Well, we've just had a real test of our stove fan the past couple of days with temps in the high 30s and two nights where it dipped into the mid to upper 20s. (Those of you living to the east of the Cascades, remember we have a damp cold and 31 here feels a lot colder than it does over there!)
I didn't close the stove down much those two nights and last night I got up a couple of times to stoke it back up. This morning the back bedrooms were cool but still comfortable and warmer than they would have been with the floor fan moving the heat.
Definitely a keeper!
Sunday, January 13, 2013
Saturday, January 5, 2013
Hearth and Home
I have been campaigning for several years now to purchase a fan for our wood stove. My mother has one for her insert and it does a lovely job of circulating the heat from the stove throughout the house. The fan sits on top of the stove and the heat transfers from the stove to the pedestal. The difference in the temperature between the base and the top of the fan generates the electricity to turn the fan.
Mom's house is a lot more open than ours and Mike was dubious it would work at all in our house. We have only wood heat and the placement of the stove makes it difficult to get heat down the hall to the bedrooms. We've found that a strategically placed fan helps pull the cold air into the family room and gets a circulation going. Unfortunately, the strategic place is directly in the walkway between family room, dining room, and hallway. I was getting weary of it being kicked, of trying to avoid it sixteen dozen times a day, of the constant drone exacerbating my tinnitus, and the added cost to our electric bill. So yesterday, feeling as if I was tip-toeing out on a rather flimsy limb, I purchased a fan against Mike's judgement at our local farm supply store.
The store had only a larger fan (at a greater price!) and I dithered alarmingly before I made the purchase. When I got home, I very carefully unpacked the fan so I could return it if we decided it wasn't going to work for us. I decided that if it worked as well as the current set-up, I'd keep it but if the strategically placed nuisance worked better at moving the heat to the bedrooms, I'd return it. That fan is too spendy to sit unused on a shelf or to spin uselessly on the stove.
I can tell you today that not only has that flimsy limb become very firm, but I'm not even on it anymore. The stove fan seems to be better at circulating the heat and, as promised in the advertising, is doing so with a smaller fire. The real test will come when the outside temperatures drop into the 20s but for now we're cozy and have an unobstructed walkway.
Mom's house is a lot more open than ours and Mike was dubious it would work at all in our house. We have only wood heat and the placement of the stove makes it difficult to get heat down the hall to the bedrooms. We've found that a strategically placed fan helps pull the cold air into the family room and gets a circulation going. Unfortunately, the strategic place is directly in the walkway between family room, dining room, and hallway. I was getting weary of it being kicked, of trying to avoid it sixteen dozen times a day, of the constant drone exacerbating my tinnitus, and the added cost to our electric bill. So yesterday, feeling as if I was tip-toeing out on a rather flimsy limb, I purchased a fan against Mike's judgement at our local farm supply store.
The store had only a larger fan (at a greater price!) and I dithered alarmingly before I made the purchase. When I got home, I very carefully unpacked the fan so I could return it if we decided it wasn't going to work for us. I decided that if it worked as well as the current set-up, I'd keep it but if the strategically placed nuisance worked better at moving the heat to the bedrooms, I'd return it. That fan is too spendy to sit unused on a shelf or to spin uselessly on the stove.
I can tell you today that not only has that flimsy limb become very firm, but I'm not even on it anymore. The stove fan seems to be better at circulating the heat and, as promised in the advertising, is doing so with a smaller fire. The real test will come when the outside temperatures drop into the 20s but for now we're cozy and have an unobstructed walkway.
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