Heating with uninsulated walls

I have a 50-93 down in my unfinished basement. The walls are cinder block and sealed with dry lock. I cut a hole in the floor close to where the stove sits below. I have a 2200 square foot rancher and don’t notice much of the heat getting upstairs. This thing should be making it pretty warm down there ?

What you have there is a space heater. It is not a furnace.

The amount of heated air going up through your newly cut hole in the floor above will be exactly equal to the amount of cold air that comes into the basement from upstairs through a different hole or preferably a duct penetration.

Think Circuit or air loop...

Yep,No Flow,No Go!

Yup.

Lots of people think hot air rises - it can't. It has mass so it's subject to the pull of gravity. It can only rise as it gets lifted up by heavier colder air getting under it.

If you can, the outlet of the cold air return should open as low to the basement floor as possible. That will prevent warmer air near the ceiling fighting to get pushed past the cold air trying to sink through the basement ceiling opening.

Paul

To add to what Paul said, run a 12 by 12 inch (or similar) square duct down from the fist floor and have it terminate a couple feet above the basement floor to act as a cold air return. Then open a few holes in the first floor for warm air to come up thru like the one you already have..

Also, and this is very important, seal that basement really good for cold air infiltration from outside for during cold weather. On the flip side of that, during warm weather/slow burn you'll wanna be able to crack a widow open in the basement to keep her chimney drafting.. ESPECIALLY, if the chimney is exterior block and motar.. They tend to be cold bitches that don't cooperate

If inspired to insulate do bands all around basement starting high at top of wall...the lower band make less improvement than those upper bands.

With all that stone I am betting there is little to no snow within a foot or two of the house. A space heater does a lot better when it is in the space you are heating so you have both radiant and convective heating. When it is remote you lose the radiant heating to the basement walls.

DS machine has the "basement" model...
Kicks lots of hot air and no fans...
Had this in the basement of the "old" house...
Big grate above 24x36...
https://messickstove.com/products/ds-machine-stov ... index.html

McGiever wrote: ↑

Sun. Sep. 01, 2019 7:37 pm

If inspired to insulate do bands all around basement starting high at top of wall...the lower band make less improvement than those upper bands.

x2. Insulation added in this manner will pay you back every day. Combine that with some increased air movement between the basement and first floor to further increase the amount of heat in the living area.

It is a space heater sitting in a place you don't want to heat. Does the problem explain itself yet?

i barely heated my house the last two years with a coal stove in the basement and that's with the furnace circulator going 24/7 with two 6" ducts from the coal stove blower going to the cold air return plenum of the furnace. when we had that cold spell last winter, the oil furnace and the coal stove were running wide open and i could not get my room on the second floor above 62 degrees without a space heater. get a coal furnace or a boiler, that is what i am doing.

It is amazing how long the cement walls will absorb heat before you feel warmth. In the old days my Buderus would run one full day before we really felt the warmth. My basement had a mix of insulation on the walls. I have since made some improvements and now with the Keystoker 90 and an efficient way to move the air problem solved.

I'm not a HVAC pro but a few thermostatically controlled 50 or 100 watt fans located in the right place has to be the way to go.

There are passive ways without using external forces...just takes understanding of what steps need taken to knock down the barriers that get in the way.
Air is a medium that flows in a circuit naturally, hot rises and cold sinks.
Harnessing those attributes is better than expending excess energy trying to force the air flow only in a direction it doesn’t want to go...like spinning your wheels a bit.

Look at the old houses that heated by natural circulation...
Large openings with grates are key...
My old cottage was easy...
900 sq feet DS Machine #4 directly under 24x36 grate...