ANYONE IN A BI LEVEL HOME? FLOOR VENTS????

Hi Folks!!!!

Hope this is the best place for this post.

I have a Bi level home with a very typical floor plan. You walk in the front door and go up 1/2 set of steps. To the left is an open floor plan, kitchen, living room and dining room. It's all very open. No Walls. To the right is a hallway with bedrooms and bath. My chimney is outside on the left side of the house, and my coal shaker is downstairs hooked up to it, in a room that's the same size as all the open space upstairs, direcly underneath it.

My stove heats downstairs very well, actually too well. If I installed some venting above my stove downstairs and let some of that warm air rise, would it work? The stairs are open, would be across the room from the vents, and as you descend them it gets cold until you hit the downstairs. There is one door downstairs separating the big finished stove room from the unfinished half of the basement. (the garage)

So would this create a good air circuit for half of my house? From the stove downstairs, through the vents above it, upstairs ,across the upstairs room and then falling down the steps as it cools to be heated by the stove again.

Sorry I'm not an HVAC expert and I hope I got some sort of idea across. I just wanted to know if anyone out there w a bi-level home has already experimented with this idea and how it worked out for you.

Thanks,

Joe

should work ...... on that every house is different with air flow air leaks ect ect . where is the stove installed in reference to the stairs ? can you cut a floor vent right above the stove ? you can also install a small fan to help the heat pull up into the 2nd floor you can also run duct work to the far rooms
with a in-line duct fan

Jeff

In reference to the steps, the stove is at the bottom, but across the room on the left outside wall. I can put a vent almost directly above the stove, which would hopefully move heat upstairs into the half of the house that is open, across the peak of the ceiling while dropping across the upstairs room back down the steps.

This all concerns only the left side of the house both upstairs and down, and the stairs that are opposite the stove. Both upstairs and down are open, only one room up and one down on that side of the house. I'm not really concerned with heating the bedrooms (upper level) or the garage (lower level). They can stay cooler and I already have heat sources for both when I need it.

Thanks RAYJAY,

I'm hoping someone has already tried this and can let me know how well it worked. If not I'll still put the vent in. It HAS to work somewhat, I just don't know how well.

Joe

Once you get past all the didactic stuff--it IS mostly trial & error--like stated, each home lay out is different.

pictures do help here, what is the primary heat you have ?? and if the floor joists are running the right way a duct is a very easy thing to do

jeff

I beleive he's talking floor vents, not duct work???

Chief, I've a raised Ranch with a full finished basement. The Stove is in a walled in Laundry room directly in the middle of the home. In order to move the heat out the room and throughout I installed 2 powerd wall vents to deliver air to my Taproom and one to my bedroom. While my foyer serves as my main heat supply upstairs I needed to put 2 floor vents in (one is powered, one is passive) to pull the more out of the stove room.
Eventhough my foyer should work as a "Cold air Return" in theory, I used 3"aluminum dryer vent hose to drag in actual Cold air directly to my intake, big help fer sure.

In an all electric house with thermostats set to "low" (50*) they almost never, ever kick in.

freetown fred wrote:I beleive he's talking floor vents, not duct work???

he talking moving the heat around the whole house and as for the joist going the right way its just sooooo much easier ..... been there got the tee shirt on that one .....

Nope, you're right on that--I was just goin with his talking about floor vents which will work just fine the way he is thinking.