Ceiling Fans Blowing Up or Down In Room With Wood Stove?

[dodge man]

I think the logic of fan blowing up during the winter is the hot air up high gets forced down at the edges of the room and washes down the walls to get down lower in the room. Or so I’ve read.

 

[Wagtail]

Down during the cold months and off during the warm/hot months.

This is due to a very high 'cathedral' ceiling.

 

[Milo]

Almost never works as folks imagine it should. The trouble is that most houses have insulated ductwork running thru unconditioned space, with an air handler also in a cooler basement or attic, and it's sucking in air that's only maybe 80 - 85F from the ceiling above the stove.

The losses going thru the cold ductwork are enough that the air blowing out the other end is too cool.

If you happen to design your own house and place all ductwork and air handler inside the insulated envelope, then of course it can work, and I know at least two people who did exactly this. But in any house you didn't design specifically for this purpose, it's usually a losing battle.

This can no doubt be true in some cases WinterDeere, but even if the 85* air near a return drops 15* before being distributed to the cooler rooms it's still removing warm air from where it's too hot, and moving it to rooms that are cold so win win. And the 15* that is "lost" is warming a basement, unheated wall cavity, etc. Of course if warming a vented attic it's wasted.

In my case all ductwork within the house walls, floors, and crawl space is encapsulated in foam so it really works well for me. This shows some of the ductwork in the crawl where the air handler is.

 

[WinterDeere]

Down during the cold months and off during the warm/hot months.

This is due to a very high 'cathedral' ceiling.

Even with high ceilings, up is often preferred. Either direction does the same job of breaking up stratification, moving cold air up to displace the hot down around the perimeter of the room, or forcing the hot air straight down. But the reason people prefer upflow in cold winter is that it avoids having any air blow straight onto you, making you feel colder when it's not excessively warm.

This can no doubt be true in some cases WinterDeere, but even if the 85* air near a return drops 15* before being distributed to the cooler rooms it's still removing warm air from where it's too hot, and moving it to rooms that are cold so win win.

True! But people often don't like the feel of 70F air blowing onto them out of heating registers. Heck, I remember older people around here complaining about air a little warmer than that blowing onto them from registers, when people first started converting from furnaces (120 - 140F) to heat pumps (90 - 110F).

So yes, you're pushing even colder air out of the room, which does heat the home. But it might still be uncomfortable for anyone in the room subjected to that airflow, unless you have a variable speed air handler and can dial down the velocity to reduce this effect.

And the 15* that is "lost" is warming a basement, unheated wall cavity, etc. Of course if warming a vented attic it's wasted.

Also true! But wood stoves have pretty limited firepower, so most of us heating by wood are doing all we can to avoid putting heat into any space other than our primary targets. Most "large" stoves hold only 700k BTU of hardwood, and while you have some control over the rate at which that's doled out, pushing for higher outputs means shorter burn times and more frequent need for reloads. I'm usually damn tired of reloading stoves by mid-winter!

 

[Milo]

True! But people often don't like the feel of 70F air blowing onto them out of heating registers....

So yes, you're pushing even colder air out of the room, which does heat the home. But it might still be uncomfortable for anyone in the room subjected to that airflow, unless you have a variable speed air handler and can dial down the velocity to reduce this effect.


Also true! But wood stoves have pretty limited firepower, so most of us heating by wood are doing all we can to avoid putting heat into any space other than our primary targets. Most "large" stoves hold only 700k BTU of hardwood, and while you have some control over the rate at which that's doled out, pushing for higher outputs means shorter burn times and more frequent need for reloads. I'm usually damn tired of reloading stoves by mid-winter!

Yes with the variable speed air handler set to its lowest speed on "fan on" you can hardly feel or hear it running, but it is circulating air. It wouldn't be so pleasant or comfortable if the fan operated on high speed.

Actually my Jotul wood stove heats my entire 1,700' home even down to 5 or 0 which is about as cold as it gets here. Granted at that temperature I'm burning a lot of wood to maintain 67-69 during the day but much less so as I let the house cool to 58-60 at night. Still when it's that cold, after 11pm I need to reload the stove twice more during the night. LOL yeah by February I'm ready for spring!

 

[CalG]

This can no doubt be true in some cases WinterDeere, but even if the 85* air near a return drops 15* before being distributed to the cooler rooms it's still removing warm air from where it's too hot, and moving it to rooms that are cold so win win. And the 15* that is "lost" is warming a basement, unheated wall cavity, etc. Of course if warming a vented attic it's wasted.

In my case all ductwork within the house walls, floors, and crawl space is encapsulated in foam so it really works well for me. This shows some of the ductwork in the crawl where the air handler is.

I find the look positively ghastly!

I would suffer a lifetime of "inefficeint A/C" before I would have my basement look like that.

 

[Milo]

Basement? LOL it's just a crawl space!

 

[jyoutz]

Once the living room is comfortable I have the ceiling fan on gently moving air up and the thermostat set to "fan on" which runs the air handler at slow speed to circulate the heat throughout my small 2-story house. Note the return above the stove.

That is the best solution. If you have a ducted forced air furnace, just run the furnace far to move the wood stove heat throughout the house. Once I discovered that, I quit using the ceiling fans.

 

[jyoutz]

This can no doubt be true in some cases WinterDeere, but even if the 85* air near a return drops 15* before being distributed to the cooler rooms it's still removing warm air from where it's too hot, and moving it to rooms that are cold so win win. And the 15* that is "lost" is warming a basement, unheated wall cavity, etc. Of course if warming a vented attic it's wasted.

In my case all ductwork within the house walls, floors, and crawl space is encapsulated in foam so it really works well for me. This shows some of the ductwork in the crawl where the air handler is.

I agree. The objective with running the furnace fan is to distribute the air, not necessarily blow hot air . It takes the excessive heat from the room with the wood stove and moves air throughout the house. In order to work well, you need to program the fan to run at least every 30 minutes for awhile and leave it running 24/7.