Out of curiosity, those of you that heat with wood, where is your stove located? I'm contemplating some things right now, so this question isn't entirely random.
Matt - I'm heating with wood pellets. My stove is in the basement. We have a block basement. With that said, Lisa's parent's have a house that is about 20% larger than ours, heating with a wood pellet stove on the first floor (both of our houses are 1 story), and I expect they will use about 25% less fuel than we will. If my house was a bit bigger, I'd have it on the first floor without a doubt. Just my thoughts.
basement... leaky old, dirty, concrete basement... but we also have oil, and propane that we use primarily.
I heat with regular ol split wood. I just bought a new hot blast wood stove and it has two blowers on it, one of which I have run to my furnace duct work. It heats the heck out of my house. It's leaps and bounds ahead of my old wood stove which was pretty much ambient heat. I expect to burn 1/3 the wood that I did previously.
Basement ceiling is not insulated, and I've cut and installed registers into every room. Block walls in the basement will absorb a LOT of heat and are not an insulator. It's nice to have warm floors though. I'm seriously thinking about finishing the basement off and insulating between the walls/block to try and make my stove more efficient.
I've got a Russo wood stove in the living room - it has blowers and we put the heat on 65 with the fan on so it moves the air around the house. Keeps the u/s cooler then I would prefer, and the d/s hotter... We just moved in and are still working it out. Going to add some vents in the floor to move more heat u/s. And put a blower/vent in the wall between the living room and the dining room to move more hot air to adjoining rooms.
I have both duct work and regular registers in nearly every room. My basement floor is not insulated either. What kind of stove are you looking at Matt?
I have an insert in the fireplace upstairs with a 3 speed blower. It keeps the whole upstairs warm. We only used 75 +/- gals of fuel oil last year. I put an insert (with one speed blower, I'll be changing that) in the fireplace in the finished basement this year. There is a drop ceiling and we added an intake for the furnace/blower downstairs this year. The basement is a block wall and is all underground so, once it gets warm, it should hold the warmth real well. I don't think we'll need to use the heat from the furnace at all this year.
My famliy has a outdoor woodburner that is located about 100 feet from the house, it runs hot water to the house. It keeps the house nice and toasty.
I already have it and it's installed. Problem is the ceiling is insualted, walls are insulated, and there's no access to the main floors. I was skeptical about how it would heat, so i made a fire yesterday, and let it burn for over a day. The basement was nice and toasty, but the main floor saw no change. I'm going to eithr put in vents or find an alternative for the main floor (other than baseboard).
Mine is in my basement of my house. Its a big custom built wood stove that the previous owner had built, it will heat our entire 3000 square foot house by itself unless the temps drop down into the low teens then we supplement it a bit with our electric. I have a fan sitting behind it on the basement floor (stamped concrete). The fan circulates the rising heat up through the stairwell.
Do you have this tied into a central duct network ? My buddy just looked into these. He lives deep in the NJ sticks and has PLENTY of firewood. he had asked me if I thought a wood burning stove with a blower would do the job, but, given the size of his home- I mentioned these outside stoves and looks like he can tie right into his existing duct work.
My wood boiler has water lines that go to 4 different buildings and the house Is one of them. The water lines go Into my house to a radiator. From there a blower fan that's ran by a thermostat turns on when heat Is needed, the heat Is transferred through the duct work.
