Harman Mark 3

Well I need ideas, Installing my mark 3 in a 2400 sqft house. Now that includes attached single bay garage that wont be heated from stove. House is a brick ranch 3 br dining room kitchen 2 bath , full open basement. The current set-up is a forced air oil burner. Now I have 2 chimneys on the house. One large chimney that contains 2 flues, one for upstairs open fireplace and one in basement for earth stove woodstove insert. The other small chimney for oil burner. Im looking at moving the insert to the fireplace upstairs and putting the mark in the basement. Im hoping to use the mark to heat my house without the need for oil unless january vaca. I have put up ideas on here for possibly tieing into duct, installing a baro but not getting much response. I seen the topic whos still here and seen the check in drop off in the off season but now is the time I wanna be ready. So being a mark 3 what can I do the ensure this Stove heats my entire house. P.s I do have one grate opeing in living room for heat to rise, about a square foot grate, but that surely doesnt heat the bedrooms.

It is very difficult to heat an entire home with just a basement stove. The basement itself will consume a lot of the radiant heat, and then you have to try to distribute hot air to the far corners of the house. Either buy some sweaters, or look for something that is made to tie into your existing duct work.

This is hard to answer without seeing the layout of the house. I understand the ranch concept as a rectangular box? Where are the the chimneys located? If you have a chimney towards the middle of the house, that's the one I would use. I would consider 2-3 more registers also.

In my old coastal house, the 3 chimneys are built right in the middle of the house almost along the highest point of the roof. I'm using my Glenwood cookstove in the kitchen (on one end), and another cylinder stove in the center chimney. I have about 2500sqft with 4 registers between the main and upstairs 2nd floor. The third chimney has a Jotul Alagash gaser for the spring and fall seasons.
This will be new to me also but it's worked well in the past with wood, so I can only think it will be better with coal.

See I'm thinking of tieing into my existing duct and possibly installing a ductfan to help move the air, friend of mine making me some duct to fit the stove and all the tie ins. Unfortunatly chimney that would be dedicated is on one end of the house. But you got it my basement is one large rectangle that is all open, sept for a 8x8 bathroom. Now im gonna tie into the duct im going to branch into a Y shape entering with manual dampers to move the air where I want say living or bedrooms. Im not sure how to control fan whether thermo to fan power so only runs on low temp or should I just have a local on/off switch. Now would their too much of a load on my fan on my forced air furnace if that where to run along with stove fan? Lotsa questions

anthony check your PM's

Eric

I have had a Mark III in our basement for the last 20 years and it does a good job heating the whole ranch house. Our Ranch is an "L" shape. I have 1900 sqft upstairs and 1500 sqft in the basement. Our set up may be better or worse than yours, hard to tell until you actually try it and tweak it. Our 2 back bedrooms & baths run about 7 degrees cooler (one side of the "L") than the other part of the ranch, but I have no returns back there so it is not unexpected. Sometimes I'll run the furnace blower to even things out a little. Your ductwork tie in should work better than my set up. You will probably want some returns to even things out a little more.

I lose a lot of heat because the basement walls are not insulated, I may be able to cut my coal usage by 25% or so if I framed and insulated it. I do not have mine tied into the ductwork. We have an open stairway directly in line with the stove, the stove fan runs by thermostat, but is basically runs 24x7 pushing hot air right up the steps. Cold air circulates back down the steps pretty well. The heated floor feels real good in the winter!

I'll give you my opinion. What you want to do is easyer than you think. Pick a spot in the cold air trunk, high, near the cieling. Cut a hole in it. YOU'RE DONE! Before you cut the hole, go buy a register you can open & close. Something around 8" x 16". Cut the hole to fit the register. Depending on restriction of register, you may want to add an additional hole in the cold air return, and have two registers. Put the stove where you want. Face it so that the fan blows towards the registers. Let the furnace run as useual. It won't run hard, as it will be drawing in preheated air from the coal stove. At the same time, the heat will be distributed evenly. Your heating bill will be way down low. Should you run the furnace fan only, it will cool the preheated air from coal stove. The house will feel cool. Run the two together, you'll have cheep comfortable heat. You may want to add an additional register in the floor for cold air to go. Don't expect heat to come up through the register. Cold air will be pushing it back down. If you want any kind of volume of heat to come up through a register, it has to be a BIG register above the stove.

I have to agree with the others that heating an entire house with a stove in the basement is very hard. Generally, you will not be happy with results. The floor above will be warm but not much else on the second level will be. The Mark III is not designed to supply heated air into a duct system and while it can be made to do just that in my opinion you'd be better off selling it and getting a coal appliance that was designed to use a duct system. I think you will find yourself in a Catch 22 - you will have to run the Mark III so hot in the basement that you won't be able to spend anytime there but if you don't you will freeze upstairs. If you keep the Mark III I'd put it on the level with the greatest sq ft to heat; that's probably upstairs. Remember, this is a radiant stove so it will always be hottest around the stove and 7 to 10 degrees in the nether regions of the house. Then I'd look around for a smaller stove for the basement. Once you get over the learning curve running a hand fed coal stove takes neither a lot of time or effort. Several folks here run 2 or more each winter.

Just my opinion, Good Luck, Lisa

Mine has been in the basement since I bought it in '08 ... before that I had a Mark I down there which struggled, to say the least. We're somewhere between 1,600 & 1,800 sq.ft. depending on whether you ask the realtor or the bank. Got too much going on to accurately measure it myself. But anyway, if I can heat this drafty dump to 65° during a -10° night, then you won't have an issue heating your home. Even in comparison to my neighbors homes, which would rank below average on the Massachusetts yuppie scale, mine is an energy hog. Most people couldn't handle one night in this place ... let alone 8 years,

My parents also had a stove in the basement when I was growing up, and their current coal stove resides in the same space as the old wood stove did. Heat can only go up. I think it's the best way to heat a home. Everywhere you go under your roof will be warm. Your feet are also warm as an added bonus. I could only dream of having enough extra cash to blow on radiant floor heat. This is the next best thing.

See what Id like to do if I had some dollars saved up, would be put in hot water baseboard with an oil boiler that tied into the coal stove. My aunts house had a huge alaska woodstove that had a water jacket on it tied to thier oil boiler and wow the oil tank never dropped. Was really nice on those may nights where a stove was too much. Now I have a forced air setup so to buy a boiler and all the floor baseboards and zone valves damn. I like a nice hand fed stove anyway keeps ya busy in the winter. But oh well, roughly 1200 sqft on each floor maybe more maybe less. I think the duct tie in is better than nothing anyway...

That would be the ideal for me too. Unfortunately, in my case, I have steam radiators and it's a single pipe system. Had it been a double I would have switched to hot water a long time ago. Then the tandem system really makes sense.

Why would you want to hook up a hydronic heating system to a stove?? If you are going to spend the money to install radiation, do it right and hook it up to a boiler.

Well not that it more reasonable and designed specifically for that purpose, just how I prefer a system. But anyway, the Harman is way way larger stove than what I have now. The stove I have now kept the house warm at 30 degrees and above. Now below 30 I had me a horseshoe making furnace lol and I kept the oil burner from kicking on every 20 minutes. I wanna toss the woodstove in the upstairs fp just in case. Plus it is a nice looking little insert that works well.

Yep I'm keeping the Jotul Allagash gasser on the third chimney too. It's good for the spring and fall when it's not that cold. Also my cookstove will still burn some wood if need be.

Today I had the chimney guys over to install liners. I would have sworn the chimney was bigger than it is! Long story short, the two liners 7" for boiler and 6" for the coal stove were a very tight fit. To tight. Almost was forced to remove the gasser to use that chimney but I really didn't want the coal stove down that end. Instead I had to go with a 5" for the stove which is fine as this stove actually has a 5" outlet. Would have had a 6" to 5" reducer in the system but now it's straight 5" all the way up. Oh well live and learn and spend more money to ship the 6" liner back for a 5". Wish I could go without the liner but code here states separate liners for two appliances on single chimney.
Had to cut a new thimble also further up where the chimney is wider. This thimble I had was too low and on the other side of a fireplace which narrowed because of the back of the fireplace in the opposing room. Hopefully this all works out now as I have created a nice mess.

markviii wrote:Why would you want to hook up a hydronic heating system to a stove?? If you are going to spend the money to install radiation, do it right and hook it up to a boiler.

I'm surprised none of the hand-fired people seem to have noticed the ridiculous fire in Rob's avatar. "Your hot dog will be ready in 4 seconds." The manly men may get the dancing ladies, but I kind of like being able to dial in an afterburner when needed.

Mike