How am I going to heat my home?

[thirsty07]

I am in the middle of some home renovations that includes a large amount of second floor work.  Before I close the walls I started thinking about my future in home heating...  I currently use an 1982 Vermont Castings Resolute parlor stove, it came with the house we bought 2 years ago, is most likely undersized for our house currently, and with the renovations our house will be up to about 2500 sq ft of living space.  The stove sits on one side of our old vermont farm house and currently keeps the room its in at 70+ degrees, the living room near by at 60'ish degrees, and the bedrooms on the opposite side of the house at, well, per the Mrs "QUITE slightly unacceptable".

I have unlimited access to cutting my own firewood and I HAVE NO CLUE WHAT TO USE.  The things I know are...
1.)  Whatever I choose, it must be wood burning (add on, independent or combo)
2.)  I would really like the unit to be in my unfinished basement
3.)  I have some old duct work (from an oil furnace in the basement) that supplies every room on the first floor with forced hot air.
4.)  I'm planning on renovating the entire hourse...so anything goes (new insulated ducts, running plumbing...).

Any thoughts or suggestions from the wonderfully experienced members of the forestyforum?  Thank you for your input and knowledge, it is GREATLY appreciated!

-Matthew (and his cold wife and 3 children who are too young to worry about such things as "being warm")

[beenthere]

Thirsty
Welcome to the Forestry Forum.

Pls add your location in your profile/bio. That will help with answers.

A lot of options, as you will find out, that will affect your decision. Layout of the rooms, your decision for another parlor stove or to go to the basement for a furnace add-on will be needed. Assume getting wood easily in to your basement has been figured out. As well as getting wood to your parlor.

Wood supply and location another consideration. Additional information as you can feed us will help response.

But you can't find a better wealth of knowledge with the many wood burning members we have.
Some pics of the situation will be good too, and we like pics.  ;D

[Corley5]

Wood boiler and in floor heat 

[WmFritz]

Wood boiler and in floor heat 

I second that.

Welcome to the Forestry Forum.

[Holmes]

 If you need to get thru the renovation and live in the house at the same time a wood furnace in the basement connected to the duct work will keep you warm. Provided you have a chimney that can handle a wood appliance.  That is ,not full of creosote , has a clay liner that is not cracked, bricks that are not cracked in other words a safe chimney. Thru your renovation you will make the decisions on how you really want the house heated.  Radiant floor heat is great in a well insulated house not in a drafty old house.
  My opinion is the best place to spend money is on the insulation, then the windows,  the doors, and then the heating system. If you plan to spend $6000 on insulation and $30,000 on a heating system spend more on the insulation.  A very well insulated house will pay you back almost every day of the year.
I put $22000 in spray foam insulation in my old farm house. That house went thru 250 gallons of oil in 10 days now I heat the house and make hot water with 900 gallons of fuel a year. Almost 4000 sq. ft living area.  I did put in radiant floor heat, but the savings is in the insulation.

[jfaulring]

I went the full renovation route on my 1860's WNY farm house - took everything down to the studs (except the in-law suite that the wife and are living in) and am currently putting it all back together. I sprayed in 3" of closed cell insulation which made the biggest difference;  that side of the house heats much easier now. I went with an OWB and radiant floor and have been pretty happy with it so far.  On the windy, sub-zero days the floor struggles to keep up in the in-law suite, but I attribute that mostly to the fact that the fiberglass in that portion of the house isn't that tite. The nice thing about the hot water route is being to incrementally add to the heating system as you do the renovation work; you just need to plan a bit ahead with the manifold.

[Piston]

This is a good article regarding putting a woodstove in a basement.  Like Holmes says, insulation is the key factor, unfinished or not.
http://woodstove.com/pages/guidepdfs/BasementInstall.pdf

Welcome to the forum! 

[thirsty07]

This is a good article regarding putting a woodstove in a basement.  Like Holmes says, insulation is the key factor, unfinished or not.
http://woodstove.com/pages/guidepdfs/BasementInstall.pdf

Very Helpful!  I'll pass that one along to my father.

Some more specifics...  I live in Vermont.
1.)  Wood storage and movement is not an issue, whether its in my "parlor" or basement.  The wood is blocked and split and dried elsewhere, and then trucked to my house.  Currently I stack it outside my house across my driveway under some cedar trees.  Once every couple of weeks I load up my porch with what it can handle and then bring it into the living area as needed to fill a rack.  Needless to say, a lot of movement...which i would be happy to give up.  My basement is large enough to hold a fair amount, and if i end up digging out some of the crawl space, I would be able to keep all my wood down there (hopefully).
2.)  Layout: Old farm house, so 6 rooms divided by walls and doors, some door ways which will closed off during the renovations.  The room I keep the stove in currently is a kitchen/dining open area that will eventually include a living/sitting/tv area  which is currently a porch.  Open stair way leading to the upstairs: 1 lg br, 1 med br, landing area and full bathroom right at top of stairs.
3.)  Its a post and beam house, so the floors for upstairs are essentially as thin in most places as sheetrock and plywood.  2 rooms have some space between floors.  There are no large open/high areas in my home.
4.)  The basement is uninsulated.  The majority of the foundation is cinder blocks on concrete footings.  2 ft above grade and 4 feet below.  The floors in most of the living space is freezing seeing as they are only some old 1" boards with no carpet, pad or insulation between the basement and living area.  There is one portion of basement that is the full 8', 8" concrete walls and its about 10-15'x30'.
5.)  Insulation Intent:  Complete tear down of each exterior wall (plaster and lathe with old cellulose) and adding back in r-19 batton or equivalent blown in.  Replace each old door (3 of them) and replacing the rest of the single pane windows (6 of them).  Somehow insulating the walls in the basement (spray? 4' framed walls with insulation? Should i insulate the ground in the crawl space?)

Hows that for specifics?  Hopefully that is information that can help with your suggestions.

Thank you
-Matt

[stratford 50]

Hi thirsty07, I live in Stratford NH,I use an e-classic 2300 wood only model. This is what I heat, house 28x44 2 floors -breezeway 12x12- garage 24x24 - workshop 38x32 14 foot high ceiling. I use 10-12 cord for 6 months of burning and I still have capacity left in the boiler. Insulation is key and thermo-pex piping with dry wood. Hope this helps, by the way it was -24 below with a -48 below wind chill last week here and no problems went 14 hours between fill-ups. Good luck Paul