Interesting discovery with woodstove and fan pointed in front of it

[sixdogs]

We have a modern ranch house with a small woodstove fully inside the fireplace opening and it didn't heat the house very well. Our mantle got cooked, the living room was too hot and the other rooms unevenly cold. In the past, we stuck small computer-type fans in the upper corners of the door openings and that sort-of worked. But the mantle was still too hot and some rooms cold.

By accident, today i placed a table top fan on the floor and about five feet away from the stove so it blew across the front of the stove. Fan was on the middle setting. Now, everyone may already know this but it's news to me that all of my stove and heat problems were immediately solved. The mantle is no longer hot, the living room is much cooler and the back rooms are about the same temp as the living room where the woodstove is. Just moving the air around with a bigger fan fixed it.

I'll add that i have always placed a cookie sheet on the top of the stove so it hangs over in front a bit to deflect heat off the mantle. That's still there. As well, the living room where the stove is has a ceiling fan but there are no other fans in the house. Just my two cents here so it's an FYI.

 

[Locoweed]

I have a 12 inch fan setting on the floor at the end of my hallway that is pointed at the wood stove approximately 40' away. It circulates the air to the bedrooms pretty well & like you say, keeps the living room at a reasonable temp. Been using the same fan for 15 years. At the end of the heating season I clean & lube it. It still looks & works like new.

 

[MotorSeven]

Small fans are wonderful for moving & circulating heat. Sometimes it takes a bit of time and experimentation because every house is different, but in the end they are always a benefit even when trying to heat from the basement.

 

[DKCDKC]

I had experienced the overheating phenom of stoves before so, when I built my retirement home 10 years ago, I had the HVAC guys install an intake for the heat pump almost directly above the stove. Now the air handler usually takes away enough heat to impact the rest of the house on really cold days when the system runs a lot. Otherwise I simply flip the fan on the system on and it works. One small Irish stove can actually warm the entire house above the thermostat setting if the outside is above about 25. Needless to say, my aux heat never comes on - even during times as in recent days when the outside fell below 10 at night, with daytime highs in the low 20s.

 

[joshuabardwell]

I have tried turning my central air fan on to circulate hot air from the stove around the rest of the house. It hasn't produced good results, though. The intakes are on the upper floor, so you would think that would be pulling the rising warm air from the stove (on the middle floor) and pushing it into the basement, among other places. This summer, we used plastic to block off all of the registers on the middle floor, because not enough cold air was getting up into the upper floor and loft. I wonder whether that could make the heat distribution work better too.

 

[bearcreek paul]

You can find out some good information on the anthracite coal forum. Check out the cold air returns. It may help with getting your heating system working better and save time on trial and error.

 

[groundcover]

You may want to add a heatshield to your mantle Sixdogs. You should be 36" from stove to a combustible. A piece of sheet metal spaced an inch away from the mantle with something like an electric fence insulator will cut that clearance in half. Over time the wood chemisty changes and a fire can start at temps as low as 400 degrees f. If you can't keep your hand on the wood with a hot fire shield it !! Glad you mad your house more comfortable, you just can't beat wood heat ! As we said in the '70s " OPEC kiss my ash" !:laughing:

 

[tcreeley]

I always use a fan blowing across the wood stove. Heat rises up and stays up until it cools. A fan disrupts that and forces it to mix with the cooler air- providing more even heating.
Summer fans that oscillate are nice, bullet fans work also.

 

[DKCDKC]

I am no expert on HVAC systems but I know that blocking vents or intakes can make the system work harder. Our house is laid out with vents and intakes in every room so that closed doors won't interfere with the air flow. Many houses I encountered with differences between floors or ends of the house stem from a forced air system put in for some other heating system and then used for a heat pump. In most cases the ducts were too small and not balanced for a heat pump and performance was poor. It might be an idea to - the next time you have your furnace/heat pump checked, discuss the problems with the rep who might have some ideas how you could add a vent or something to enhance performance.

For multi-story homes, I have acquaintances who have literally cut a vent in the floor above the stove to allow heat to rise. Usually you just offset a the vents a bit so stuff won't fall through the vent into the lower floor. My daughter has a vent cut in a wall between the room with the fireplace and the home's foyer. She installed a whisper fan in it and it is quite effective at moving heat.

 

[sam5570]

I fixed that problem several years ago my wood stove is in the living room and it stays with in 2 degree's of the rest of the house the key is ceeling fan's i have 1 in every room in house temp stays pretty much same whole house.