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How to Duct Heat from a Wood Burning Stove : 6 Steps

How to Duct Heat from a Wood Burning Stove

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A wood-burning stove can be a great addition to your home, providing you with warmth, ambience and an escape to the outdoors. However, while they have many benefits, they also have their disadvantages.

If you’re living in a home or apartment with a wood-burning stove, pellet stove or any other stove, you may have noticed that it can make the place uncomfortably hot during the summer. 

The reason why this is so is that a wood heater releases heat straight into the atmosphere, making it very hard for any other type of heating to keep up.

We will walk you through each step so that you can learn how to duct heat from a wood burning stove in this article.

What is a Leak and How Does it Affect a Home?

What is a Leak and How Does it Affect a Home

A leak is the release of any hazardous, flammable, or toxic substance from a container. Leaks can be caused by many things such as age, mishandling, corrosion, and contamination.

This type of problem can cause significant damage to property and harm others if not treated immediately in a wood stove system. In addition, when leaks occur in duct work they can cause considerable problems.

Solving this type of problem will require a professional fixer who knows precisely what is happening inside the ducts. This is a job for the experts.

Where Does Air Move When There’s a Leak? 

Leaks can cause a rapid loss of airflow, leading to a significant loss of energy efficiency of your wood stove. In addition, if the ducts are not insulated, they will collapse in on themselves due to too much pressure being applied to the system. This will also require a professional to fix because they will have to identify exactly what the problem is occurring within the ducts of wood stove.

What are the Benefits of Installing Insulation in Ducts?

What are the Benefits of Installing Insulation in Ducts

Insulating ducts can help to:

  • keep the temperature of your home more consistent
  • save money on energy bills
  • prevent health risks from heaters during the winter months
  • prevent health risks from air conditioners during the summer months

Insulating ducts can help seal any gaps found between floors and walls using spray foam insulation, caulk, or other sealants that will create an airtight barrier around your home’s heating system (this may not be needed if your house is already well-sealed).

How to Duct Heat from a Wood Burning Stove?

Duct Heat from a Wood Burning Stove

1.The first step to ducting heat from a wood-burning stove is to install insulated ducts that will capture the heat coming from your wood stove and transfer it into your home. 

If you have any bare or unprotected copper or aluminium coils, you should consider insulating them with fibreglass or aluminium tape to ensure that your home stays warm.

2. Insulate the ducts of your wood stove by sealing them with foil or fibreglass insulation tape, which will prevent the heat from escaping out of your house. You should use at least 3-5 inches of this type of insulation on all seams and joints. This includes both vertical and horizontal seams.

3. Next, you’ll need to purchase an air return which will allow the heated air to be drawn into your home and circulate throughout the house while you’re heating your wood stove.

 The hot air obtained by burning wood from inside your wood stove will travel through copper pipes, but it needs a way to get inside the house for it to travel efficiently. This is where an air return comes in!

4. Install a vent at the bottom of each room for cold air from outside to enter and mix with hot air inside the house on your wood stove. A cold breeze coming from outside may feel nice on hot summer days, but it will cause your wood stove to lose heat. 

To get the most out of your wood stove, you need cold air from outside and hot air from inside so that they can mix and circulate throughout the house.

5. Seal all gaps around doors and windows so that warm air doesn’t escape outside during winter months when it’s colder out than it is inside. This process is critical if you live in a home that faces the sun.

6. Finally, make sure that any vents on top of your stove pipe are sealed off as well. Make sure that hot air from inside your wood-burning stove can’t escape outside into the atmosphere.

Preventive Measures

Determine How Much Heat is Being Lost

If you’re having difficulty figuring out how much heat is being lost, place an infrared thermometer in the worst spot. The thermometer will tell you how hot or cold that spot is. You can also measure which spots are losing the most heat, which will make it easier to know where to place your insulation.

Check For Air Leaks in the Ducts

Check For Air Leaks in the Ducts

The amount of air being lost through cracks in your ducts depends on the size of the leak and how rapidly air moves through that area. An excellent way to tell if you’re losing a lot is by touching the ceiling while standing near an air vent, then compare what it feels like to when you touch your hand against the same spot, but you are standing near the leak from pipes of the wood stove.

If your ceiling feels colder when you touch it where the air is coming out, then that means there is a big problem somewhere in your ducts and you should take a look.

Install Insulation on All of Your Ducts to Stop Heat from Escaping

Insulating ducts can save you up to 20% of your heating bills. To insulate the ducts, use fibreglass insulation such as Fiberglas or Fibracell UltraTec (Fiber-R-tec). 

Replace Worn Out Parts, Like Metal Joints and Plastic Elbows

It is not uncommon for your house to lose heat if there are parts in your HVAC system that are worn out or have holes in them.

This process happens because when it’s cold outside, the warm air inside of the ducts will begin to escape, and since there are holes, most of this escaping heat will escape right through those holes.

Fortunately, by replacing these old parts with newer, more efficient ones, you will be able to keep as much air in your home as possible.

Check to See if all Parts of the System are Working Properly

Check to See if all Parts of the System are Working Properly

If you want to be sure that your heating and cooling systems are going to work properly, then you need to make sure that the pressure within them is correctly adjusted.

For example, the pressure inside of a duct should be between fifteen and twenty PSI. If it’s higher or lower than this number, you may have to adjust the thermostat settings to fix the problem.

Clear the Vents of any Debris That May Block Their Flow

When you clean out the debris, make sure to be safe. Wear goggles and gloves to don’t cut yourself with any sharp objects or accidentally burn yourself from hot parts of the vents.

Ensure Annual Check-up

Don’t forget to have an annual check-up to make sure everything is working smoothly! This will help to ensure that your heating and cooling systems work for years to come.

Test Out the Hot Spots

The first thing that you should do is turn on a space heater to test your system first before you begin working on it again in an attempt to find the hot spots.

If you turn on a space heater, the cold spots will be the areas that need work. So pay extra attention to these areas when working on your system.

Use Radiant Floor Heat

In areas that are cold during the winter months, such as your kitchen and bathroom, you may want to think about using radiant floor heating.

This type of heating is an excellent idea because it heats the person instead of the air. It works by warming up the floor, giving out heat to your body as you walk across it.

Air Conditioners Can Save Money

It also helps to prevent the amount of heat that is escaping through your ducts. In addition, air conditioners will cool down an entire room instead of just one or two appliances, which will ensure that a lot more wood heat stays inside your home with it instead of being lost outside.

Safety Precautions

Safety precautions must be taken to ensure the heat does not escape from the ducting and insulation is added.

Other safety measures you can take include covering the stove door with a screen or protective mesh, adding an exterior canvas or metal door, and protecting your chimney with an insulated draft dodger.

Additionally, you might want to wear gloves when working near a wood-burning stove. It is best to stay away from the flue and let the stove cool down before touching it.

Conclusion

If you’re worried about your home heating up too quickly and consider installing a wood-burning stove, it is essential to consider the risks of having leaks in ducts that can cause serious problems.

To avoid these issues or repair them before they get worse, make sure you seal any gaps found between floors and walls with spray foam insulation, caulk, or other sealants.

This process will create an airtight barrier around your home’s heating system, which may not be needed if your house is already well sealed. We hope you have found our blog helpful in fulfilling your insulating endeavours. 

2 thoughts on “How to Duct Heat from a Wood Burning Stove : 6 Steps”

  1. Reading your article. I have warm air system I am looking to see replace with a log burner. Can I utilise this. Mine is an old Johnson and Starkey boiler?

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