How to Get Wood Stove Heat From One Room to Another

[LukeLewis]

I set my wood stove up in a small room that's on the side of my house. It measures probably around twenty by twenty feet square. The room sort of looks like a lean-to. It's right off my kitchen and there's one downstairs door into the room. I set the wood stove up so it's right next to that doorway on the bottom floor. There is also a loft in this side room and together, the room height is around 15 feet. There's another door upstairs in the loft that leads back into the upstairs portion of my house.

The floor boards of the loft area have spaces between them, so the heat from the wood stove flows upstairs very nicely. Before we go to sleep for the night, I go downstairs and shut the downstairs kitchen door and open the upstairs loft door. The wood stove heats everything really good upstairs. The challenge I find myself facing is one where all the heat from the stove seems to want to go upstairs and not downstairs. Even if I keep the upstairs door shut and the downstairs one open, the heat still remains in that room. As you can imagine, the loft area gets pretty hot while the kitchen stays pretty cool.

I'm trying to figure out how to solve this problem. I think there is too much heat at the top of this room for a door fan to work. Those fans are too small. Plus, since all the heat is at the top of the room, a door fan wouldn't even be reaching it. Maybe a ceiling fan in the loft area to push the heat back down? Does anyone have any good ideas for me? The area in which I live doesn't get exceedingly cold - maybe 5° to 10° in the middle of winter. Another problem is that my house doesn't have good insulation. It's an older farmhouse and it leaks cold air a lot. If you can think of anything that might help me, please let me know. I'd like to get the heat from that room into the kitchen so I can heat downstairs somewhat. Thank you.

 

[CraigHardy]

I've burned wood in wood stoves for a long time and I can honestly say that the only way to get the heat from one room to another is by way of a good floor fan. I've actually had issues where the heat from the stove didn't even make it across the same room, much less another room. Doorways are real challenges for heat to move through, so what you need to do is use a fan to get that heat moved around. Years ago, I bought a fan from Amazon. I forget the actual size. The first one I bought was around 20", but that was too large, in my opinion. I think the second fan I bought was around 14" or 16". I liked that one better because it was quieter and it seemed like it pushed the air more directionally as opposed to spread out all over the place. Here's a link to a random fan on Amazon that I just found. This is the type of fan I'm talking about: https://amzn.to/3fGiXEv.

As far as the best direction to point the fan, that's something you'll need to figure out through trial and error. I would guess that you'd want to have the fan on the floor downstairs sitting right in the doorway. You can point it up so it pushes the cold downstairs air up into the loft area. If you do that, the hot air will need to move out of the way and it'll most likely flow out that downstairs door into your kitchen. That's the hope anyway. I've pointed my fans in all directions and have found some pretty good solutions, but overall, the fan is the only solution. Wood stove heat notoriously moves very slowly if left to its own devices, so you really do need to force it around mechanically.

 

[CampFireJack]

I've got an electric fan that blows the cooler air from the floor into the room where my wood stove is situated. That room gets really warm. I've found that this strategy works better than attempting to blow the air out of the hot room (where the wood stove is). If you think about it, the warm air is already naturally flowing out of the top part of the door and the cool air in the bottom. I'm just helping those air currents along with the fan.

What I've always wondered is if those non-electric fans (powered by heat) that are available to sit on top of a wood burner would help at all. Do you think that would help move the hot air around at all? I find this subject quite interesting.

 

[CraigHardy]

I've got an electric fan that blows the cooler air from the floor into the room where my wood stove is situated. That room gets really warm. I've found that this strategy works better than attempting to blow the air out of the hot room (where the wood stove is). If you think about it, the warm air is already naturally flowing out of the top part of the door and the cool air in the bottom. I'm just helping those air currents along with the fan.

What I've always wondered is if those non-electric fans (powered by heat) that are available to sit on top of a wood burner would help at all. Do you think that would help move the hot air around at all? I find this subject quite interesting.

I suppose if you got your hands on one of those fans that was powerful enough, you could theoretically move the air around the room a bit more. I don't think it would help get that hot air out of the room though. At best, you'd swirl it around. But that might disrupt the natural air current you were talking about.

I've seen those heat powered fans in action and I have to tell you that I wasn't impressed. They hardly move any air at all. If you truly have an issue with neat not moving from one room to another in your house, you need to take action. The only way to do that is with a good floor fan. I've tried everything and that's the only thing that seems to work.