Wood stoves aren't usually designed to heat an entire house, but are just the right size to heat a particular room in a house. However, installing a wood stove in the right place in the house, in addition to helping air circulate between rooms or using a stove boiler, can help raise the temperature throughout the house. Wood stoves come in a wide variety of sizes. Some are designed to heat only small areas, while others can heat an entire house.
To ensure that you heat both levels of your home properly, be sure to select a stove size that can heat a minimum of 2,000 square feet, even if your home is smaller than this size. Obviously, if your home is much larger than 2,000 square feet, size the stove accordingly to ensure that it can adequately heat both levels. When moving warm air from the stove around the house, it is very important to install a return circuit so that the air can return to the room where the stove is located. Depending on many factors, a single stove may not be right for your home, and there's nothing wrong with that.
Conduction is the process of transferring heat between objects through direct contact, and is the most common type of heat transfer. If you have a two-story house, you'll definitely want to locate the stove on the ground floor, because the heat increases. These stoves are built into a chamber in the wall and take cold air from floor level and heat it around the body of the stove. If your stove has a glass or ceramic lid, heat emanates to this cover and is then transferred to your pots and pans.
Remember that hot air rises, so a stove placed on the upper floor will not generate much heat in any of the spaces on the lower floor. That's it, now you've created a convection current and your stove will spread background heat throughout the house. Once again, this means that it will not overheat where the stove is installed, especially in models that release heat to the ceiling. You can increase heat flow by placing the stove in a room on the ground floor and then installing a fan and vent to keep air moving through the ceiling and circulating through the upper spaces.
Wood stoves can be installed in homes of any size and can also easily heat a two-story house if used correctly. When it cools down, it falls back down until it meets the floor and then moves back to the stove. One thing that always frustrates many, even veteran janitors of wood stoves, is the art and science of dispersing the heat produced by the stove.
