Free Heat

  

We will be installing a wood burning stove in the stone fireplace of the house. We already have quite a lot of timber that we will not be able to use either in the house or around the garden so it will be burnt over the winter months to keep the open plan ground floor heated. The stoves can generate between 6kW and 9kW of heat which is quite a lot for room of an area of just 48sq.m.  Also, the heat is not that controllable. It’s either too hot or not quite warm enough or just right but only for a short while.

So I got to thinking of what I have seen in old houses and offices were there are grilles within the ceiling to the floors above. These may have been ventilation grilles but will serve equally as heat transfer grilles. These could be positioned in the corners of the bedroom away from any bedroom furniture and fitted with an adjustable louvre to the top side and a decorative cast iron grille to the ceiling side.
                                    

I would like to think the heat will escape to the upstairs via the stairway opening  which of course it will but doubt it will ever heat anything but the landing area. The heat won’t escape through the downstairs ceiling as we have 15mm flooring on top of a 20mm of boarding on 12mm plasterboard. Good for sound but a barrier to heat.

The downside of all this of course being the transfer of sound between upstairs and downstairs which would be hard to control and couldn’t be achieved by simply closing the louvre. It would require some sought of damper that starts to make the whole idea quite complicated unless you had both the time and ingenuity to devise a simple damper system that could be worked from the bedroom side of the heat transfer grille.

 However, if sound transfer isn’t a worry then I think it’s great way of keeping air moving round the house whilst keeping the bedroom heated during cold winter months.