Getting Heat Circulated With a Wood Stove in the Basement

Homeowners enjoy finding ways to lower their utility bills, especially during the winter months when they need to heat their homes. Burning wood in an efficient wood stove certainly adds heat to the room where you have installed it, but moving the heat throughout your home takes some ingenuity. If you have a wood stove installed in your basement, you have the benefit of physics lifting the heat, but the passive rise is seldom efficient enough without help.

Vent cover
Marker
Electric drill
Tin snips
Self-tapping metal screws

Instructions

- 1
  Position your wood stove when it's installed so it sits under the ducts for your existing heating or air conditioning system. The closer you place the stove under the duct, the more heat will rise directly into your circulating system.
- 2
  Find a place in the duct to install a return vent if there is not one close by. Place a vent cover on the underside of a duct on the ceiling and trace its outline with a marker.
- 3
  Drill four holes about an inch in from the outline in each corner. Cut out the inside of the vent opening, an inch in from the outline, from corner to corner using a pair of tin snips.
- 4
  Screw the vent cover in place with self-tapping metal screws using an electric screwdriver.
- 5
  Turn on the ventilating system to your existing heat source but use the fan setting instead of the heat setting. Let the fan run as long as the wood stove is burning in the basement, and the warm air will be distributed throughout the home wherever there are heat vents.

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