Hopefully your fireplace or woodstove will generate a lot of usable heat for you. Many times, though, homeowners experience an intolerable buildup of heat in the room where the fireplace or woodstove is located with little of it getting to the rest of the home. The natural circulation of this excess heat depends on many factors, and we will discuss some of the common considerations.
Location of the chimney - A centrally located chimney will work better than a chimney at one end of the home. Interior chimneys will also radiate more heat into the home than a chimney which has three sides exposed to the cold outdoor temperatures. It also has the added advantage of staying warmer and not cooling the flue gases as rapidly.
Design of the home - Open floor plans allow heat to seek out the cooler areas easier than floor plans with lots of walls and small doorways that represent barriers.
Windows and insulation - Large or multiple windows will allow abnormal amounts of heat to escape to the outdoors, as will poorly insulated walls.
Multiple stories - Homes with more than one floor level allow the heat to rise to the upper floors, often to the point of making the first floor colder than desired.
The items discussed above are some of the factors that influence how well the heat will circulate. Unfortunately, most of those factors cannot be changed once the home is built. Now let's look at some things that we can do to help improve the heat circulation.
Place a fan at floor level blowing into the room with the woodstove or fireplace. Yes, we did say into the room. The cooler air will always be on the floor so you want to blow cooler air into the room which will cause the warmer air at ceiling level to come out and circulate to other rooms. If you have the fan blowing out of the room at floor level, you will only pull cooler, floor level air out of the room.
Install a "mini-fan" in the doorway of the room with the fireplace or woodstove. This fan should be blowing out of the room since it will be located up high where the warm air is.
Register vents can be installed high in the wall between two rooms allowing the heat to flow from room to another. Register vents may also be installed in the floor allowing the heat to rise from one level to another. Stairways will act as natural chimneys allowing the warm air to rise to the upper levels of the house. Floor vents are not usually needed because the natural "stack-effect" in the home will allow the heat to rise. These vents may be purchased with or without "booster" fans to assist the natural air flow. "Booster" fans are recommended for through the wall vents but are generally not required for floor vents. When making changes of this sort the best results will be achieved when encouraging the natural convective cycle of the home.
Ceiling fans can be used to help circulate the heat. They are not very effective for moving heat from room to room; but when installed in the room with the fireplace or woodstove, they will bring the hot air down from the ceiling and make the room more comfortable.
Another method you may wish to try is running your heating system in the "fan only" position if it is so equipped. This will circulate the air in the home without running the heat portion of the system. This works well for some people but fails to impress others.
