Any HVAC peeps here? I need some help.

[SterlingAcres]

Quote:
No, I only have a woodstove on the first floor. Only source of heat in this house. The previous homeowners blew the furnace and we decided not to replace it. There is no duct work here currectly, just a hole in the living room floor and ceiling with grates.

 

[conradpdx]

Though mines not vented we can easily cook ourselves out of our house with our wood stove. It took me a season or two (we just use it occasionally on the really cold days, or for effect on holidays, when we ran out of heating oil- our gauge never worked, etc) to figure how much wood to use and to add to keep it alive without cooking us out (after startup on add a log bout every 1-1 1/2 hours).

Untill I figured it out there were a few times we were standing on the front porch in pj's with doors and windows open in the middle of the coldest days of winter waiting for the place to cool down and fire to subside.

 

[I have WHAT in my yard?]

Dh is suggesting a vented grate like the old houses used to have essentially a hole in the ceiling to let the hot air flow naturally up. Our old house had these, but we closed them!

 

[jvls1942]

In the house I grew up in we had no furnace. there was a heating stove in the living room. In the ceiling was what my dad called a floor register.. It was just a 12 x 14 square hole in the ceiling above the stove which was a hole in the floor aboe with a cast iron grate over it.. the warm air naturally rises and heats the upstairs room.

to make air circulate rom room to room.. use a box fan on the floor and blow the air toward the stove. from the room you want the warm air to go to.. rather than trying to blow the warm air toward the room.. I can go into a long explananation why this works.. just try it.. put the fan in the doorway of the cold room.. You will notice more heat in less than 10 minutes..

 

[ams3651]

Quote:
I've got a WindMachine fan running to push the air into the kitchen as well. The bathroom seems to be the coldest.

ams, I realize we'll have uneven temps, we'd just like the upstairs a bit warmer. I don't like being shocked awake when I need to pee at 4am.

my grandmother still has the registers in the floor open to the first floor to help the heat migrate upstairs, we just had a ranch. It was always chilly in her upstairs though.

 

[MissPrissy]

If you look at old two story houses that had mainly wood heat on the first floor you'll see grates in the ceiling and in the upstairs floor over the rooms with fireplaces. The heat naturally rises and heats the upper rooms too.

 

[SterlingAcres]

Thanks guys. DH was thinking if duct work wasn't an option, maybe one of those super quiet bathroom exhaust fixtures would suck more hot air upstairs. He doesn't want to make the "floor register" any larger, since it's probably 12"x16". Plus, we plan on putting an addition onto the house in the summer. That would be two more rooms to heat, so that was also a concern.

 

[PurpleChicken]

You need to add a fan to the floor register to increase the circulation
of air. They make registers with built-in fans or you can add a quiet
one to your's.

You also have the option (I wish I had a pic of your floorplan) to blow
fans into your living room thereby forcing the warm air out into the other
rooms.

Ductwork, in my opinion, would be a mistake. It's expensive and does
not move the volume of air you need to move. I have a similiar setup
in my house. We have a propane stove in the living room and ductwork
in the kitchen and bedrooms. It does nothing to move the air from the
hot spots. We recently gutted our house so we are heavily insulated
and have a brand new airhandler and duct system.

 

[PurpleChicken]

You may be able to adapt one of these, depending on the thickness of
your floor. It's got to be at least 8 inches.

http://www.hvacquick.com/scfnconfig.php?fm=DB

 

[SterlingAcres]

Thank you PC. It's a small house, less than 700 sq ft. I don't have a photo of the layout, but I'll describe it the best I can.

Front door opens to living room. Wood stoves on left side. Archway into kitchen, stairs on back left wall. Upstairs - bathroom left hand door (L shaped to accommodate attic steps), bedroom left hand door, bedroom straight down the hall. That's it. There's nothing else here. Unless you count a walk in closet in the first bedroom.