Room to Room Heat Transfer - Wood stove

Looking for some diy advice on installing ducting above the ceiling in my home to pull the heat from one room and dispersing it to three other rooms in the house.
I have an 1800 sf house in the Northwest, L shaped, with a wood stove in the farthest part of the house, basically at the end of the L. House is single story built in 1980 with base board heating and now has a wood stove. I don't like the base board heat and would rather burn wood as its free for me. I am wanting to move the heat without putting a fan in the doorway, as it doesn't distribute evenly to the rest of the house. The room with the wood stove gets really hot and the fan isn't what I'm looking for and its in a bad location.
I suspect there may be some code issues, not sure. I am wanting to know if this idea is efficient with an inline fan controlled with a switch or timer and insulated flex ducting. I would like to split off twice going to two bedrooms and then to the living room or kitchen which is at the other end of the house from the woodstove. I don't know where the best placement for the registers would be. Do I need to have return air grilles? What size ducting, fan cfm, where to buy materials?
This is the first time I have posted. I've owned the home for two years and just wanting to make some improvements and stay cost efficient. I'm also not really wanting to go with a furnace due to the costs of installation and the increase in utility bills. Any advice?

 

You could use insulated ducting and a fan behind the heater to blow the heat across the L to spread the heat around. Take the hot air from the ceiling of the heated room and direct it to the floor of the other rooms. You should have a fresh air inlet below the front of the stove (or wherever the stove pulls air in), that way you lessen the CO poisoning potential (which would negate the "cheap" of the free wood)

 

If you was to get a old furnace or blower out of one and put it in the attic.
cut a large register in the ceiling right above the wood stove, then you could duct from the register to the blower box or furnace and then duct from furnace to the rooms rooms like you want to. I have done this for customers
and it works fine. You could have a thermostat turn the blower on and off as needed. If you do decide to do this, let me know and we can get into it deeper for sizing ducts. Later Paul

 

Thanks for the advice. I am wondering if this idea of installing a fan and ducting in the ceiling is the best move. If I plan to sell the house, will this be considered an improvement or should I consider installing a furnace for a primary/secondary heat source? I want to think I am at somewhat of an advantage because I don't have a furnace in the house which gives me the opportunity to look into some newer/Green energy saving heating options. Unfortunately I am restricted to propane as the county has not brought in Natural Gas as of yet.
I have also contemplated radiant heat and infrared heat panels placed in different rooms.
I want to make the best choice with regards to staying low cost and efficiency.
Jeramy

 

People look at this in different ways. I am a heating contractor so if i buy a house i would want a 95 percent furnace with air on it. Now if i wanted to burn that wood i would put a coil in my hot air plenum which would be tied
into a outdoor wood heater. That way i could use it when i want, and still have a good heating system with air on it. That way i would not have the mess and the smell in the house. But this is only my opinion. Later Paul

 

Baseboard heating is probably the second best form of heating you can get.
Under floor heating is probably the best.
Water is the best conductor of heat you can get, its 4000 times better at delivering heat than air.
I suggest that you capture the heat from the wood stove and transfer it into the baseboard heating system.

 

what method did you have in mind for doing the heat transfer. Paul

 

I had a similar problem, I heat with Oil, Hotwater baseboard. Oil is outrageous. My secondary heat is Coal. I started using coal in 1980. I installed metal ducting and used an old squirrel cage blower with a snap disk on the stove. The snap disk is sensitive to the temperature change and you can get a range of on/off temps. Good luck.

 

I saw some info about the Shaver Outdoor Wood Furnace which uses the water to heat transfer and heat the house or also a waterless system with air. I would like to know more about how I can use my existing wood stove to transfer the heat to water and then to my base board heaters or possibly have to replace with a system to handle the heat transfer system. I will have to look up this info on the snap disk system as mentioned above.

 

I think you guys need to know the difference between a wood stove and a wood burning furnace . A stove is made to be free standing in your room with no ducts added to it or water coils. A wood burning furnace is made to add duct work and water coils to it. Later Paul

 

Currently, I'm using a wood stove. The stove is located in the far corner of my L shaped house. To get the heat to transfer to the rest of the single story house, its got to go through a doorway, laundry room and down the hall to the living room and kitchen. I have been using a small fan in the top corner of the doorway which works ok, I'm just looking for a better more permanent way to get the heat to the main part of the house.

I'm also looking for new ideas for heating my home in the green aspect since I only have base board electric and a wood stove. I want to avoid going with forced air but may be interested in a heat pump. What ever I do, I want it to be an improvement if I ever decide to sell.

The ceiling ducting solution looks like the most feasible solution to my problem and also least expensive. I will also need to have a wood stove professional inspect my stove to ensure it burning efficiently.

 

There are several people who make Boilers, Wood fired. Turboburn, Greenwood, Tarm Biomass.
Thay all make indoor wood fired boilers for hydronic systems.
Not knowing what type of furnace you have....one could have a copper jacket made that would fit round the back of the furnace, or wrap 3/4 inch copper pipe round the outside to absorb the heat.

 

talk to the insurance people before cutting away fire protection for your whole family. What ever you may save may not be worth it.

 

As far as cutting through your fired rated drywall . If you want to maintain your fire
rating, all you would have to do is install a fire damper at the ceiling line. Later Paul

 

I similarly have a L shaped 1800 square foot house that originally had a fireplace insert wood heater located at the far end of the house. It was impossible to push the heat off of the heater to the back of the house where the bedrooms and bathrooms are located. I loved heating with wood but was looking for a more effiecient system. I was lucky enough to have an old unused chimney that came down into my basement, so I put a cheap used woodstove in the basement and connected stove pipe from the chimney to the wood stove. Next, I built a sheet metal box around my wood stove roughly one foot wider, longer, and taller than the wood stove and put a 16" collar on the lower side of the box and another collar on the top of the box. Finally I connected the flex comming from the supply side of my gas pack (has to be on supply side return side will put smoke in the house) to the bottom of my box and ran flex from the top of the box back to the ductwork of the house. For good measure I installed a thermal disk to ensure the fan wouldn't run if the fire cooled down. Then just put the thermastat on fan stoke the fire up and enjoy the extremely warm air that is coming from the vents.
P.S. the only drawback i have found is the system has an extremely slow recovery time I am in the process of making some improvements to try and remedy that.

 

I am sure what you have works. But you have a stove not a wood burning
furnace that is made to duct out. All wood burning furnace ducting should be metal not flex. Wrapping metal around a stove, you could get smoke that can have carbon monoxide in it that could be very dangerous. Duct work from a wood burner has to have more clearance from combustibles because it can get much hotter than ducts from a gas burners. All i am saying is a wood burning furnace can be tied into a gas furnace system, but it can be dangerous if not done right. Later Paul

 

If the system is put on the supply side of the air handling system there shouldn't be a problem with smoke creeping into the air that is being circulated throughout the house. Trust me originally I tried to put this system on the return side and I immediately filled the house up with smoke. Putting this system on the supply side means that I have to rearrange the ductwork under the house between changing from heat to air however, with the heater on the supply side of the air handling system creates a positive pressure inside my sheetmetal box. The worst thing that could happen is that the fan could blow air into the wood stove and make the wood burn up to fast (very unlikely). The flex just comes off the box that surrounds the stove it is not actually attached to the wood stove. The air circulating throughout the box is hot but not nearly capable of catching the flex on fire. Actually it would be much more dangerous to use flexible ductwork attached directly to a gas pack than my system because the gas pack has a burner and a stray flame could get into the flex. There is nothing but hot air inside my box so I see no way that could be dangerous.Also, I advise anyone who heats with any type of wood burning system to invest in a relatively inexpensive carbon monoxide alarm just to be safe. Just because it is not a wood burning furnace does not mean you can not be creative and make something work to better suit your needs.

 

what I did was get an old furnacel your local hvac company should have some they are scraping remove everything not needed heat exchanger gas valves ect but keep filter rack , controls and blower. put that in your attic the controls on the furnace will allow you to put a t stat in the room with your stove and let in cycle with temp simply set your tstat on ac and it will cycle like your ac would when cooling a room you can the put a return grill in the ceiling of your heated room and supplies to where you want your heat transfered to. the only issue is if you have a door to your room with the stove keep it open or it could possibly cause backdraft if the rooms tight and your drawing air out of it. mine has always worked great but i just pumped my air to the hall on the opposite side of the house.I would avoid messing with the wood stove, shrouds ect,just transfer the air room to room with insulated flex and an old furnace as a air handler its simple and effective and safer insulate around air handler when done

 

Hi All, and Happy New Year 2013!!!
I started this post back in Oct 2010 and have really seen alot of great replies. I finally completed my project of transferring heat from the room where my wood burning stove lives and I am fairly satisfied with the results. I purchased a new Bosca Spirit 500 wood burner and installed on new hearth which looks fantastic. Will post pics soon with more details... Sorry for the delay.

 

Hi guys

I have also been reading about moving heat from the one end of the house to the other,
Whenever a fire burns it pulls in air from the outside of the house, threw gaps in doors, windows, anywhere it can, (its best to have ventilation made especially for the job),
If it’s cold outside (very cold) that air could be pulled in from the far end of the house resulting in drafts in every door-way until it gets to the fire (chimney).
Most talk about blowing hot air from the fire area to the cold area, but my idea is to do the complete opposite, take the cold air from the far ends of the house and move that to the source of heat, this way you 1: give the fire the air it needs, 2: you remove all drafts from all door ways and passages, 3: the cold air in the ducting will be losing much less heat than hot air would.

This is just an idea at the moment, if anyone has any comments!