Having stove in the basement to heat whole house...

[HammerJoe]

Hi Guys...

I am looking to have a pellet/woodstove installed to curve the costs of increasing "hydro"/electricity prices.

My original idea was to have it in the living area but due to the layout of the house I don't have alot of options where to put the stove.

The safest place was to put it in the mudroom which is roughly 6'X15'.

The ideal place would be to have it facing the kitchen so it could blow the heat into the house.

My problem, there's a window there and due to clearance distances the stove would take too much space for anybody to walk in there...

So I am pretty much limited to have it in the basement...

The basement is not finished.

32X14 of the walls are concrete and 32X14 is half concrete and half wood(thus insulated with vapor barrier)

The concrete wall is underground while the wood one isnt.

My square area is roughly 1280sq feet.

If putting a stove in the basement, and making some vents in the floor to allow the heat to go upstairs, would it require a significant amount of heat (pellet consumption) than having it upstairs?? What kind of figures would it be?

I do plan on insulation the whole basement, I just dont know when it will happen. :)

Thanks for all the help you can provide to help me reduce my energy costs. :)

[wkearney99]

Don't get a stove, get a furnace. They do make ones that use pellets. Then just have it hooked up like anything else.

[tbasc]

I understand there are issues with negative pressures if sufficient make up air is not available.

TB

[buffalobill]

i don't see the savings adding up by heating a previously unheated basement. if there's a chance you have gas, look at the wonderful RINNAI gas heaters. gas is presently cheaper than electricity heat in buffalo ny. here's a link to al in maine, you'll enjoy his website:

[Edwin Pawlowski]

I have a similar setup. My intention is the augment, not replace the other heat. That works. As for heating the entire house, it is not going to work well. Trust me, many homes around here heat with wood and they all have the same problem -- poor air circulation.

You can assist it with fans, you can risk fire codes by putting in floor vents, but you will just not achieve the same level of comfort you are used to. A temperature variation of 20 to 30 degrees from the stove location to the other corner of the house is common.

If you put in open floor vents, one over the stove, one a the opposite end of the house, you improve the air circulation and heat distribution, but you also make a serious hazard for flame spread in the event of a fire, by the stove or any other origin. I'm not sure it it is local or national, but they are not permitted in most areas. .

Insulating the basement will have a better payback than the stove. If there is one thing you are going to do, put up the insulation. Frame the bottom portion of the wall with 2 x 4 and carry them across the top. Insulate it and then put a wood shelf around the room where it meets the upper framed section. You will end up with about 10" of shelf width just below the windows. That is where I am sitting right now and it holds a small TV in the corner, speakers, some bookcases, etc.

[I R Baboon]

i disagree with everyone. i have a 880 sq ft 103 y/o ranch style house with little or no insulation anywhere. my woodstove is in the basement. it heats up the entire basement and then the nice warm air does what it does best. on the ceilings of the main floor there is a ceiling fan to push that nice warm air pack down again. i can heat my entire house all winter just using the woodstove in the basement.

[m Ransley]

A few thoughts, some prices people pay for hydro is maybe as cheapr as pellet, figure costs by btu, burning continously leads to soot inside. Pellet is made, as electric oil go up so will pellet

[Edwin Pawlowski]

And the temperature differential is less than 2 degrees from room to room? And never fluctuates more than two degrees?

[George]

Also consider that cutting a bunch of holes in the floor promotes smoke and flame spread during a fire.

[barry]

And his ambient temps are ... ?

And his fuel consumption is ... ?

Not to mention that distribution over 880 sq-ft is summat simpler than over 1500, say, with multiple floors.

Where you really need heat, sealing can be much more important than insulation in avoiding losses, per govt. tests. Meaning, you need all the insulation you can get, and to seal whatever possible to make that insulation effective.

Simple wild extrapolation- I. R.'s handle sez it.

J

[Chris Lewis]

According to :

Also heavily depends on your house layout.

We have 2200 square feet in two floors, and a single wood stove is capable of keeping it quite comfortable when temperatures are well below freezing.

However, this is very much an open concept home. Stove is centrally located on first floor, there's no floor above it, the rooms are very large, with large passageways between them, and there's very few doors.

It's also very well insulated, and our personal comfort temperatures are somewhat lower than most people's.

[nicksanspam]

About the same, IMO, if you arrange for warm basement air to rise up through a grill at the top of a closed stairwell and put some return vents in the floor near exterior walls and put a radiant barrier on the basement ceiling to avoid heating the lower part of the basement by downward radiation... foil or thin foil-faced foamboard with lots of gaps to let warm air rise up through it.

You might also surround the stove with a radiant barrier and insulate the upper foot of the basement walls with a strip of double-foil foamboard over 1x3 spacers, since they will be exposed to colder soil and warmer air. There seemss no point in going below that, since warm air rises and still air has about R5 per inch for downward heatflow.

The basement-to-living-space temp diff decreases with more vent area and upstairs insulation. If the upstairs needs 20K Btu/h with A ft^2 of returns and an 8' height difference, 20K = 16.6Asqrt(8')dT^1.5 makes dT = 56.6A^-0.667 = 57 F for 1 ft^2, 12 F for 10 ft^2, and so on, plus about 1 Btu/h-F-ft^2 with an R1 floor conductance.

Nick

[Bill]

Might want to remove or move that window!

I prefer to keep a *very* close eye on my woodstove. It seems to me it can get too hot very easily. Also the fire can wilt away to nothing if I don't pay attention. Then need to restart the fire. It is easier to add a piece of wood while it is still hot.

Depending on the wood I an using, I might need to add another piece of wood every hour or half hour.

I've learned about the "behavior" of my woodstove by sitting and watching it. It is in the living room where I am at most of the time. I added an outdoor wireless temperature sensor on the wall by the woodstove so I can monitor the wall temperature when I am in other rooms (bought several on same frequency).

I've also learned there is a "time delay" for everything related to my woodstove. If the outside temperature goes from 50 to 28, then I know I will need to build up the fire. If the outside temperature is going from 28 to

50, then I know I need to let the fire burn down (Or I will roast myself out of the house!).

There is a time delay for the outside temperature to cause the inside of the house to change. And there is a time delay for the inside temperature of the stove to change the outside temperature of the stove (and thus the room temperature).

So far as keeping an eye on the woodstove while I am in another room, I would like to eventually have remote temperature sensors for the following...

-Chimney temperature (would alert me to a chimney too hot situation).

-Stove top temperature (I can tell if fire is burning down or stove too hot).

-Wall temperature (can tell if surrounding walls are getting too hot).

-Outside temperature (can decide to build larger fire or let fire burn down).

Also I got some books on woodstove cooking. What they suggest is slow cooking all day long similar to a crock pot. I made ham and lima beans yesterday. I kept the stovetop around 200 degrees and cooked it for 8 hours. Also cooked my turkey on the woodstove. For that I kept it around 250 degrees and it was done in about 3 hours.

[I R Baboon]

snip Depending on the wood I an using, I might need to add another piece of wood every hour or half hour.

you burning balsa wood or something?

[I R Baboon]

i live right on lake ontario where it can get quite cold and windy. i can keep my house around 68 degrees all winter. who cares about a 2 degree difference between rooms? i keep unused rooms doors closed anyways. every room has a fan on ceiling. open the door and turn it on and rooms back up to temperature again. fuel consumption is 3-4 face cords which is free for me (friend) plus all the pine scraps from work i can handle. yes, pine=more creosote. thats why i have my own chimney brush. i see no reason to not put the woodstove in the basement HammerJoe, get some fans make sure you set them for winter. the heat will radiate through the floors. whats the r of a floor? R-1? its almost like having in-floor heating. nice warm hardwood floors mmmm

[k]

Agreed - pellet prices are up this year, and availability in the Northeast is very spotty. The pellets I'm getting now come from British Columbia, so the freight has driven the price up about $50/ton over last year. I like the pellets, though. They're burning clean and hot.

We heated this house from the basement for years with cordwood, then for more years with a simple pellet burner. There's one small grate in the kitchen floor, and otherwise we leave the door to the basement open. The floor plan helps, as does the fact that the only opening to the outdoors from the basement is a well insulated hatch - no windows. The house is also insulated for baseboard electric heat, so it's quite tight. Our floors are all either tile or hardwood on the first floor, and it's nice when they are warm. The kids' bedrooms were upstairs, and they could always close the door if they got too warm.

[HammerJoe]

Thanks for all the replies.

Hydro/electricity costs in New Brunswick 11cents/kwh (based on some formula found on the web)

Pellets can be had around here for $3.89/$3.39Cad per bag.

We have been threathned of a 16% rate increase in electricity next year and I can't see it get any better for years to come. Pellets will no doubt increase as well, but I dont see huge increases in the same scale as electricity.

Also, I dont like electric heat and I am not heating the house properly to not escalate my electric costs. At least with pellets/wood stove I will have proper heating in my house while controling costs. Even if it installed in the basement.

[Bill]

I would rather not say what type of wood. I don't want to open another can of worms on that subject! :-)

[Oscar_Lives]

Probably old pallets and shipping crates he is stealing from work.