Wood burning stove question

[Mr T]

I have a wood burning stove in my living room. Ive been using it alot this winter instead of running up the gas bill. I have found that aiming a small fan at it helps distribute the heat around the room. Ive thought about turning the fan around to blow out into the room. There are 2 air intakes on the doors of the stove (typical wood burning stove). Am I at risk of sucking carbon monoxide into the house by having a fan blowing on or away from the stove?

[suemarkp]

I doubt it, but the wood stove would work better if it had a dedicated combustion air intake instead of using room air. Where is all that combustion air coming from now -- probably through window gaps, wall cracks, and appliance vents. That's the only risk I see for CO would be another gas appliance that is being back drafted by the wood stove.

I don't believe the fan is changing anything -- it is just recirculating the room air and not lowering or increasing the pressure in that room. Most modern wood stoves have 4" combustion air vent pipes and a provision to add a booster fan to help room air warming.

[Mr T]

It's in the middle of the house, my guess is its sucking from the kitchen stove vent.. It's the nearest thing. No bathroom vents. The only other gas appliance in the house is the furnace. It's a 90%, has forced exhaust, takes air from the house. Since the thermostat is in the living room with the stove, they arent gonna run together anyways.

The house is 52 years old. It's a stove insert into a fireplce. My guess is it was replaced in the late 50's early 60's. The house had baseboard electric heat when it was built then was retrofitted with a gas furnace that hung from the floor joists in the crawspace sometime in the mid-late 60's. 3 homeowners back blew it up around 1990 (crawlspace flooded that summer and he wasnt putting 2 and 2 together and lit the pilot....) The remains of that furnace were replaced with the current unit (not in the crawlspace).

I'm guessing they swapped the fireplace with the stove to help with the baseboard heaters. Ive been using the stove on the weekends to cut back on gas usage this winter. Just me here right now and i dont need the whole house heated all the time. The living room, familyroom and kitchen are all open areas with high ceilings. Just trying to even things out in those rooms where I am at most of the day when I'm home.

[scuba_dave]

I used a fan at my last house to move the warm air around. I had gas heat & mostly heated with wood. House wasn't tight enough to worry about air leakage. My gas bill in the winter used to be under $40 a month. I was never really home much

There is actually a non-electric fan made for a stove that uses heat to run
It has a built in generator!!! It was $117 so I never bought one

http://www.caframo.com/images/Ecofan802largenew.gif

[CR500]

I put a wood stove insert in my fireplace this year. It was a freebie (used). It had two small built-in fans that were like equipment cooling 4" box fans. I yanked those and mounted twin 475 cfm blowers. They're ugly and make it difficult to hear the TV but if you stand in front of the stove, it feels like getting blasted by a giant hair dryer!

This stove also draws combustion air from inside the room. I put a combination carbon monoxide detector / smoke detector in the room with the stove and it hasn't detected anything.

[Bumblerazz]

We found that to get the hot air from the fireplace to move from room to room was to use a small clip fan of some sort in the door arch. We would have one room blasting away at 30*C+ but the adjacent room barely above 18*. Clipped the little bugger to the door frame and within an hour both rooms were comfortable, around 21*C.

You can find some nice quiet ones that are very effective.

[Moonlight24]

Place one of those steel fans that are about 6" in diameter on the floor blowing up at the underside or backside of the stove. This will get cool air blowing against the hot backside of the wood stove. This air will directly rise and then should be circulated throughout the cabin or house. If you have a vaulted ceiling, it really doesn't matter which direction the ceiling fan(s) is/are blowing, it will just mix the air and the cold air will get mixed into the hot air and circulate.

Anyone that owns a house, should have a CO detector and replace it as the back of the package says is necessary.

Light a cig or a piece of cardboard in front of your stove, and you can tell if you have downdraft or not.

[Mr T]

7 month old thread... now closed