# pointing fan towards stove



## chrisasst (Dec 18, 2009)

Ok, So I haven't tried pointing a fan towards my stove before. I usaully have my pedestal fan on top of my stove blowing the air. So I am trying what you guys suggest by pointing a box fan towards the stove. Well here are my findings...With me doing this, it has not increased the temp in my furthest corner, and it has lowered the temp in the room my stove is in by a good 4 degrees. I still have the pedestal fan blowing outwards so I don't know. What am I doing wrong, anything?


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## fataugie (Dec 18, 2009)

I don't know...I've done the same thing and I can't really notice a difference in my house (raised ranch) other than the heat evens out a bit between upstairs and downstairs...but to the cool side.  Not what I expected.


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## newf lover (Dec 18, 2009)

i have a fan close to the floor blowing toward the room with the stove. Fan is on low. I have nothing blowing hot air out of the room. The temperature goes up about 5 degrees in the room the fan is blowing cold air out of.


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## littlesmokey (Dec 18, 2009)

Where is the fan? Do you put it in the cold corner to move that air, or in the stove room? Your results defy physics. The easier air to move is the cold, but your heat doesn't vanish because you add a fan, it has to go somewhere. Move your fan until you get the results you want. All you are doing is creating convection, but you need to extend that distance as far as possible. I heat a corner of my shop two rooms from the stove with a 5 inch (approximately) variable speed box fan. Starts on high and when the temps up, it goes to a medium level. Fan is in the far corner of the room away from the stove.


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## DannMarr (Dec 18, 2009)

Second law of thermodynamics- Heat travels from hot to cold and not the other way around. 
Cold is a formation of water & vapour with the chilling up of temperature and is heavy weight......hard to travel.
Heat is vapour on the rise and circulate faster and move from place to place in the form of replacement in space.


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## littlesmokey (Dec 18, 2009)

DannMarr said:
			
		

> Second law of thermodynamics- Heat travels from hot to cold and not the other way around.
> Cold is a formation of water & vapour with the chilling up of temperature and is heavy weight......hard to travel.
> Heat is vapour on the rise and circulate faster and move from place to place in the form of replacement in space.



Absolutely, but not helpful here. If you have an empty space that used to be cold air, you replace it with the warm. The cold air will naturally travel across the floor, if pushed and move towards where the hot air used to be. I guess the same principle applies to force air furnace systems in that they have cold air returns, not hot air ones. Pushing the cold air towards the stove initiates the convection. By inducing the motion, you can often maintain it with much less volume from the fan.

That's stove basics 101, practical experience, no laws apply. :cheese:


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## DannMarr (Dec 18, 2009)

Actually, in forced air systems the cold is sucked and not pushed. But I understand your reasoning, sometimes experience is the best knowledge.


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## krooser (Dec 18, 2009)

I use a pedestal fan to blow the hot air from my kitchen/porch into my living room.

If temps are below 0F I also use a small fan to blow the cold air from my bedrooms into the kitchen... seems to work better than aiming a fan at the bedrooms...


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## jtakeman (Dec 18, 2009)

As far as I know from testing. Cool dense air is harder to move than lighter warm air. Use a hot air balloon as an example. Moving the cool air towards the stove creates a void and the warm air easily moves in behind it. It works for me, But there is always the opposite and you will need to figure out what works for you. But in order to distribute the air you will have to assist with a fan or multiple fans.


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## fataugie (Dec 18, 2009)

The fan obviously is moving the air and helping to enhance the movement that was already present with the convection.   My observations are that the reason it seems cooler is because the air moving is at a greater velocity than normal convection and it is moving around the area dissipating the heat to the far reaches of the structure quicker.  So, if given enough time and assuming the heat gain is greater than the heat loss in the structure, eventually you'll get ahead and the temp would start rising.

I have a set back t-stat and when it falls down to 65 overnight, to crank it back up to 70 takes hours in the morning.  Sometimes 4 hrs.  But then it maintains that temp pretty well.  Running the fan or not running, the time required to come up varies only slightly (an hour or so).  However, the far reaches of the house become comfortable quicker.  Each house is different.  I discovered the ability to heat the whole place with one well placed Kerosene heater during a power outage.  Until we put the stove in, we would crank the Kero heater on cold days to help cut down the baseboard electric.  The Santa-Fe is rated at 34K BTU's on high and the Kero heater is something like 32K.  But the layout of my place allows for easy, unrestricted convection from the core of the house.  So adding a fan just distributes it around to some of the dead spots on the outer edges.


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## HopeItBurns (Dec 18, 2009)

I use computer fans, they usually run on 12 volts but  I am just running 7 volts DC for both. I have one contraption which is made of 3 fans at end of hall on floor blowing cold air toward stove (happens to be in almost in direct route to stove) and another contraption consisting of two fans on ceiling blowing warm air toward bedrooms and bathroom.  Each fan draws approx 1.5 to 1.8 watts, I leave them on only when the pellet stove is running (stove was off- just cleaned it). I had to pivot the cold air fan cause the linen closet happens to be where fan needs to be located. Skytech thermostat is just past normal thermostat.


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## CygnusX1 (Dec 18, 2009)

chrisasst said:
			
		

> Ok, So I haven't tried pointing a fan towards my stove before. I usaully have my pedestal fan on top of my stove blowing the air. So I am trying what you guys suggest by pointing a box fan towards the stove. Well here are my findings...With me doing this, it has not increased the temp in my furthest corner, and it has lowered the temp in the room my stove is in by a good 4 degrees. I still have the pedestal fan blowing outwards so I don't know. What am I doing wrong, anything?



Instead of using a pedestal fan, try a small box fan and place it on the floor. You want to push the cooler air to the stove. If you fan is placed too high, it will take the warmer air, cool it and push it to the stove. By placing it on the floor, you create a convection current in your house: cooler air traveling along the floor-----hotter air along the ceiling.


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## stoveguy2esw (Dec 18, 2009)

basic rule of thumb , cool air low back to the stove , warm air high away from the stove , 

using redneck  terminology (guilty)picture a racetrack upended onto its side with the stove at 1 end , traffic leaves the stove and runs the straightaway up high cools in turn 1  and starts back towards the stove in turn 2 , gets reheated in turn 3 and races away from the stove again coming outta turn 4 (can you guess i cant wait for Daytona?)  :coolsmile:


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## jtakeman (Dec 18, 2009)

stoveguy2esw said:
			
		

> basic rule of thumb , cool air low back to the stove , warm air high away from the stove ,
> 
> using redneck  terminology (guilty)picture a racetrack upended onto its side with the stove at 1 end , traffic leaves the stove and runs the straightaway up high cools in turn 1  and starts back towards the stove in turn 2 , gets reheated in turn 3 and races away from the stove again coming outta turn 4 (can you guess i cant wait for Daytona?)  :coolsmile:



Mike that's a cool way to think about it. I will have to go to speed dot com and see how many days there is to go!


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## becasunshine (Dec 19, 2009)

We use the window/box fan on the floor trick and it works well.  Our stove is in a corner in our study at one end of our house.  It faces the study's doorway, which opens to an L-shaped hallway, which in turn leads to the rest of the house.  The house is a circular floor plan single story bungalow with approx. 1250 sq. ft.  We keep one bedroom closed off most of the time so that lightens the heating burden a bit, but if we open that bedroom door the stove has no problem heating that room also.

We keep a box fan on the floor in the study pointed at the stove.  Most of the time we set the fan on medium speed.  Sometimes I'll turn it down to low at night when I want less noise in the house.  Sometimes we'll turn the fan to high when we are starting with a cold house and we need to pull in  that wall of cold air and push the heat out of the study.

Our HVAC thermostat is in the L-shaped hallway, right outside the study door.  The heat has to turn a corner to pass the thermostat- and it's moving when it passes that thermostat.  I can stand in the next room and feel the heat coming in from the hallway.  The thermostat gives us a pretty good indication of how well our convection is working.  When we start with a cold house we can watch the temperature read out on the thermostat climb.

Last year was our first year with the pellet stove and we tried moving the heat using ceiling fans in reverse, pulling up toward the ceiling.  That did not work at all for us.  Someone on another forum (I think it was another forum) explained how to use the box fan on the floor.  The difference was immediate and noticeable.


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## DannMarr (Dec 19, 2009)

Regarding ceiling fans, I have better results when the fan blows down to the floor and not to the ceiling. Heat rises on it's own, so blowing the heat down to the floor balances the temperature. Then again, I have vaulted ceilings, that may play a part in it.


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## poconoman (Dec 19, 2009)

Ceiling fans:

Summer A/C.........pull air UP
Winter heat..........push air DOWN.


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## dobie daddy (Dec 19, 2009)

the common census the exact opposite.


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## Pellet-King (Dec 19, 2009)

Last thing i want is a ceiling fan blowing DOWN chilly air in the winter, any breeze warm or cold doesn't feel good, i have mine now blowing up on the slowest setting in my dining room, not were the stove is either, feels warmer in that room now.


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## DannMarr (Dec 19, 2009)

> Last thing i want is a ceiling fan blowing DOWN chilly air in the winter


Why would cold air blow down when the warm air is above? I have mine set at low and the heat distributes very nicely. Another example of experimenting to accommodate individual needs. What works for one, may not work for all. As long as your warm!


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## slls (Dec 19, 2009)

My daughters trailer has one cold air return. The door to the furnace closet has about a 2 inch gap at the bottom.  

My first floor is heated from the main room to one doorway through another doorway and all heated almost equal. It puzzled me for a while, I then figured out the fan is located at the bottom of the stove and runs a long time set to high. The cold air being pulled off the floor for such along time the outer rooms gets the air replaced with warm air, works great.


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## sweetsncheese (Dec 20, 2009)

poconoman said:
			
		

> Ceiling fans:
> 
> Summer A/C.........pull air UP
> Winter heat..........push air DOWN.



Try it the opposite way.






The goal is to aid convection not fight it.  Hot air is rising so you're using the ceiling fan to pull the hot air UP and increase these naturally occurring air currents.


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## DannMarr (Dec 20, 2009)

Ceiling fans are set to blow down (counter clockwise) during the summer and blow up (clockwise) in the winter. This is the Norm.
But for those of us who have tall ceilings and open staircases (as myself), we often do the opposite. 
 Cool air sinks to the floor, which causes the lower levels to be cooler and the upper levels hotter. 
In the winter, we run the fan in the blowing-down direction to move warm air into the lower levels of the house. We feel no draft  because we are too far away from the fan. Speed rate must be put at minimum.


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## mjbrown (Dec 20, 2009)

i use 2 cieling fans in my house... the living room and the dining room are next to each other. the living room gets quite warm where the stove is so, i set that cieling fan to push down on the lowest setting...the dining room fan is set to pull up on the lowest setting, and makes kind of a circulation from the two rooms. i should add that my livingroom is sunken about 2 feet. this system works pretty well for me, when the temps drop real low, i put an oscillating fan behind the stove set on low, and it seems to help push the heat.

mike


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## chrisasst (Dec 21, 2009)

well, I think I finally got it working. My wife wasn't home so I just let the fan blow for a few hours and the cold spot got warmer. Kind of funny also. At one point the cold spot was warmer than the stove room.


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