Advice on Air Return

 
n0useforaname
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Post by n0useforaname » Thu. Feb. 06, 2014 7:27 am

So, right now I have a Harman Super Mag Stoker in my living room.. it heats my upstairs just fine. I took the 6" add-on on top and ran a pipe down through the floor into the ceiling of my finished basement, and used a round thing to distribute the air that is connected to my ceiling tile. My basement went from 55 to 67 so far, and it's only been 12 hours, but you can tell the air on the floor is def. colder, which I figured would happen anyways. So what is my best plan of action to "mix" the air down there? Someone told me to open my basement door to the upstairs and it would create a flow, but I'm afraid all the heat will escape and make it colder down there. Should I just run a box fan? Stand up fan? Open the door? Or just leave it as is? I know it's not the "norm" to do what I'm doing, but with how my house is setup, it wouldn't of made sense to put the stoker in the basement, as I don't have heat runs, and nor could I add them. It's a log home and they built it "tight". That and the hearth pad, flue, etc.. were already in place with a Mark II when I moved in.


 
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Post by wilsons woodstoves » Thu. Feb. 06, 2014 7:36 am

ceiling fan?

 
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Post by n0useforaname » Thu. Feb. 06, 2014 7:39 am

wilsons woodstoves wrote:ceiling fan?
If possible I'm looking for something that is more simple to do. It's drop ceiling and I would have to run power wire from the fuse box, etc.. which would be a pain because the guy who had it before me had the ceiling dry-walled in the garage (where fuse box is) so I would have to tear it all apart.

 
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Post by McGiever » Thu. Feb. 06, 2014 7:47 am

You will get many suggestions...
Experiment yourself...you will learn a lot.

 
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Post by n0useforaname » Thu. Feb. 06, 2014 7:54 am

McGiever wrote:You will get many suggestions...
Experiment yourself...you will learn a lot.
I understand where you are coming from, but I don't wanna go drop money on things I don't need, or won't work. I live in the middle of no-where on a hill and I'm a 45 minute drive away from any type of store.. and I would be making that trip with 3 kids, and really don't want to do that if I don't have to. There are lots of items that I never knew existed, so I'm hoping someone on here has a great idea.

 
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Post by McGiever » Thu. Feb. 06, 2014 8:21 am

Some theory, you need the same volume of air to come up off basement floor as the volume going down off the stove...the farther the difference in air volume between the two the lesser the effectiveness. :)
It's a loop, current or circuit...what goes in needs an equal to go out...and keep repeating over.

 
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Post by Freddy » Thu. Feb. 06, 2014 8:32 am

Do the simple, cheap ideas first... open the basement door & watch it for 48 hours. Then a box fan. Try it in a few different areas & see what helps, what hurts. One thing with a box fan that I've learned, full speed makes more noise & doesn't move all that much more air. Use low or medium speed. Medium will move almost as much air as high & be much quieter....and use less electricity.


 
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Post by n0useforaname » Thu. Feb. 06, 2014 8:38 am

So if I go the box fan route.. would I want to put the fan on the floor and suck the hot air down? Or blow the cold air up? I would assume slant it and suck the hot air down, but this is where I get confused. I thought about running a line from the fan on my Harman to the basement floor, because it has a setup to do that.. that way all that cold air would be sucked up into the harman.. but my basement is finished nicely, and not sure a random tube would look good.

 
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Post by windyhill4.2 » Thu. Feb. 06, 2014 9:10 am

Heat rises,it sounds as though you are heating your basement from the ceiling. Like the looks or not ,you need to blow the hot air out at the basement floor level instead of from the ceiling,open the basement stair way door & you will have your air loop completed . Cost for this should be minimal,will it look super nice ? Looks vs $$$ spent will make it look real good

 
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Post by Carbon12 » Thu. Feb. 06, 2014 9:19 am

Do you have duct work for a central A/C system? If so, and you have registers in the basement, you could use that to circulate the warm air. Providing the air handler is NOT in an unheated space like the attic. Regardless, sucking warm air to the basement from the first floor might work best. A floor register on the first floor connected to some flex duct with a fan in the basement sucking some warm air down would also be quiet. You'd have to leave the basement door open to allow air to return to the first floor, however.

 
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Post by n0useforaname » Thu. Feb. 06, 2014 9:31 am

windyhill4.2 wrote:Heat rises,it sounds as though you are heating your basement from the ceiling. Like the looks or not ,you need to blow the hot air out at the basement floor level instead of from the ceiling,open the basement stair way door & you will have your air loop completed . Cost for this should be minimal,will it look super nice ? Looks vs $$$ spent will make it look real good
Yeah, that's what I'm doing is heating it from the ceiling. I know it's not ideal, but I have a good reason for it. We are going to turn my garage into a 2 car garage, turn my wifes garage under the house into a 5th bedroom, and put an indoor pool on the side of the house. When we do that.. I'm going hot water radiant through the house. Now that won't be until 5-6 years from now, but I didn't wanna spend a bunch of money now doing everything the right way to just tear it all out in 5-6 years.. so it's temporary. And where my stove is upstairs, the ideal place to put the 6" pipe cannot happen due to support beams. So I had to move everything forward a foot, and now I'm kinda screwed. And in my basement I have wood trim/small shelf going around the wall, so I can't even run something down my wall without destroying the trim/shelf. I'll have to post some pics.
Carbon12 wrote:Do you have duct work for a central A/C system? If so, and you have registers in the basement, you could use that to circulate the warm air. Providing the air handler is NOT in an unheated space like the attic. Regardless, sucking warm air to the basement from the first floor might work best. A floor register on the first floor connected to some flex duct with a fan in the basement sucking some warm air down would also be quiet. You'd have to leave the basement door open to allow air to return to the first floor, however.
I do not.. log home with coal heat.. that's it.

 
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Post by windyhill4.2 » Thu. Feb. 06, 2014 9:37 am

That is the good thing about a forum like this,even if some of our ideas are way out of the possible because of things we can;t see,those same suggestions might just jar your thought process to the right solution.

 
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Post by n0useforaname » Thu. Feb. 06, 2014 10:12 am

windyhill4.2 wrote:That is the good thing about a forum like this,even if some of our ideas are way out of the possible because of things we can;t see,those same suggestions might just jar your thought process to the right solution.
This def did help. I'm going to see if I can angle out of my ceiling.. then to the wall, then find a rectangular duct to run down my wall to my floor. If I do that and then open the door upstairs, that would be perfect. But I gotta see how damaging it would be to cut that chunk out of my trim.. because it's not normal trim, it's more of a small shelf.

 
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Post by McGiever » Thu. Feb. 06, 2014 10:26 am

Do plan on using a blower/fan to force the air circuit thru duct.

It will not work passively to move either hot air down or cold air up...they can only move in those directions by applying suffient force.

You understand?

 
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Post by Carbon12 » Thu. Feb. 06, 2014 10:30 am

Electric heaters in the basement for when you want to use the basement, would be the cheapest way of heating,.....short term. Or consider a used stoker with direct or power vent if no chimney access in basement.


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