Help with Heat!

[warcloud3-1]

Ok, so I've been heating with an old earth stove for years. ( Couldn't afford to run the gas furnace). A while ago, I pulled up the old carpet from the back room, and lo and behold, an access panel! What I found underneath is an old sistern. Evidently the back half of the house is an add-on and they just built right over the top of it. So that's where that pipe in the basement comes from! Yep, already plumbed. I pumped the cistern dry, and didn't see any tile or other source to fill it. It was full again a few days later, after some rain and snow melt. Also, the house has no gutters. Evidently it's just filling with groundwater. Ok, so here are my questions......I'm thinking of moving the wood stove to the basement, and rigging up some kind of radiators (heat exchangers) around the stove to heat the water in the cistern. How can I make the cistern water tight? Also, would I be better off to use under floor heating or use heat exchangers in my existing furnace duct with existing furnace blower? I know I can also cut vents into the floor to allow heat from the wood stove to rise.

[ET1 SS]

I do not think it is a cistern, as much as a root-cellar that floods.

Is there a problem with where your stove is now?

[warcloud3-1]

Originally Posted by ET1 SS

I do not think it is a cistern, as much as a root-cellar that floods.

Is there a problem with where your stove is now?

I always assumed root cellars had access, like a door and stairs? The stove is not very efficient where it is now. I have to use fans to circulate the air, and when it was below 0 this winter I had to run kerosene to not freeze to death. If I put it in the basement I can use the existing chimney, it will heat the whole house, and I'll use the old coal door to dump wood into the basement. (No mess in the house)

[ET1 SS]

A woodstove in the basement is a very old-school method of whole house heating.

I have been in houses that use large iron grates in the floors to encourage warm air to rise. Other homes that have air ductwork to carry air around to other rooms.

If you shift to heating water then the woodstove is more commonly called a furnace. You can circulate that heated water very easily to radiators wherever you want the heat.

Our woodstove heats water that flows through our radiant floor system.

[JoePa]

Yes - but if it gets that much water in it - you might be out of heat and a stove - I'd think of something else - like moving the stove to a better place and put up a chimmey if you need to -

[huisjen]

You don't give a location. It might help to know what climate you're in.

If its filling with ground water, you have a very wet basement. It's hard to say anything constructive here, but the ideal response might be to connect the house to the ground with a hot box (which keeps the pipes inside it from freezing) and otherwise treat the place as a "treehouse". Insulate and air seal the floor well, and ventilate the crawl/basement.

How big is this place? How much do you burn per year? What kind of wood? How warm do you keep it? What's the closest airport for weather data?

[warcloud3-1]

Originally Posted by huisjen

You don't give a location. It might help to know what climate you're in.

If its filling with ground water, you have a very wet basement. It's hard to say anything constructive here, but the ideal response might be to connect the house to the ground with a hot box (which keeps the pipes inside it from freezing) and otherwise treat the place as a "treehouse". Insulate and air seal the floor well, and ventilate the crawl/basement.

How big is this place? How much do you burn per year? What kind of wood? How warm do you keep it? What's the closest airport for weather data?

We're about an hour southwest of Ft Wayne Indiana. I do have a wet basement, pretty much everybody around here does. Planning on taking care of that this summer, with gutters and proper drainage. House is 1200 sq feet, planning on adding a second floor in the near future. (One-two years). Typically burn 6 cords a year, this year burned 8 due to colder weather. Mostly burn maple, ash, and oak. Whatever I can get really (it's all free). Try to keep 68-70 degrees. Closest airport is Ft Wayne.

[warcloud3-1]

Also, the cistern ( or whatever it is) is 8 ft deep and 3-4 ft diameter, so I think if I heat it up, it should hold the heat for quite a while.

[huisjen]

Okay. Looks like a 6100 Heating Degree Day climate, averaging the last three years and assuming you keep it at 65° inside. Assuming the wood is actually dry, we can call it 25 million BTU/Cord. So, call it 6.7 cords, averaged over the same time, which is 162 million BTU, more or less.

If I got all that right, then 162 million BTU/1200 ft2/6100 HDD = 22 BTU/ft2/HDD. Now lower numbers are better, and generally, if the number is over 5, there are probably things to be done. The worst I've seen to date is 20. But here you are at 22. Now I could have gotten this wrong if you actually keep your house colder than 65°, but if you keep it colder with that consumption, then the house rates even worse.

Unless you live on a hill, I doubt you can fix a flooding problem with gutters. As you said: Evidently it's just groundwater.

So assuming you have a low efficiency woodstove and replaced it with a high efficiency natural gas furnace, you'd need 990 Therms of gas to heat the same house the same amount. Your current natural gas price is around 70 cents a therm, but I don't count on that staying level. Still, that means you'd pay $700 to heat your house if you went to gas, or maybe $800 if you have a lower efficiency system, plus whatever you might pay for system maintenance. This is cheap compared to Maine prices. Still...

You have a very leaky house. Close it up without really mitigating that water and you'll have a health situation from mold fumes.

I can't help but wonder if you can jack the whole thing up a few feet, fill the foundation with packed gravel, pour an insulated slab and above grade crawl space wall, and go from there. The thing is, this place is so leaky that a band-aid approach may not be economical.

I've got a decent summary of what else most houses need here. Consider your options and good luck.

[haypoint]

IMHO, warming up the water in a cistern is a quick way to have a swamp. Since it fills up, it must also flow out.
I'm trying to think of an efficient reliable way to get your house heated and heating cistern water isn't one of them.
Getting the heat from your wood stove converted to hot water with radiators isn't very efficient.
If you had a boiler and heated water, circulated to the cistern with a pump, then ran radiators in the far ends of the house, with a pump, plus figured a way to stop algae, it might work.
But, I think a furnace in the basement and some duct work to the far ends of the house and a blower above the furnace, would make you warm.
Difficult to get a dry basement if ground water fills a cistern in a few days.