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Comment by HeyLaughingBoy | Hacker News Reader

I had my wood fireplace going for the first time this weekend when the daytime temperatures were around -12F. It can easily raise the temperature of my living room, dining room & kitchen (one open space) to 80+ but that's with electricity to power the circulation fan.

How are you keeping the whole house warm if you can't circulate the air? I'm genuinely curious.

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There's some old school technology to solve that problem. For example, I stayed in a friend's ancient family home in Maine that simply had a bedroom over the living room wood stove, and an open vent between the two floors to let the heat through. There are also non-electric fans to help distribute heat from a wood stove.

https://www.amazon.com/PYBBO-Improved-Fireplace-Magnetic-The...

To clarify, that fan is electric and powered by a peltier (thermoelectric effect) device using heat from the stove.

This is exactly why old farmhouses here in the Midwest were T shaped. There was a chimney in the center of each long arm of the T. Then vents through the floor right above the heaters to warm the second story. With good placement they did not need to blow the heat around.

From personal experience, a heat-powered fan helps a lot. I used one when I lived in a Franklin-stove-heated cabin in Montana, and while you wouldn't mistake its power for an electric fan, it more than did the job.

https://www.amazon.com/heat-powered-stove-fan/s?k=heat+power...

Currently running a generator to run the wood stoves fan, its not ideal but not amazing.

car battery and computer fan

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