Distribution of Rising Heat from the Pellet Stove.

olhasmith

Hi Guys!

We are brand new stinkin' home owners. We bought a house about 10 months ago in the mountains where the winters are brutal and the home prices are affordable lol!

We have a two story bi level on a slab. It's a two story rectangle basically. Last winter (our first winter) we survived on electric baseboards by locking ourselves up in one room the whole 8 months of winter - and our electricity bill was still $390!

This year we managed to get a Harman pellet stove hand-me-down and decided to install it on the ground floor pointing towards the other end of the house. It's going to get the first floor heated up quite nicely, however, the second floor is where we all sleep and based on our experimenting, the heat doesn't seem to want to rise, and instead gets trapped under the dense cold air of upstairs floor and just hovers on the first floor ceiling.

We explored putting vents into the floors by cutting out actual holes, however, I'm not too thrilled about that. It's dangerous for troublemaking kids and resale of our home drastically goes down, let alone the $$ tune our home insurance company will sing once they find out we made holes in our floors lol.

I've been doing some research and wanted to ask anyone for advice on this. What if we put parallel vents into the walls instead on each floor!? Will the heat rise? or will it get stuck inside the wall/between the studs?

Do I need to run ducts? can I just install an empty vent without a fan?

We have about $1k budget on this, The walls are thin - so no legitimate ductwork can be installed.

Any help on this is much appreciated! Thank you!

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Jamie Hall

Warm air rises. Always. However, correspondingly, cool air sinks. If the cool air can't get back to where the pellet stove is, the warm air can't displace it -- and you have no heat. You absolutely have to have the circulation.

In old houses -- often heated by a single wood stove -- you do have grates in the floor between the first and second stories -- but not just over the stove. You need to provide a way for the cooler air upstairs to get back downstairs without fighting with the warm air trying to rise. Sometimes the location of the stairs can provide this return flow, but often you may need to have grates near the perimeter of the building, and free flow from where they are back to the stove -- and those grates actually need to be bigger than the hot air grate above the stove. And all the grates need to be good sized -- for gravity air circulation such as we are talking here, two feet on a side is none too big.

Even with adequate grates, however, do not expect particularly even heat If the stove is central to the structure, it will be pretty good (unless someone shuts a bedroom door, which is a no-no). If the stove is at one end, though, the other end is going to be cooler. Can't help it.

I'm not sure why your home insurance folks would have a problem with it, provided you have solid metal (preferably cast iron) grates in the openings.

mattmia2

There may be vents with an intrumescent element that will seal up if it sees the heat of a house fire, that might make the insurance happy, but you would also need to make sure it doesn't see heat from the stove that would seal it up.

unclejohn

Lots of houses have metal grates for hot air circulation in the floor.

Jamie Hall

mattmia2 said:

There may be vents with an intrumescent element that will seal up if it sees the heat of a house fire, that might make the insurance happy, but you would also need to make sure it doesn't see heat from the stove that would seal it up.

Surely you jest, @mattmia2 ! A four square foot grate? Though I suppose that one might be able to come up with a fire damper for a grate that size...

As @unclejohn says, though, metal grates in the floor for heat transfer are very common, and I find it hard to believe the insurance company would have a problem. But... you never know.

olhasmith

Thank you all for your input! Jamie Hall thank you so very much, after what you said, we've done more research and are going to call a tech to come in and do mild duct work at the other end of the house for return air circulation in the walls. The stairs are not enough for the return flow and there's too much positive pressure downstairs. I think we can fit it all in on our budget in order to stay mildly comfortable upstairs during the teens in the winter.

ratio

My house doesn't have a return from the 2^nd floor, so it was always uncomfortable up there esp. during the cooling season. I ended up putting a (larger) fan pointing down the stairs—it's a lot better up there. Minimum expense, zero cutting.

JUGHNE

Old houses around here with wood burning stoves often had a ceiling/floor register vent assembly cut into the ceiling somewhere above the stove.
It was a straight thru set up. Was about 16 x 14 so would fit between floor joists on 16" centers.
The door at the top or bottom of the stairway was the return.
You might close the door during the day and open in the evening before bedtime.

As far as insurance companies are concerned they are more interested in knowing that you have a non-conventional fuel burning appliance in the house.
The small print in a policy may state that you have to report that fact to them or ?????.

Zman

I hear the comment about insurance companies not covering claims frequently. Does anyone have actual experience with this? I have worked with quite a few claims adjusters and have yet to meet one that is concerned (or knowledgeable) about building codes.

As for the grates, I can't imagine them effecting resale value as long as the workmanship is professional. There is absolutely no code requiring fire separation within a residential dwelling. If sound is a concern, you can use insulated ducts in an offset configuration to minimize sound transfer.