I have a typical 10 year old bungalow,. about 1200 sq/ft. The wife and I want to develop the basement. In the rec room area, I want to put in a wood fireplace. The question I have is this. Is there a way I can hook the fireplace into the central heating ducting so that when I have a fire going, it heats the entire home? I would like to do this to save on gas in the winter especially. A problem I may have is that while there is ducting right above where I would like it to go, it isn’t a “main” one near the furnace. It only goes to one vent. Can it get connected to that, or does it need to go closer to the “manifold” (for lack of me knowledge on the proper terms) near the furnace?
I assume you are thinking about a woodstove, not a fireplace.
While you can convert or purchase a stove that will duct into your existing ducting, it’s not a do-it-yourself project.
Depending on the layout of your home, you shouldn’t have any trouble heating 1200 square feet with just radiant heat from the stove, especially if you use it as a backup to your gas heat. The furnace will help circulate any radiant heat produced by your wood stove.
Actually, it depends on your goal. If you’re looking for atmosphere, put in a fireplace and forget about heating the house with it. But if you want to heat the house, get yourself a “furnace add-on” woodstove.
As you suspect, an add-on will work best if it’s ducted directly into the plenum chamber of your furnace, so it generally needs to be situated pretty close by. An add-on is typically airtight (no pretty flames to watch), very heavy and very ugly. Most feature a large squirrel-cage fan to pump the hot air into the plenum, where the heat activates the fan thermostat in your furnace, and the furnace fan then circulates the warm air through the house.
We had a similar situation to you and put a fairly small Elmira airtight woodstove in the basement, immediately beneath the main bedroom. The stairwell alone allowed enough hot air to rise from the basement to heat the house. Our house was a bit smaller than yours, but we bought the smallest woodstove available - a larger stove should help heat a larger house.
My dad had a fireplace (also from Elmira IIRC) that was basically an airtight insert. It had a fan system that drew air around the chamber and then circulated it back out. The house is a side split, and with only the stairwell to get the heat upstairs, the fireplace insert heated the house.
The trick is to make sure you get good wood. I don’t know where you live, but I found it difficult to get truly seasoned hardwood. I got real lucky one year and bought four face cords of seasoned cherry that this guy wanted to get rid of. Really nice heat.
I agree with bare- my family had a Thermopride wood-burning furnance in addition to an oil furnace when I was growing up in the 70s and 80s. It was only cost-effective because we owned several wood lots and cut four or five cords of firewood a year. It wouldn’t be necessary to tie the stove into the ducting unless you plan to use the stove as your sole source of heat.
