I hope I can explain this so you can understand. We are remodeling an 1894 single story farm house, not the "This Old House" variety, but an old house thats been added onto a couple times, making it long and narrow. Front part of the house has the living room, 2 bedrms. and a bath (Bath now has it's own heat source.) Then through a narrow doorway into a 500+ sq.ft kitchen, and beyond that, another large bedroom. Up till now the house has been heated with a couple woodstoves and an ancient oil heater. We installed a Monitor oil heater in the kitchen, it works great and is very efficient. It would easily heat the entire home, except for the way the house is laid out, which tends to block the heat from other rooms, especially the living room and 2 front bedrooms. Before we break down and buy another Monitor for the living room ($1700+), can anyone suggest a way to circulate the heat into the front room? Without removing the wall between the kitchen and living room? : ) Perhaps some sort of fan system over the doorway? My dh is extremely talented and can build about anything, but we have so many irons in the fire right now that he simply does not have the time or energy to "invent" something and is ready to just go purchase another stove. Sure could use some ideas.

-- Lenette (kigervixen@webtv.net), November 30, 2000

Answers

Id cut vent holes,,, the size a vent cover would fit,,, at the top and bottom of the walls to the adjoining rooms. Should be able to go in between the studs,, then as the warm air rises,, it'll push the cooler air into the heated room,,,Did it at my first house for the woodstove, worked good, .

-- STAN (sopal@net-port.com), November 30, 2000.

how about fans?

-- renee oneill{md.} (oneillsr@home.com), November 30, 2000.

I was thinking something along the lines of what stan said. I'd get some ducting and cut an inlet in the kitchen ceiling and run duct work though the attic to the room you want to heat and put a fan in the works to blow the hot air that has risen to the ceiling in the kitchen to other rooms. You can get a lot of convection by putting a vent near the top of a wall and one near the bottom (not right above each other though) if the room is right next to the kitchen.

-- Amanda in Mo (aseley@townsqr.com), November 30, 2000.

I saw for sale, at Real Goods (RealGoods.com), once a corner fan that fit into a doorway, the upper left or right corner, and ran by electricity (plugged in). This allowed air to cirulate in different set-ups. Don't know if they still have them. Maybe your husband could put in a thermastat-controlled vent fan somewhere?

Good luck. I hope something works for you.

-- Anne (HT@HM.com), November 30, 2000.

Stan is 100% correct. We had the same problem in an old home and my husband cut vent holes..in the top one, he installed one of those old fashioned blower fans that used to be standard items for range exhaust...chilly? Pull the little chain and the fan comes on sucking nice warm air from the kitchen into the living room. In the days before furnaces (and even after), vents in the floors were used to allow rising heat to come on up or over...you may want to check out junk stores for some truly gorgeous vent grates..some were lovely intricate things..God bless.

-- Lesley (martchas@gateway.net), November 30, 2000.

We have the fan Anne talked about and it blows our woodstove heat up the stairs. I think we got it from a catalog called home improvement.DW

-- DW (djwallace@ctos.com), November 30, 2000.

Holy cow Lenette!! 500sq ft kitchen? Just live in there! Ha! How many sq ft in the entire house? When I'm in those really old houses I always wonder how many familys have lived there and how many children have played in the big rooms. Got a lot of history in there, hope you enjoy it! ....Kirk

-- Kirk Davis (kirkay@yahoo.com), December 01, 2000.

We bought an electric power-flow register from Lehman's. It's 10" by 10", and fits in the wall. If you were to put it in the wall between the kitchen and living room, it would blow heat right in. Hope this helps.

-- Lena(NC) (breezex4@go.com), December 01, 2000.

A couple of small box fans placed in the upper corners of the doorway would solve your problem . I used them for a simmilar situation. You can order them from northern tool for about $6. www.northerntool.com 1-800-533-5545 they have lots of cool stuff for around the homestead at reasonable prices.

Shawn

-- shawn winsor (jungleboys@hotmail.com), December 01, 2000.

Man, my whole house is 750 sq feet! When I lived in WI our house was heated with one "pig" barrel stove. The best facilitators for heat were a ceiling fan in the room with the stove and vents as others have mentioned. GooD luck with your dispersion.

-- Doreen (animalwaitress@excite.com), December 01, 2000.

Just another approach-we cut agood size pass thru from the kitchen to the dining room in the wall of one house we owned,and loved it.The counter was on one side and the table on the other. It made passing food & dirty dishes easier,plus allowed for air circulation and a more open feel.You could even use shutters to close it off when you wanted to,like to hide the messy kitchen when visitors come!

If the wall is a nonsupporting wall,it's pretty straightforward.Watch for electric & plumbing lines tho.If a supporting wall then you reinforce it like for a door or window. Just a thought.

-- sharon wt (wildflower@ekyol.com), December 01, 2000.

In addition to fans and grates and bigger doorways, all good ideas, make sure your stoves have access to outside air for combustion. Drilling a hole in the floor next to your woodstove will really stop the drafts that are sucking in from everywhere and allow the heat to radiate out.

When you have the house toasty warm, and you STILL have one cold room, open the window about an inch in that room and it will draw the warm air in and allow the cold air out. When it is warm, shut the window.

-- Laura (gsend@hotmail.com), December 01, 2000.

Lenette, our old farmhouse is laid out similar to yours. Added and added on going west to east with wall right down the middle. We have another metal roof up in our attic under the top metal roof, so we could only put the wood stove in the log house part which is far west. We got Windmere small square fans and turned them upside down and screwed the legs into the doorjam at the top corner, must be by electric outlet. They work pretty good, but they wont push farther than 1 room really. The 3rd room away is cool, but not cold.

This year one of the little fans quit and I took a big box fan and just tied a string on one top corner and hooked it to a nail up at the top of the ceiling by the door into the log room. That puppy blows some air! It pulls all the hot air off the ceiling thru the doorway. It warms the kitchen and dining room great, but it is kinda tacky and I have bumped my head on it dozens of times. (I'm not used to it being there) When the log room gets too hot I just put it on 2. It works much better than the little fan.

I have tried my ceiling fan in the living room many times, button up or button down, and it just makes it colder, I don't know why. We want an outdoor stove so I will deal with this untill we get one.

-- Cindy in Ky (solidrockranch@msn.com), December 02, 2000.

Cindy in Ky is right. The only way to circulate the heat effeciently is via water. Using hydronic heat from radiation in each room, hooked to a outdoor wood furnace will take care of the problem. It's a little more expensive, I'm sure, but far better than trying to circulate hot air. When we encounter these t ypes of houses-the good old big houses with drafts and all, we just set a central boiler outside and run radiation. In rooms where it's not feasable to have radiation we can and do install a blower box [air handler] and circulate hot air in those locations. Nuther words--hot water is much easier to run llines for than big duct systems. Matt. 24:44

-- hoot (hoot@pcinetwork.com), December 02, 2000.

Wow, thank you everyone for all the advice. Lots of good ideas. Another stove obviously would be the easiest, but I hate to spend more money! We figured this remodeling would cost around $11,000, but looks like it's going to be nearly double that before we're finished, so I REALLY don't want to buy anything we don't need to. A little history about this house...We are the 3rd family to own it. I'm not certain but I think the first 2 owners were either couples or batchelors - no kids. My dh's parents bought the place and 80 acres in '42. It was not much more than a shell, never painted inside or out, tiny kitchen with a wood cookstove, outdoor plumbing, etc. Dh's father, who did all kinds of woodworking, immediately added onto the kitchen, making it the size it is now. The "new" addition has some neat old pine paneling which I love. Later several rooms were added on beyond the kitchen, making a large bedroom/sitting room area, with a small room beyond that which is a pantry/cellar/storage area. This storage room has 1 ft. thick walls with sawdust insulation, which makes it great for storing canned goods and root vegetables. The house was remodeled in '42, again around '60 and then about '70. (Yucky old green/orange shag carpet!) Dh's family farmed the 80 acres plus several other 80 acre pieces that they leased. Raised about everything here, plus had a grade A dairy. Also ran a nursery and landscaping business for about 15 years. My dh was the eldest child, has been running a tractor, driving the truck to town etc. since he was 9 yrs. old. Also could out shoot any man in the county by the time he was 9. My dh and his brothers grew up there, married and left home. His parents sold most of the land, keeping the house, barns and a few acres. DH bought the place from his folks in '86 as his dad was dying. We put a big double wide mobile next to the farmhouse and have taken care of his mom till a year and a half ago when she passed away. We thought about selling out and getting more acreage but there are lots of memories here. The taxes on our mobile are high - half of our tax burden, so I talked my dh into remodeling the old house which we will move into, and selling the double wide and moving it off the place. We have TONS of animals, plus working 6 days a week, so time on the house is limited and the remodeling is slow. It's been frustrating but fun. We gutted the bathroom and kitchen, which is where most of our remodeling money has gone. We have found layers and layers of old wallpaper and linoleum, which brought back lots of memories for my dh. My in-laws had kept nearly every receipt since about '44 or'46, everything from power, phone and feed bills to breeding records on the cows. Grocery receipts, clothing and fabric purchases, tools, everything! Even some dry cleaning receipts from a laundromat owned by our neighbor's parents. The neighbor is a retired county judge whose mother just passed away at the age of 103, so these receipts go way back. I found notes my dh wrote to his mom when he was 4-5 years old, scribbles on the original wallpaper in my dh's old bedroom, and his brother's name carved in a cabinet that his dad made. This place could tell lots of stories. : )

-- Lenette (kigervixen@webtv.net), December 02, 2000.

A few additional comments about the house itself - The outside walls in the old part have 3 layers of external siding, the roof originally was wood shingles but had 2 layers of composition roofing and then we put a metal roof on about 8 years ago. The original walls, instead of having 2x4 studs have rough cut 2x6s set sideways, so the wall space is actually only 2". (But there is the 3 layers of siding for insulation, LOL) Inside walls, instead of sheetrock, have a 1/4" "hardboard", which is actually a pressed paper product used in those days. Ceilings in the bedrooms were this same hardboard with lathe strips. Living room was paneled but in the 70's with a cheaper paneling, not the unique pine stuff like in the kitchen. We left the kitchen paneling but will paper over the living room paneling (it's too dark, for one thing). The doors and most of the windows have 6" decorative frames. Most of the doors are still the old, narrow (28"??) wood doors with metal knobs with the old fashioned locks that take those funny old metal keys. (Still have most of the keys, too.) Living room windows were "updated" (Ha!) but the bedrooms and kitchen still have the old double hung wooden framed type. The old part of the kitchen has the original (pine?) shelves and cupboards, and we still have the original 1894 flour bin, which we incorporated into the new kitchen. Kitchen ceiling was fir-tex, which we covered with sheetrock. A lot of this stuff sounds cheap (it was, considering the economy in 1942 and prior to that) but it really has held up well over the years, especially considering it housed a family of rambunctious farm boys. (One of my favorite stories is when my brother-in-law stuck an "empty" gun powder keg in the kitchen wood stove - it blew the door off the stove, shot across the length of the kitchen and put a dent in the wood paneled wall on the far side.)

-- Lenette (kigervixen@webtv.net), December 02, 2000.

Thank you Lenette for sharing your house! Love it!...Kirk

-- Kirk Davis (kirkay@yahoo.com), December 04, 2000.

Our log room part of the house had layers of paneling on it and sub floors over the origional wood floors. Under the paneling was material for wallpaper, cloth glued to the walls. Under that was newspapers from the Louisville paper. We read all the newspaper ads. You could get a 8 course meal at the Blue Boar in Louisville for 68 cents!! Under that was the wains-coating, which is what is showing now on 3 walls. I painted it a tan color. The forth wall we ripped down to log, big logs, and chinked it with concrete. This way we can see the logs. We also exposed the hand hewn log beams on the ceiling. I still need to paint them. My laundry room, next to the log room is all wains-coating too. Used to be the little kitchen, guessing from the old wallpaper, red teapots and such.

I wanted to take everything down to bare wood, but I did not think it a good idea to be sanding all the old paint. So I painted all the big wooden doorjams and walls and floors with tans and browns. Our wood floors are in no way level, they go up and down everywhere, but we love this house. And we saved it, it sat on top of this hill 10 years empty. Don't know the exact age, but a tree man said my pear tree was closer to 200 years old than 100.

-- Cindy in Ky (solidrockranch@msn.com), December 04, 2000.