Moving heat to second level

[Ashful]

Put a screen door at the top of the stairs

I love this idea, but this guy much be a bachelor.

 

[Ashful]

A warm floor won't radiate much into the upstairs rooms. You want convection. So pulling the insulation will feel nice to your feet, but won't heat the rooms there much.

Not debating you on principle, of course this is right. But you're ignoring another very strong factor in how our bodies behave. A human with warm feet can be more comfortable in a cooler room, than a human with cold feet in a warmer room. I fight this very fact in my house, built 1775 atop an older house from the 1730's. I keep our first level very warm, 73 - 80F, but we often feel cold, because our floors are painfully cold. This doesn't only hurt us by conduction (we can wear slippers), but it creates a cool blanket of air at the floor, that your ankles feel. Don't ignore our lizard brain.

 

[stoveliker]

Correct. (why does physics (transport of heat and mass) get made so complicated by biology (lizard)...)

This is also why my (and tabner's) fan system works so well: it sucks precisely the blanket of colder air from the floor.

 

[NorthernFireplaceFool]

Growing up my folks had a wood stove in their basement they strictly heated with. They had no insulation in their basement floor and an open stairway from the basement to the upper floor. The floors were very warm as the heat went right up and warmed the floors. There was also hot air spillage up the stairway to the second floor too.

 

[Ashful]

Do note that if you live in the mid-Atlantic, there's reasonable probability you have (or should have) a sub-slab ventilation system for radon remediation. This can be problematic for basement installs, both with regard to back-drafting the flue and with regard to convecting heat upstairs thru a stairway, by dropping basement air pressure below the rest of the house.