is the air intake your using only the grate above your humidifier or are you using both? We don't have a humidifier, but are looking at your setup in order to improve our system. We don't have central ac so I think if I switch the thermostat so it's not on heat it will only circulate the air.
It is sucking in air through the hole where the humidifier was. You could add another 4x12 intake vent. Also covering a vent or 2 up stairs will help draw the cooler air down stairs. Please don’t forget to hit that subscribe button if you haven’t already!
That's what I do I have a floor grates in each room but I have a ranch and my wood burning stove is down in the basement and once I fire it up boy gets hot upstairs and decent downstairs
Hi, I’m looking for advice on spreading heat in my home using my existing ductwork. Here is my situation. I have to ventfree gas fireplaces in bigger open rooms, and there are 2 additional smaller bedrooms that get no heat from those at this point when the doors are closed. There are return air vents to the furnace which happen to be in the areas of the fire places. I was wondering if it would work to either run the blower only on the furnace(which I have the concern of burning out my blower leaving it on all winter) or. I was thinking to face small fans into the return air vents to force the heat throughout the house thus possibly heating those colder rooms and not running electric heaters. I’m on solar energy and trying to save on my grid usage. I’m thinking battery powered fans by the way. I use rechargeable batteries all over the place. I hope you can offer me some advice. Thanks in Advance.
I just moved into a brick house in Kentucky. There is a wood stove in the basement and it has a chimney. I'm not real construction savvy and I really don't understand how the heat distributes through the house. Could you explain it to me? I know heat rises but I don't know if it goes through the vents and if it does how does the smoke not enter the house? Is it just the heat from the basement rising through the vents or is it somehow connected? I have a two story plus the basement.
I have a rancher, and when it's not cold enough to fire up the outdoor wood boiler, the fireplace heat just doesn't get into the back bedrooms well enough. I tried the fan thing too, with no success. I found if I run the circulation blower on the propane backup heater, it's better, but not quite perfect. It still a little cold in the back bedrooms. I'll take a look at the intakes. I never thought about it until now. Great tip! Thanks!
@@portercreekI think I read somewhere that people use fans with wood stoves wrong. They use it as what would seem to make sense, putting the fan near the heat source blowing the hot air in the direction of the colder space. I'm not sure if this is true, but the article said if you put the fan in the area you want more heat to and blow the cooler air TOWARDS the heated space it'll push the cool air into the warm space displacing the warm air back towards the cooler space.
I know this is an old video, but I'm looking for a similar solution for heating distribution with our wood stove insert. A few things are different, though. Our stove is in our main floor living room. It does a great job keeping our big open concept 1st floor nice and warm. My kid's bedrooms are on the 2nd floor, and they get chilly. However, my furnace is in my crawlspace, and it is around 55° year round there! So I don't think using our HVAC fans would help distribute heat in our situation. Fans don't really help either, due to the stairs and bedroom configuration. Any tips?
I'm absolutely no HVAC expert, nor do I have any experience doing this, but this is my thought. Every "ducted" HVAC system has the registers where the output comes out and a cold air return duct, if your main floor has one or more returns that may pull the warm air thru the system set on fan, and maybe cover the returns upstairs completely or partially. Since could air returns typically are close to the floor and heat rises I don't know if making some kind of removable ductwork that would draw from higher up and connect to the return. The crawlspace temperature may be a problem and might take quite awhile for the ductwork to warm up enough to reduce the thermal loss. If possible insulate as much of the ductwork as you can.
@@karleewaddoups8152 the furnace pulls air from the main living areas, they usually won’t pull any from the crawl space. The upstairs rooms will always be a few degrees cooler. You could also put a fan on the floor of the upper level that points towards the stairs, this will help encourage the cool air to fall down the stairs while causing warmer air to rise
@@portercreek ah I get you. Thanks for sharing tips. I'm in same boat. Just thinking of running a back boiler stove in an open vent system with some radiators
I think it's common that forced air furnaces have some kind of 'air circulate' switch. Could you just flick that on and use your basement as the intake?
Not sure what you mean. It's the same furnace circulation fan that heats the house when the thermostat calls for heat. The amount of air it moves is quite noticeable. We must have much different systems.@@portercreek
If you know your way around relays you can make it energize y (call for cool) on a call for fan only and then break power to you outdoor unit when fan only is energized if interested I can explain in more detail
Well yes: the air handler for central is well suited. The business of running that in cold weather regrdless of heat source helps stabilize things - especially in houses where its in the freakin attic.
Yes, it’s on what is called off peak power. The will alternate units every 15 minutes during peak power draw times to help reduce the load on the system. So they will shut mine off for 15 minutes and then when they turn mine on for 15 minutes they will shut the neighbors off for 15. Any electricity I use on that meter is discounted about 40%
What you have done is logical, and is part of most contemporary furnace protocols. But, a Major Plus for you is to move the woodstove from the basement to the main floor of the house. You don't need the woodstove in the basement. The air circulation from your central fan will heat the basement.
As mentioned in the video, the only way this works is by shutting off the breaker to the ac compressor so it doesn’t run. The ac doesn’t actually turn on.
HI WE ARE THINKING OF PUTTING A WOOD STOVE IN THE BASEMENT, PROB GO OUT THE SMALL BASEMENT WINDOW ,"TAKING THE GLASS OUT" CAN THIS BE DONE. WE THINK THE ELEC COULD GO OFF FOR SO MANY OF US AND WE WANT TO BE SET UP FOR SUCH TIMES. ANY HELP, WOULD BE OST APPRECIATED. THANK YOU ANGELA I A DOING THE RESEARCH FOR THIS NOW, WE WILL DO SOMETHING ASAP.
Just put the wood stove where you spend time; that's what they do. Most heat in a cellar goes out through the foundation into dirt ( unless the cellar is used by people. ) Simple!
When the breaker to the ac is off it does not run the ac, it just speeds up the furnace fan a little which helps distribute the heat throughout the house.
@@portercreek you have that 95+efficient furnace. The stove is maybe 80, on top of running the fans, and you're struggling to get heat throughout the House, you'll save more just running the furnace. With what you got going on there.
I have a woodstove in my living room. When using daily my gas bill is 30 bucks a month. When not used 140. So yeah you save money. You dope@richvanorden7026
Wood is free and in abundance for most people qith a wood stove minus the saw expense but furnace fuel is expensive and not guaranteed to be available.
My woodstove is also in the basement. I have the same problem as you did at the beginning. Super hot in the basement (80F+) and relatively warm (71F+) on the main floor. After watching your video, I just turned on the fan in the heating system. The main floor instantly reaches (75F). Thanks so much for your tip.
Awesome! I am glad it helped you!
There are thermostats with “circulate” mode so you don’t need to turn off ac or do anything else
Thanks for commenting
This is what I use with my 2 year old high efficiency gas furnace.
Our wood stove is on the first floor, but with 'circulate' on the furnace fan, the Stove heat reaches the whole of that sprawling floor (3,200 sq ft home) and upstairs too. The furnace fan runs on solar, but even in the winter there is enough solar power in our battery backup to do the job easily (along with other things like the Fridge and Freezer, etc.)
We have an old 60's style rancher. The standard living room and kitchen on one end, a hall with the bedroom other end. When I run our central unit on fan only, it seems to me it's just blowing cold air from the ducts that are down in the cold basement. Does that make sense? Any way to get wood heat from one end to the other?
Recommendations for a 3-floor tiny home in Oregon? I would be putting this on the ground floor (dining room/kitchenette), and the second floor is the living room and third is the bedrooms. Each floor is 15x15 feet. The total height of the home is 22 feet. Each floor is separated by stairs. Could we open windows on the first floor or would that just suck out heat? I wasn't planning on installing an A/C in the home, just fans (whole home is solar powered). Love your channel!
Your best bet would be to put it as close to the stairs as possible. 3 floors will be hard to heat with 1 stove unless it is next to the stairs and it is open
Depending on the layout of each floor, I would think it might be possible for the stove pipe to be run straight up, or with as little angles as possible, through each floor (insulated at each point it would be near anything combustible) to vent through the roof. That should provided some radiant heat to each floor, at least I think it would. Might make cleaning the creosote more of a challenge though.
Kudos though, I'm a big guy, not sure I could adjust to a tiny home but who knows.
Love your videos, we have a wood stove in our tiny chicago home and your tips on keeping the fire hot, moving air around with fans have really helped. One question I have is should I be putting my humidifier close to the stove or more away? I have it next to it atm and I think it might just immediately be evaporating it.
Thanks you! The faster it evaporates the quicker the air will gain humidity. Higher temperatures gives the air more capacity to carry water so having the humidifier in a room that is warmer would, in theory, help evaporate water more quickly in turn raising the humidity of the air in the house quicker. I think the difference in having it near the wood stove or further away is negligible when it comes to how effective the humidifier is. I would put it where it is most convenient and you’d be most apt to keep it full because, for me, when it is not convenient I forget to fill it and then it does nothing for me 🤪
@@portercreek 100%! I wanna try out your method for the ac, but with my furnace setup idk if it’ll work… we have it in the loft where we rarely go and our ducts are poorly distributed… But hey I’ll give it a try
I was able to wire just the fan on my furnace. I use that a lot when I just want air circulation but not heat or AC. Once I get my wood stove going I want to run a return from near the top of the wood stove and put a sensor in there, if temp reaches over 35C or some other predefined temp I'll have it run the blower. For good measure I'll probably put a smoke sensor too so it turns it off if it detects smoke.
Around here, it is against code to have a return vent to the furnace within 10’ of the stove
Is the air intake your using only the grate above your humidifier or are you using both? We don't have a humidifier, but are looking at your setup in order to improve our system. We don't have central ac so I think if I switch the thermostat so it's not on heat it will only circulate the air.
It is sucking in air through the hole where the humidifier was. You could add another 4x12 intake vent. Also covering a vent or 2 up stairs will help draw the cooler air down stairs.
Please don’t forget to hit that subscribe button if you haven’t already!
@@portercreek Thank you, great ideas. Yes, I subscribed.
Cut vents in the floor in many places to get the heat to rise
Thanks for the tip!
That's what I do I have a floor grates in each room but I have a ranch and my wood burning stove is down in the basement and once I fire it up boy gets hot upstairs and decent downstairs
That is exactly what I did, I removed the carpets upstairs as well.
I WAS WONDERING ABOUT HOW TO DO THE PIPING
👍🏻
Hi, I’m looking for advice on spreading heat in my home using my existing ductwork. Here is my situation. I have to ventfree gas fireplaces in bigger open rooms, and there are 2 additional smaller bedrooms that get no heat from those at this point when the doors are closed. There are return air vents to the furnace which happen to be in the areas of the fire places. I was wondering if it would work to either run the blower only on the furnace(which I have the concern of burning out my blower leaving it on all winter) or. I was thinking to face small fans into the return air vents to force the heat throughout the house thus possibly heating those colder rooms and not running electric heaters. I’m on solar energy and trying to save on my grid usage. I’m thinking battery powered fans by the way. I use rechargeable batteries all over the place. I hope you can offer me some advice.
Thanks in Advance.
Why are you wanting to use the vent free gas fireplaces as your primary heat source? They burn the o2 in the house and add moisture and smell.
I just moved into a brick house in Kentucky. There is a wood stove in the basement and it has a chimney. I'm not real construction savvy and I really don't understand how the heat distributes through the house. Could you explain it to me? I know heat rises but I don't know if it goes through the vents and if it does how does the smoke not enter the house? Is it just the heat from the basement rising through the vents or is it somehow connected? I have a two story plus the basement.
smoke goes outside through the chimney
I have a rancher, and when it's not cold enough to fire up the outdoor wood boiler, the fireplace heat just doesn't get into the back bedrooms well enough. I tried the fan thing too, with no success. I found if I run the circulation blower on the propane backup heater, it's better, but not quite perfect. It still a little cold in the back bedrooms. I'll take a look at the intakes. I never thought about it until now. Great tip! Thanks!
I hope it helps! Thanks for commenting, please don’t forget to hit that subscribe button!
@@portercreekI think I read somewhere that people use fans with wood stoves wrong.
They use it as what would seem to make sense, putting the fan near the heat source blowing the hot air in the direction of the colder space.
I'm not sure if this is true, but the article said if you put the fan in the area you want more heat to and blow the cooler air TOWARDS the heated space it'll push the cool air into the warm space displacing the warm air back towards the cooler space.
I know this is an old video, but I'm looking for a similar solution for heating distribution with our wood stove insert. A few things are different, though. Our stove is in our main floor living room. It does a great job keeping our big open concept 1st floor nice and warm. My kid's bedrooms are on the 2nd floor, and they get chilly. However, my furnace is in my crawlspace, and it is around 55° year round there! So I don't think using our HVAC fans would help distribute heat in our situation. Fans don't really help either, due to the stairs and bedroom configuration. Any tips?
I'm absolutely no HVAC expert, nor do I have any experience doing this, but this is my thought.
Every "ducted" HVAC system has the registers where the output comes out and a cold air return duct, if your main floor has one or more returns that may pull the warm air thru the system set on fan, and maybe cover the returns upstairs completely or partially. Since could air returns typically are close to the floor and heat rises I don't know if making some kind of removable ductwork that would draw from higher up and connect to the return.
The crawlspace temperature may be a problem and might take quite awhile for the ductwork to warm up enough to reduce the thermal loss. If possible insulate as much of the ductwork as you can.
@@karleewaddoups8152 the furnace pulls air from the main living areas, they usually won’t pull any from the crawl space. The upstairs rooms will always be a few degrees cooler. You could also put a fan on the floor of the upper level that points towards the stairs, this will help encourage the cool air to fall down the stairs while causing warmer air to rise
Run your furnace fan ?
@@BruceSchomisch just the fan is the slowest speed the fan will blow and hardly moves any air
Can you move the stove to the living room?
Our living room is on the main floor, if I put it there the basement bedrooms would be freezing.
@@portercreek ah I get you. Thanks for sharing tips. I'm in same boat. Just thinking of running a back boiler stove in an open vent system with some radiators
I think it's common that forced air furnaces have some kind of 'air circulate' switch. Could you just flick that on and use your basement as the intake?
Yes, they do but they move a very minimal amount of air. When the ac is on they move a significantly larger volume of air.
Not sure what you mean. It's the same furnace circulation fan that heats the house when the thermostat calls for heat. The amount of air it moves is quite noticeable. We must have much different systems.@@portercreek
What about a gravity vent?
We don’t really have a good spot for one
Right now it is 74 degrees upstairs and it’s 77 degrees downstairs!
If you know your way around relays you can make it energize y (call for cool) on a call for fan only and then break power to you outdoor unit when fan only is energized if interested I can explain in more detail
In my old furnace I could have done this but on this newer HE one we had installed a few years it is not so straight forward
thank you
You're welcome
Well yes: the air handler for central is well suited. The business of running that in cold weather regrdless of heat source helps stabilize things - especially in houses where its in the freakin attic.
👍🏻
Ok, I'm ignorant.
How do you keep smoke from filling yhe house up
The wood stove has a chimney that exhausts all the fumes outside.
The power company cycles your AC????????
Yes, it’s on what is called off peak power. The will alternate units every 15 minutes during peak power draw times to help reduce the load on the system. So they will shut mine off for 15 minutes and then when they turn mine on for 15 minutes they will shut the neighbors off for 15. Any electricity I use on that meter is discounted about 40%
What you have done is logical, and is part of most contemporary furnace protocols.
But, a Major Plus for you is to move the woodstove from the basement to the main floor of the house.
You don't need the woodstove in the basement. The air circulation from your central fan will heat the basement.
👍🏻
I do the same, good video
Funny how so many people have given me a hard time about it, they apparently just don’t get the concept! Glad to know someone else gets it!
Double check, i think running your AC in winter can damage your system.
As mentioned in the video, the only way this works is by shutting off the breaker to the ac compressor so it doesn’t run. The ac doesn’t actually turn on.
HI WE ARE THINKING OF PUTTING A WOOD STOVE IN THE BASEMENT, PROB GO OUT THE SMALL BASEMENT WINDOW ,"TAKING THE GLASS OUT"
CAN THIS BE DONE. WE THINK THE ELEC COULD GO OFF FOR SO MANY OF US AND WE WANT TO BE SET UP FOR SUCH TIMES. ANY HELP, WOULD BE OST APPRECIATED. THANK YOU ANGELA I A DOING THE RESEARCH FOR THIS NOW, WE WILL DO SOMETHING ASAP.
Check out the video I posted on installing a wood stove in the basement
Just put the wood stove where you spend time; that's what they do. Most heat in a cellar goes out through the foundation into dirt ( unless the cellar is used by people. ) Simple!
Truth!
Kinda miss leading I'd title, " using my ac ducting" I really thought you used the actual ac to move heat lol
Thanks for comment
I KNOW THAT, IW ROTE YOU FROM THAT VIDEO, I GUESS YOU HAVE NOTHING ELSE TO SAY OK THX
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😂😂😂 explain how your saving money. And I'll explain how you're not by a long shot
When the breaker to the ac is off it does not run the ac, it just speeds up the furnace fan a little which helps distribute the heat throughout the house.
@@portercreek you have that 95+efficient furnace. The stove is maybe 80, on top of running the fans, and you're struggling to get heat throughout the House, you'll save more just running the furnace. With what you got going on there.
I have a woodstove in my living room. When using daily my gas bill is 30 bucks a month. When not used 140. So yeah you save money. You dope@richvanorden7026
Wood is free and in abundance for most people qith a wood stove minus the saw expense but furnace fuel is expensive and not guaranteed to be available.
How about you put a wood burning stove upstairs where u live and need the heat???? Call me crazy
You’re crazy