DIYbanter - View Single Post - Having stove in the basement to heat whole house...

wrote:

... If putting a stove in the basement, and making some vents in the floor
to allow the heat to go upstairs, would it require a significant amount
of heat (pellet consumption) than having it upstairs??

About the same, IMO, if you arrange for warm basement air to rise up
through a grill at the top of a closed stairwell and put some return
vents in the floor near exterior walls and put a radiant barrier on
the basement ceiling to avoid heating the lower part of the basement
by downward radiation... foil or thin foil-faced foamboard with lots
of gaps to let warm air rise up through it.

You might also surround the stove with a radiant barrier and insulate
the upper foot of the basement walls with a strip of double-foil
foamboard over 1x3 spacers, since they will be exposed to colder soil
and warmer air. There seemss no point in going below that, since warm
air rises and still air has about R5 per inch for downward heatflow.

The basement-to-living-space temp diff decreases with more vent area
and upstairs insulation. If the upstairs needs 20K Btu/h with A ft^2
of returns and an 8' height difference, 20K = 16.6Asqrt(8')dT^1.5 makes
dT = 56.6A^-0.667 = 57 F for 1 ft^2, 12 F for 10 ft^2, and so on, plus
about 1 Btu/h-F-ft^2 with an R1 floor conductance.

Nick