Wood stoves have been around for a long time. Many families prefer wood stoves to electric heaters because of their many benefits.
One of the benefits of using wood stoves is that they produce a real flame, unlike electric heaters that mimic a real flame. Therefore, you can get a lot of heat from your wood stove by ducting the heat that it gives off.
This short blog post will discuss ducting the heat from a wood-burning stove. We shall also provide you with some essential tips to consider after you have successfully ducted the heat that comes from a wood-burning stove.
The tips are meant to help you get the best from your heating and cooling system and avoid common accidents that may occur when you duct heat from a wood-burning stove.
Can you Hook a Wood Stove into Ductwork?
Yes, you can hook a wood stove into the ductwork of your home. Doing this helps spread all the heat that that wood stover produces to all the corners of your home.
Wood stoves provide heat energy by burning wood pieces in the combustion chamber. The heat they produce rises directly to warm the room where they are over time.
You may use any of the different types of fans to increase the level of distribution of the heat from your wood stove. You may also connect it to the existing ductwork in your home. This will make the woodstove a reliable source of warmth and comfort in the entire home.
Benefits of Hooking Wood Stove into the Ductwork
There are many benefits of hooking a wood stove into the ductwork of your home. Here are some of the most common advantages of using this approach.
- Adequate circulation of heat: The heat that comes off your wood stove rises directly upwards. This means that you may end up losing a considerable amount of heat. However, if you duct the woodstove to your existing ductwork, you will enjoy a cozy environment because the heat will effectively move through the ductwork to all the rooms.
- More potent than using fans: Fans may help distribute the heat from a wood stove to other rooms in your home. However, fans are bulky and limited in circulating the heat. Ducting the wood stove to your ductwork is the surest way of circulating the heat to any area in your home.
- Easy control: When connecting the wood stove to the ductwork, you control the heating process. You can turn the heat on or off in any given room at any time using the valves.
- Low level of repair and maintenance: The ductwork operates in the background. Once you are sure that all the components are working perfectly, you will not have to bother with the cumbersome routines of repairing and maintaining it, as is the case for using other methods like box fans to spread heat from your wood stove.
How to Duct Heat from a Wood Burning Stove
Wood-burning stoves are not designed for ducting. Nevertheless, you may decide to duct the heat from them to circulate it around the entire home.
Here are a few methods that you can use to duct the heat from your wood-burning stove.
1. Drawing Cold Air Through Ducting
This is by far the most effective way of ducting heat from your wood-burning stove. Essentially, this method works well because it is the opposite of expected.
Instead of ducting heat from the wood-burning stove to the distant and cold rooms in the store, this method lets you move the cold air from those distant rooms to the wood-burning stove.
You will need to install a duct from the cold rooms to the wood-burning stove for this method to work. You will then install a fan inside the duct and directly face the wood-burning stove.
Adjust the fan’s speed to ensure that it effectively blows the drafts of heated air away from the wood-burning stove. This creates space for the cold drafts of air to blow towards the wood-burning stove.
As a result, the stove repeatedly warms the drafts of cold air, and the fan blows them away. This process creates an endless cycle of warm and spread cold air quickly.
2. Using a Wood Stove Heat Exchanger
Using a heat exchanger is another effective way of ducting your wood-burning stove. This method works well if you have a multi-storied home. You will have to install the heat exchanger and a fan to blow the air through the exchanger’s tubes.
There is nothing new about installing a heat exchanger in a multi-storied building to duct the wood-burning stove. The heat exchanger collects all the hot air from the flue and comes from the wood-burning stove.
The air then heats the tubes that make up the heat exchanger. This creates a cycle of heated air that flows in every corner of your home from the tubes of the heat exchanger.
The fan blows air around the wood stove and the heat exchanger. This process ensures that cold air reaches the woodstove while hot air leaves the wood stove and gets distributed across the different parts of your home. In other words, the combination of the fan and the heat exchanger creates a convective current in the home.
3. Using Wood Stove Fans
You can use your wood stove fan to duct heat from the wood-burning stove by connecting it to the furnace plenum. The wood stove furnace provides the plenum with an endless heated air supply when you do this.
The plenum then distributes the heated air in different regions of your house via ductwork.
Here is how you can connect your wood stove fan to the heating ducts.
- Use a tape measure to mark a space six inches down from the top of the plenum.
- Use a marker to mark out the outer end of the collar. Ensure that the collar ends up at the plenum.
- Use your awl to create a small hole through the plenum. Ensure that the hole is aligned with the markings you would have made on the plenum in the previous instruction.
- Unscrew the sheet metals on the plenum and pull off the top. Ensure the plenum is firmly held in place by bending the tabs on the collar.
- Put the ductwork in place by fastening it through the seams. This should be worked up to the level of the fan.
4. Using Floor Vents/Grilles
Because hot air is light and rises, it can quickly move to rooms above if you have vents and small grilles. The small spaces allow the hot air from the stove that rises to near the ceiling of your room to move to adjacent rooms upstairs.
However, it would help if you were careful when using grilles. Large openings will allow smoke from the stove to seep into the rooms above the one where the stove is. Therefore, ensure that you have grilles of the correct size.
5. Place your Stove in the Optimum Position
Placing your stove in the optimum position will go a long way in ensuring that the heat is spread across the room evenly.
However, it would help if you remembered that this is not the most effective way of ensuring that the heat from your wood stove spreads across the entire house.
For example, if you have multiple rooms, it would be challenging to ensure that the heat evenly and rapidly spreads across the house by simply placing the stove in an ideal position.
Preventive Measures
Ducting heat from a wood-burning stove may not be a straightforward job. Anything may go wrong at any time. However, you can minimize the risks by adhering to these necessary preventive measures.
- Checking for air leaks in the ducts: Cracks on the ducts may lead to a significant amount of air leakages. The actual amount of air that may leak depends on the size of the cracks and the speed at which the air is traveling through your ducts. You can check this by comparing the feeling of standing near the leaks, touching the ceiling, and touching the spots where you suspect a leakage occurs on your ducts.
- Constantly replacing the worn-out part: Worn-out parts may contain holes and other crevices. These openings will let a lot of warm air from your house escape to the outside. Replacing the worn-out parts will prevent this form of heat loss.
- Check your heating and cooling system comprehensively every year: An annual examination of your system’s components will go a long way in helping you have an effective heating and cooling system for the home.
- Determining the amount of heat lost: Doing this will help you figure out the right spot for placing insulation. An infrared thermometer can instantly help you determine the level of heat loss in your system. Then, you can place it at any of the spots where much of the heat loss occurs. This will give you an idea of the amount of loss and the positioning of the insulation.
- Insulate all the ducts: A good strategy for saving the heat in your system is to install insulation on all the ducts in your home. Generally, heat losses from crevices in the ducts may amount to 20% of what the system generates. This is a significant amount, considering that heating and cooling entails using high energy levels. Thus, insulating your ducts will go a long way in saving you from massive heat losses through leakages.
- Using air conditioners: Air conditioners can help cool down the entire room and cozy the environment. Investing in air conditioners is a sure way of maximizing the heat from your wood-burning stove.
- Use radiant floor heating in icy areas: Radiant floor heating is unique because it directly warms people’s feet in any room where you install it. This approach can help keep everyone comfortable, even during the coldest days of winter.
- Clearing debris from the vents: Debris usually accumulates in the vents over time. This debris may cause severe blockages in the vents. Therefore, you need to clear the debris occasionally. When clearing the vents of any debris, use your safety equipment, including gloves and goggles. Using all your safety equipment properly will keep you safe during the process.
- Ensure that the pressure inside the heating and cooling system is at the proper levels: You can do this by checking all your heating and cooling system components. You can use the thermostat to adjust the pressure to the correct range whenever necessary.
Conclusion
Ducting the heat from a wood-burning stove is possible if you understand what needs to be done. It is a good idea to get a professional to do it for you.
There are various methods of ducting the heat from your wood-burning stove. Your choice of the method to use boils down to your preferences.
Furthermore, please take note of the need to keep the ductwork free of debris by cleaning it whenever necessary. Also, minimize heat loss by applying insulation in the ductwork’s right places.