Where to locate the woodstove? Wanting to avoid a costly mistake....

[SweetSilver]

We are having our house built, and we can site the woodstove upstairs (1100sqft, but that includes a bedroom which will probably be shut off), or in the daylight basement room (about 700sqft all told: bathroom, closet, extra storage etc).  The staircase is completely open.

The basement room, when it gets finished, will be a bit of family room until our girls (now 5 and 7) are teenagers, then they will probably go down there.  So, it's not like it will be out of the way too much, even though the upstairs living room is our main living area.

We are leaning towards installing it in the basement, because if we don't that space will always have to be heated with electric heat, and in a power outage will have no heat at all, unless we install propane heaters in the wall.  We are at the end of a long dirt road, we will be among the last to get power back on (we chose to connect with the grid) and are trying to make the house be as livable as possible without power, if it were to go down.

Our contractor and the stove dealer are both advising us to put the stove in the main living area.  The advice is that the basement will overheat and the remaining house.  I get that, but I don't like the alternative, either.

If we are going to install the stove in the basement, we need to do all the work first, because installing the pipe through the attic, then coming back to finish a flue through the first floor would be a significant extra cost over doing that work all at once.

HELP!!  I don't want to make a costly mistake.  Have any of you had any experience that could even be remotely helpful here?  BTW, we are not DIYers in this instance, being gardeners my husband is more of a "chainsaw carpenter", so suggestions about DIY are probably futile in this case.

[FarmerBeth]

We have a wood furnace in the basement and it works just like central heating.  I highly recommend that sort of set up to anyone.  Even if it's not a central heating stove furnace (which, seriously, has been so easy) I'd personally still go with the basement for the simple fact that heat rises and easily heats the rest of the house.  If you are in an area with serious winters, I find overheating is much easier to deal with than simply never feeling warm.  Also, when you load the wood into the furnace, some of the smoky smell gets out (there's another thread in this section about that right now).  That's not what you want to smell in your main living area.  I'd also be looking at having a good quality thermostat, it can make the overheating situation pretty much nil for a wood furnace kind of situation, and some of the newer wood stoves may have more sophisticated thermostat options.  And I agree with you about avoiding situations where an area has to be heated electric or propane.  They are both very costly options.  The closer you live to where your firewood is harvested, the more savings you'll have avoiding other heating options.

[FarmerBeth]

My DH just mentioned that the outside wood furnaces are really efficient and safe for fire and air quality (he's got a friend that just put them in for the local reserve) but also he mentioned if he did it all again with our place (which in our case is a century home renovated) he would have gone for wood furnace with hot water heating rather than forced air because it's cleaner and you lose less heat.  Another thought there if the wood furnace is do-able for you.

[SweetSilver]

Thanks for the advice yet again, FarmerBeth.  About an hour after I posted, I came up with our own solution.

The trick was that if the stove is located in the upstairs living room, the basement would *always* be cold unless we heated with electric or propane.  But if we installed it downstairs, then if we kept that room warm, but didn't attempt to keep the whole house thoroughly heated, we might use electric heat upstairs, but maybe not.  The key was dropping the thought of necessarily heating the entire house.  Maybe it will work out well, though, and heat everything no problem.  

[Brambleberry]

I would seriously consider putting in a flue for both the upstairs AND downstairs.  You wouldn't have to install two stoves unless or until you decide it's necessary, but you would always have the option.  Now is the time to do something like that since it will be more difficult to retrofit.  You could install a cheaper, smaller stove downstairs and a nicer one upstairs.  

If you just put one large stove downstairs, you could install some floor vents above the stove.  I've seen some really cool big decorative cast iron vents (about 2 ft. by 3 ft.) in older homes that would be good for passive air movement, or you could put in smaller vents with a fan assist. 

You will probably need a stove with a thermostatically controlled damper if you install your main stove downstairs since simpler stoves with only manual dampers do take a lot of babysitting and it would be inconvenient if it's not in your main living space.  Also consider that it's just really pleasant to have a fire to watch and cozy up to!  I would never want to give up having our stove in our main living area for that reason alone.

[mamandedeux]

Originally Posted by Brambleberry 

If you just put one large stove downstairs, you could install some floor vents above the stove.  I've seen some really cool big decorative cast iron vents (about 2 ft. by 3 ft.) in older homes that would be good for passive air movement, or you could put in smaller vents with a fan assist. 

We have vents over our stove, which is downstairs. We easily heat our entire house (1200 sq. ft. upstairs and 800 sq. ft. dowstairs) with that stove alone. On really cold nights (-15 celsius and under), we sometimes turn the electric heat on in the bedroom I share with DS2. DS1 and DH like sleeping in a colder room.