Heat Project

Shortly after buying our house (nearly 2 years), we put in a pellet stove for our central heat.

The house has a central forced air propane furnace, but propane ain’t cheap.

Pellets were at least cheaper.

It worked great for just Jen and myself. The main living areas were heated nicely, while our bedroom (farthest from the heat source) was left a little on the chilly side.

Perfect. Who doesn’t like it a little on the chilly side when they’re sleeping?

Fast forward a bit and now we’ve got two little girls.

Their first couple of years we resorted to the propane furnace, because it was the best way to get convenient heat directly to their rooms.

They’re my kids. In my book, they should be warm when they sleep. If for nothing else, so they’re not waking up all night and thus waking me up too.

Now that Abigail’s nearly three and Lauren’s almost one (yeah Lauren gets the shaft), we’re trying to get back to the cheaper pellet heat, yet still get some warmth in their bedrooms.

To do this, we have to go back about a year.

Since we bought our place, our furnace has had this interesting little feature.

It has no return ducting throughout the house. The return is as you see it here on the side of the furnace. The door to the “furnace room” is louvered, thus creating flow along the floor, down the stairs, etc. The house originally didn’t have central heat. It was electric heat with a coal stove. The central system was put in after the fact and cheaply without proper return ducting.

Eh. It works, but it’s noisy and not as efficient as it could be.

Still not having the time/money to put in a proper return system, my Dad and I at least tried fixing the noise.

He suggested building a box to route and quiet the return. So we did.

With Abigail’s help of course.

It worked great.

It quieted the roar of the return and provided an opportunity to better circulate the heat from the pellet stove.

Our current pellet stove circulation relied on a tiny auxiliary fan in the stair well to push the heat from the downstairs ceiling level to the upstairs. As I said before, this worked great for heating the main living areas of our home, kitchen and living room in particular, but didn’t do much to get the heat to the bedrooms.

With the new “return box” being in the wall opposite the pellet stove, I now had the ability to tie the pellet stove heat output into the central systems fan circulation.

A little cut here.  A little cut there. Some duct work.

And voila a pseudo return duct circulating heated pellet stove air to the rest of the house.

Kind of.

It definitely works, but it’s kluge. Like it wasn’t ever going to be?

I’ve heard the heat in your furnace is something like 120°F when it circulates the return air through it and throughout your house. That makes for a nice and toasty house. At this vent I’ve measured average pellet stove air temperatures of 84°F. Mix that little bit of intake with the rest from the return and you get a breezy 70° in the rest of the house. Not toasty, but not cold.

Which is fine. It’s the best I probably could have hoped for the price I paid ($30 in duct-work).

There’s some tweaking still to do.

Since I now have return circulation elsewhere, I “closed off” part of the original grill. In my mind (not likely anywhere else) this makes a little difference and is probably necessary anyway for proper flow, pressure, etc. Though looking at the grill and where all the dirt accumulates, it doesn’t look like there was much flow where my tape is anyway. Maybe I change that.

Either way, the bedrooms now have some decent heat and the girls definitely aren’t waking up cold, thus waking me up.

Mission accomplished – sort of.

Would be easier just to burn the propane.

– b