Will one pellet stove do?

[Shortstuff]

First, great forum!

I'll try and keep this brief, but with this mornings cost of heating oil at $4.699 per gallon, we're looking at more than $700.00 every five weeks in the winter here (Southeastern MA). I've done my homework and am considering purchasing either the Quadra-Fire Classic Bay 1200 free-standing or the Mt. Vernon.

I have exactly 2,150 sq.ft. of floor space to heat, all my ceilings are 9'. We bought this house which is basically a one-story ranch about 12 years ago and we have litterally stripped every wall to the outside sheathing and made every outside wall 2"x6" which gives us an R19. The attic is all a minimum of R30. Yes, there is a crawlspace under approximately half the house and a cellar and garage under the other half, which I'm not concerned with heating. The house is approximately 90'x24' in size and is fairly tight. We've got it so well insulated and sealed, good Anderson windows and doors, that it really doesn't take a lot to heat the house, although the heating bill indicates otherwise. We use about 4.25 gallons of fuel oil per day in the dead of winter which seems pretty good.

I have a great location in the center of the house to place one large pellet stove and provide a couple of fans to blow the heated air to each end of the house, which brings me to my question. Would one large stove, centrally located with good circulation be adequate to heat my house? It is not a truly open floor design with 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, den and kitchen.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Steve

 

[MCPO]

Any house 90 long is going to be very hard to heat with a pellet stove blowing warm air in one direction , especially placed in the middle of the house but a large enough stove might work to some degree..
And if you do manage to blow the air in both directions you would in effect be cutting the temperature of that air in half. I`d have to think the stove would be burning quite high and lots of pellets not to mention fan velocity noise.
Anything is worth a try I guess.
John

 

[Wet1]

I'd think two small stoves located at either end would yield better results, but does that actually work for your layout (both physically as well as thermally)? John and I both have a Harman P38+, which is a small stove that will burn at a nice low rate. As long as you're layout and stove feature requirements are a fit, I'd think two of these would work great for you.

One central heat source in a 24' x 90' single level house? I'd think that would be very warm in the center and probably chilly near the ends (especially if it's not an open floor plan), unless you can come up with some clever way of distributing the heat.

One other thing that will help regardless, install ceiling fans if you haven't already. I also have 9' ceilings and the heat loves to sit up there! In my larger rooms I've installed large ceiling fans and leave them on their lowest setting... you'd be amazed how much heat you can save by recycling the warm air that sits up there. The air movement will help a little with your distribution dilemma a little as well.

Scot