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Skip the wood stove store, a $40 door fan from the dump kept my whole place warm last winter
Everyone on here keeps saying you need a $2,000 insert or a pellet stove to get through a New Hampshire winter, and I don't buy it. My place is a drafty 1970s ranch outside Concord and I heated it last winter with a 30-year-old box stove I pulled from the transfer station for $40, plus one cheap fan. The trick was putting a small box fan on the floor about 4 feet back from the stove, pointed at the base of it, on low. Nobody told me this, I just tried it after reading a dusty thread on a wood heat forum. It pushes the cold air along the floor into the stove, the stove heats it, and the warm air spreads out across the room instead of stacking on the ceiling. My kitchen went from 52 degrees in the morning to 64, and I burned maybe a cord and a half of split hardwood all season. Yes, the fan running on low costs a few bucks a month in power, but that's nothing compared to a stove store quote. What I don't get is why the stove shops around here never mention it. Has anyone else tried a floor fan with an old stove, or did it make your place feel colder in some rooms?
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