Woodstove Blowers

[Amber Gold]

I have a quadrafire 3100 step top woodstove in the dining room, and it does a reasonable job heating the house. The dining room has a 12' ceiling, so I have a ceiling fan to push the heat down and door fan to blow the air into the adjacent living room and bedrooms. We're already running the two fans, so I don't want to run a third (blower) if it's not going to make a difference...there's also the $300 price tag. Looking for opinions on if adding a blower makes that much of a difference in woodstove heat output. Worth it or not?

Thanks for the input.

[wishlist]

Rule of thumb for those of using free standing woodstoves.......always move cold air , much easier.

I have a 1800 square foot ranch with an addition that has cathedral ceilings. My Hearthstone is in the addition so moving warm air was challenging down a hallway into 3 bedrooms. I tried a few different things but what works the best is ceiling fans and moving cold air near the floor and pushing it towards the stove. Your house will create a natural flow of air doing this.

I ditched the door fans and box fan trying to move the warm air. Tried a small blower on the floor pointed towards the stove and it made a huge difference. Since then I have tied a 8" inline blower ( 700 cfm? ) into the cold air return on the forced air furnace in the basement. It's hooked up to a reostat and I use it only on those really cold nights. Try moving the cold air Josh, it works!

[Amber Gold]

Wishlist. Been thinking about what you wrote. My house is a ranch set up like this: kitchen, dining, living, and then short hallway to the bedrooms. The wood stove is in the dining room. Dining room has a quasi-cathedral ceiling, so there's a ceiling fan pushing the heat up top, down lower. The door fan was in the doorway between the dining and living rooms, and there's always been a noticeable temp. difference between the two rooms...say at least 5 degrees. All I'm really trying to do is get the bedroom temps a little warmer, but more to equalize the dining/living room difference.

Yesterday, I moved the door fan to the hallway entrance. My thought with this is maybe it'll work better if it's pulling air across the living room from the dining room. Hoping that it'll create a flow pattern where the warm air's flowing across the top and the cold air's going back across the floor. One thought I have with this though is maybe the ceiling fan, pushing the air down in the living room, will stop this air current.

Just made the change, so too early to tell. We have some cold weather coming in, so it'll be a better test. Thoughts??

[wishlist]

Josh, sounds like your trying different things which is good. I had a small doorway fan that I used for a couple of years to try and move warm air down the hallway of our ranch house. It worked some but I wasn't satisfied.

Do you have a forced air furnace by chance? If so, try this trick. You'll probably have cold air returns ( floor level) in the hallway and in the back bedrooms. As an experiment try running just the blower and if you can close off your registers so that your basically moving cold air from the floor and dumping it as close as possible near the woodstove. If you can do this you will notice a nice increase in temp in the back bedrooms. When I first tried it I closed off the cold air return in the hallway with newspaper ( it will suck shut on the grill) and just used the 2 cold air returns in the back bedrooms. Digital thermostat in hallway raised 6 degrees in no time.

I know a couple people who use those portable duct fans that you see drying floors and such and place them far from the stove but blowing cold air towards it. Works well .

[OldManMaple]

If your stove is a 3100 millennium it calls for a 812-4900 blower.
Here is a link to the blower on amazon http://www.amazon.com/QuadraFire-Convection-Blower-812-4900-Castile/dp/B006M0UOTE
Check the number in your owners manual
Amazon's price is 169.49 If you can get the actual manufacture's model # you might find it even cheaper online. Your will more heat with the blower as it will increase the natural convection of air around the stove.

[Amber Gold]

Moving the blower made things a bit worse. The living room was a couple degrees cooler, so I moved it back. We have young kids, so I don't want to put a fan on the floor to move cold air back to the woodstove room. The furnace is old and has a big blower on it. It costs a small fortune to run. I forget how much it was to run when we used it, but I remember it being quite a bit.

Thanks OldMan, that's much cheaper than what the dealer told me. $170 isn't bad.

Thanks for the ideas.