Distribute wood stove heat

[nbaxley]

I have a 20'x30' old shed that I'm turning into a office/workshop. The office will occupy a 8'x15' corner of the workshop and be walled off and insulated from the rest of the workshop. I was given a fairly large wood burning stove by an uncle and I'm wondering how best to use it to heat both office and workshop. The office will be my home office and will house a couple of computers a desk and a couch. Right now I have no insulation and no walls put in and the stove is sitting in the corner not hooked up so I'm not fettered by any existing construction. I will be insulating the walls and the ceiling eventually. A couple of other factors. This is in central Illiois so the winters can get pretty cold. The roof is a fairly flat slant and pitches to the north only, it's just a one-way slant whatever that's called. There is a big sliding door on the east side that I'm not quite sure how I'm going to insulate yet. Several questions:

1) Is there a certain place to put the stove to get the best distribution. I can probably put it along the shared wall of the office and workshop to get a central location but I don't want to have it in the way too much. 2) Can I distribute the heat by routing the exhaust pipe through the building? Does that put off much heat itself and are the ways to help that along? 3) Are the are any precautions I need to take if I route the exhaust through the drywall walls from the workshop to the office? 4) Is it any better to send the exhaust out the wall than the roof?

I'm sure there are lots of other questions I should be asking as well so I'd really appreciate any insightes you've got.

Thanks, Nate Baxley

[default]

The simplest way is to not seal and insulate the partition between the office and the rest of the shop. If you allow airflow, (possible assisted by a fan), you can heat it like one big area.

Amazingly, it's called a "shed roof". As opposed to a "gable roof" which looks like a monopoly house.

You CAN put a long run of stove-pipe in, but the more pipe you have, and the more heat you suck out of it, the more creosote will condense out on the walls, which means you're going to be cleaning the stovepipe more often. If you go that route, put a sealable cleanout at each end of the horizontal run, buy your own wire brush sized for your pipe, and inspect it monthly during the heating season. Another downside is that that long run of stovepipe is likely to be in the way.

Other than using the special insulated fitting designed for that purpose, no.

If you don't mind a primitive looking setup, there's no particular reason why you couldn't cannabalise a radiator and a big-ass water tank, and build a gravity-fed, open-air system..

--Goedjn

[frank-in-toronto]

your house insurance will go up. if you don't tell them, you invalidate it. hmmm. give this some thought. electrical may be a better long term option. ...thehick

[Doug Boulter]

[e-mail] (nbaxley) wrote on 28 Sep 2004:

Remember that your office will contain a 200-400+ watt heater. You're using it now.

[Nate Baxley]

I've definetly thought about that. I'm hoping that will help assist the stove some.