Heating a house....

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inkjunkie

inkjunkie

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We will be building a house on a walk out/daylight basement. Unsure of what we will be doing for heat but we are talking about putting our Pellet Stove in the basement. Hoping that with the addition of some powered vents and a few returns we will have enough heat & air movement to heat the upstairs as well. The foot print will be 1200 square foot. Any thoughts?
 
my uncle has a wood stove in his basement and just ductwork above it running into the floor of each room. updraft only with no fan. its a very large home and it will run you out of both upstairs and downstairs. down side is no thermostat.
 
rigrunner said:
my uncle has a wood stove in his basement and just ductwork above it running into the floor of each room. updraft only with no fan. its a very large home and it will run you out of both upstairs and downstairs. down side is no thermostat.
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Luckily our pellet stove has one...
 
the problem i found with a wood stove it is either to hot or to cold i have a new yorker wood boiler in my house that also heats my domestic water just set the stat and keep the wood to it nice even heat that dosent dry the air to much
 
I recently added a 1200 sq ft addition over my garage and had a company come in and spray foam insulate it. I have a natural gas fired boiler with in floor radiant heat. I went from 2300 to 3500 sq ft and spray foamed all of the open walls. My heating bill has been within $5 of the previous year since the addition. While the spray foam wasn't cheap, not having to upgrade my boiler saved about half of the cost of the insulation.

Jason
 
Doug especially out where you're at, I'd seriously want something "for backup." If nothing else, consider an LP room heater or "through the wall" and get one with a so called millivolt system (self powered) so it can operate if the power is out.

I would think if you have a large enough pellet unit, sized for the house, maybe consider putting a floor grill in above it, etc, you could do OK

Frankly, in my opinion, you'd do better if you had a separate heater, whatever the fuel, for both basement and main floor.

Let's say you had two pellet units, and either 12V backup or just a generator. Even if one unit quits, or if you lose power, you can still have some heat.
 
Franklin stove.

Fireplaces pull almost as much heat out as they provide and they'll burn anything.
 
jimjimjimmy said:
the problem i found with a wood stove it is either to hot or to cold i have a new yorker wood boiler in my house that also heats my domestic water just set the stat and keep the wood to it nice even heat that dosent dry the air to much
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The pellet stove that I linked to does have a t-stat. It also self controls its heat output, the further you are form the set temp the more it will produce. Also self cleans, so no pot scraping is necessary.

12valve said:
I recently added a 1200 sq ft addition over my garage and had a company come in and spray foam insulate it. I have a natural gas fired boiler with in floor radiant heat. I went from 2300 to 3500 sq ft and spray foamed all of the open walls. My heating bill has been within $5 of the previous year since the addition. While the spray foam wasn't cheap, not having to upgrade my boiler saved about half of the cost of the insulation.

Jason
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Last I looked there was only one contractor that spray foamed around the Spokane area. There is getting raped......and then what he charges. To come in and just spray the underside of our roof, the building is 42x40, he wanted somewhere in the neighbor hood of 14k. The building we are in now has radiant heat in the floor. However, everything that could have been done wrong was and couple it with we do not have NG out here, only propane we don't bother with it. I am thinking about running tubing in the floor of the new place, just in case. Also thinking that we very well might look into an outdoor wood boiler at some point.


67Dart273 said:
Doug especially out where you're at, I'd seriously want something "for backup." If nothing else, consider an LP room heater or "through the wall" and get one with a so called millivolt system (self powered) so it can operate if the power is out.

I would think if you have a large enough pellet unit, sized for the house, maybe consider putting a floor grill in above it, etc, you could do OK

Frankly, in my opinion, you'd do better if you had a separate heater, whatever the fuel, for both basement and main floor.

Let's say you had two pellet units, and either 12V backup or just a generator. Even if one unit quits, or if you lose power, you can still have some heat.
Click to expand...


The pellet stove that I linked to is can be ran off of a car battery. We also have a generator from the Spud launching days, needed the generator to run a small compressor to fill the Spud gun with air.

Our pellet stove has one of the highest btu outputs. We have a second one now because of how poorly this building is insulated....and just in case the Quadrafire acts up. The stove is a multifuel unit. Takes a very hot ignitor to light corn pellets. Because of this the original style ignitors burn up pretty quickly. Quadrafire came out with a lower wattage unit that is just for lighting wood pellets. I have a couple of these as spares. They also came out with a new burn pot, one that was designed around the lower wattage ignitor.

We have looked at a few small LP in wall heaters. We have a couple of Parrots that need to be kept warm.

We will more than likely put a pellet stove in on the second floor as well. With Ernie's health problems it does not take much for her to get cold. Would just like to only have to run one stove if we can.

ramcharger said:
Franklin stove.

Fireplaces pull almost as much heat out as they provide and they'll burn anything.
Click to expand...

Guessing you mean a wood burning stove? This is also what we are thinking about. Like the simplicity of them over a pellet stove, the pellet stove has an electronic ignition and 2 blowers that can fail.
 
ramcharger said:
Yep, wood burning stove. A big hunk of metal and nothing to go wrong.
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Only issue with a wood burner is we have a lot of days where heat is needed.....just not a ton of it. Least with the pellet stove it is on a t-stat.....
 
buddy of mine installed a wood burning furnace outside and is hook to a radiant heat system in the floor. 4' logs fit in that thing. cheap to run, but the initial cost was pricey. Are you building on a large lot?
 
I put in my own in floor radiant heat - 3 floors, heat source is 2 50 gal natural gas hot water heaters. Very happy with it. Does need power to circulate so a small generator would keep us going in a power outage. For ultimate self reliance and cost reduction, an outdoor wood fired boiler like what was mentioned would do it.

If you do in floor radiant I have a contact for the best design consultant out there.
 
When my house was built, the fireplaces have "sleeves" around them and vents at the bottom of the fireplace and one or two at the top. As the fire heats up the inner part radiates heat into the sleeve and it comes out of the top vents.

We would put some fans in front of the bottom vent(s) and then get better circulation and more heat out of the top vent. One year we threw a New Year's party and I had that sucker putting out so much heat (I like BIG fires) that people were holding the door to the outside open to cool down - in middle of winter in Chicago!!!

If you put a jacket/sleeve around the heat source and then push the air with a cheap fan, it can put out alot of heat.
 
My house is a 2 story 1880 built farmhouse. It has a vent in each room to allow heat to rise naturally. I heat with a wood burner in the basement that works well. At one time that is how all these old farm houses were heated. They also used coal.
 
I helped a friend put in one of the outdoor furnaces (wood burning), it works like a champ. He stokes it twice a day, it feeds hot water into a small heat exchanger and you use your regular circulator pumps. His house is always warm but you do have to have access to a lot of wood...not a problem here in New Jersey since the storm! The total cost was around $11,000 for the conversion.
 
Just as important as heating choice is insulation. Put in the maximum amount you can afford, especially in the ceiling. Heat transfer (BTUs) increases parabolically as the differential between warm and cold areas increases. You might want to consider orienting the house, if possible, to garner as much wintertime solar gain as possible. That is free heat on sunny days. Keep total window area as low as possible because windows transfer heat much more readily than insulated walls.
 
2darts said:
buddy of mine installed a wood burning furnace outside and is hook to a radiant heat system in the floor. 4' logs fit in that thing. cheap to run, but the initial cost was pricey. Are you building on a large lot?
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5 acres. If we decide to do an outdoor boiler it will be down the road.

Idaho said:
I put in my own in floor radiant heat - 3 floors, heat source is 2 50 gal natural gas hot water heaters. Very happy with it. Does need power to circulate so a small generator would keep us going in a power outage. For ultimate self reliance and cost reduction, an outdoor wood fired boiler like what was mentioned would do it.

If you do in floor radiant I have a contact for the best design consultant out there.
Click to expand...

PM on its way shortly......

krazykuda said:
When my house was built, the fireplaces have "sleeves" around them and vents at the bottom of the fireplace and one or two at the top. As the fire heats up the inner part radiates heat into the sleeve and it comes out of the top vents.

We would put some fans in front of the bottom vent(s) and then get better circulation and more heat out of the top vent. One year we threw a New Year's party and I had that sucker putting out so much heat (I like BIG fires) that people were holding the door to the outside open to cool down - in middle of winter in Chicago!!!

If you put a jacket/sleeve around the heat source and then push the air with a cheap fan, it can put out alot of heat.
Click to expand...

My Dad had an old all plate fire box in his house. Very much what you described. Once he put small blowers in the bottom worked well. He loved BIG fires as well. If the tips of the fire were not coming out of the chimney cap he was not happy. For years all we burned was old wooden gutters, tar and all (he owned a gutter business). Neighbor was on the fire department and he used to jump down my Dads throat about it constantly. After 10 years of listening to him my Dad had the chimney cleaned. Surprisingly there was no creosote. Guess the occasional log fire kept it clean.

chryslerfat said:
My house is a 2 story 1880 built farmhouse. It has a vent in each room to allow heat to rise naturally. I heat with a wood burner in the basement that works well. At one time that is how all these old farm houses were heated. They also used coal.
Click to expand...

My sister's old house had a wood burner in the basement. Her rocket scientist boyfriend tore it out and put electric baseboard in its place. Thought the guy was going to have a heart attack when that first cold spell hit and he got the bill. Have some questions, will just pm you...

FISHBREATH said:
Just as important as heating choice is insulation. Put in the maximum amount you can afford, especially in the ceiling. Heat transfer (BTUs) increases parabolically as the differential between warm and cold areas increases. You might want to consider orienting the house, if possible, to garner as much wintertime solar gain as possible. That is free heat on sunny days. Keep total window area as low as possible because windows transfer heat much more readily than insulated walls.
Click to expand...

North-south is what folks up here have told me as to house placement. Architect/engineer that we will be using has told us that what we want is not the most energy efficient. What we are looking at is, if I can bring myself to take all those small trees down, is a daylight basement, a second floor and then an insulated attic in the trusses. Due to the smaller foot print he said it will be tough to get heavy insulation up in the attic. I do not like real steep pitched roofs and last we spoke about everything he said that a steep roof will be necessary. I know the steeper the better for snow slide off as well as load capacity but......

Would like to thank you folks for your input.....
 
I live in a 1000 square foot house which was built in the 1950's without insulation yet had a propane monitor and a wood stove, its in southern Oregon in the sticks as well. Last summer I had both blown in and batt insulation from the ground up including vapor barrier and insulation under the floors to the attic, removed the propane unit and installed a small heat pump, no vents above on the wall of the living room. My electric bill has gone down a few bucks, I haven't used the wood stove this year and at 4 this morning got up outta bed and turned the thermostat down to 67 from 71 because I was sweating in bed.
 
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