Please read below before commenting, because I'm going to do my best to state all the facts:

Right now I have planned to heat my entire cabin with a wood stove located on the main floor and I still plant to do that, but as supplemental heat I am going to install a Propane wall heater that provides 30,000 BTU's of heat. Something similar to this:

Propane Heater

Originally I was looking at radiant floor heat which consists of PEX plumbing run underneath the plywood sub-flooring and "radiates" up through the floor by pumping hot water from the water heater through the piping, keeping the floor warm and in turn warming the whole house.

Now I have this crazy Idea of kind of combining the two and simply mounting the propane heater in the center of the insulated basement and the warmth that it generates in the basement radiate up through the floor and then in turn warming the floor and keeping the whole house moderately warm.

I think this will work for several reasons:

1. The house is a tall house with a small foot print and heat naturally want's to rise anyway.
2. The floors consist of 3/4" T&G plywood and 3/4" pine T&G flooring which together only have an R Value of about 2.
3. The basement has walls of 8" concrete block with a thermal barrier and 1" of rigid foam insulation which equates to a combined R Value of about 9.

Here's a cross section of the cabin. Each floor is 24'x20'. The heater would be mounted on the center column in the basement/crawl space filling the areas in between the joists with warm air that would radiate upwards through the 1st floor.



Here's a picture taken in the basement where you can see the centrally located column where I'm going to mount the heater.




I know I'm crazy, but do any of you have any experience with something like wood heaters in the basement? I know it's a thing up North to have a rather large wood burning heater in the basement and heat the house in a similar manner.

I think the top floor will be cold.

I've been in some houses in bitterly cold Temps that had wood stoves and they all some forced air system to move that warm air around.

By the way...

It's not going to cost me anything to try, because I'm buying the propane heater anyway and I have to get a propane tank and install it anyway too, because I'm going to have a propane gas range and this heater will be mounted somewhere in the house before it's over.

I disagree on the first sentence and agree on the second.

We have stayed at our friends cabin and slept on the top floor. They have a wood stove and the first floor was pretty comfortable, but up in the bedroom where we stayed it got so hot that we had to open the windows to cool it off enough to sleep. (They warned us that we were probably going to have to do that.)

So my worries are that the top floor bedrooms are going to get too hot no matter what we do. So much so that I am thinking of designing an 8" pipe that pulls hot air from the peak at the roof up at the lofts and recirculates it down to the first floor in the winter and reverses and pulls cooler air from the first floor and recirculates it to the top during the summer.

My inlaws have a 2 store house plus a basement. They have a buck stove down there and a large AC return air vent directly across the room from the buck stove. He can fill heater up and turn the AC fan to on and heat his entire house with the heat from the stove.

I know you dont have central air but a similar system might work.

I think it would probably work very well. The means of recirculating air from floor to floor as you mentioned could really be a wise addition.

My only concern would be the source losses with it being in the basement which isn’t sealed from the look of the pictures? You could build a simple spread sheet to calculate loss paths based on insulation values you mentioned and get an idea or you could just try it and see.

So they have a wood stove on the first floor or in the basement? Do you have a large connection to the first from the basement that you will open? I don't think the radiant floor concept works with a dry heat source beneath the floor. I'm not sure where you cabin is, but if you ever get Temps below twenty, you'll need another heat source.

Maybe I read this wrong, you aren't going to replace the wood stove, just supplement it? If that's the case, I wouldn't bother.

I have a friend who's dad is a creative tinkerer like this. Their home is built on a slope and is 2 story, with the top floor being the living quarters and bottom as a basement/garage. He installed a fireplace downstairs and built a large enclosed metal box above it. He then installed uninsulated metal duct work around the ceiling (under floor of living quarters) forming a loop to the box and put a fan on one side. Fireplace heats air in box, fan send it through the duct returning to box to be reheated. Floors stay warm and the electric bill stays low... so long as they feed the fireplace. This is in a 2,000sq/ft home.

With as small of a footprint as you have, I can't help but think it will work.

Those heaters aren’t great. It would prolly heat the basement and maybe the floor if you leave it on high. And that’ll eat up some gas.

It would be great for keeping yer pipes from freezing when you aren't there, but I doubt you're gonna gain much off it on the main floors for the amount of fuel it'll burn. I'd put a good 4 or 5 burner LP heater , like a Vanguard on the first floor .

Yeah... I think the concept is sound, but the heater may be lacking. I may try it just for grins and giggles anyway, seeing that I won't be out any money for trying and then if I doesn't work as planned move the heater up to the main floor and wall mount it like I was going to do anyway.

Wouldn’t be bad to have down there to leave on because of pipes freezing. I use an Ashley wood heater and it heats my house well.

my grandparents had a 3 story house. OLD house built in early 1900s, with horrible insulation. they had 3 fairly large natural gas heaters-- all on ground floor..the old school kind, don't know BTUs but they put out some heat. no other heat on any floors but they had registers in all rooms on all floors. open the registers (some small 8inches sq and some large 2ft x 3ft) all registers could be closed if the above floors didn't need heat, but if needed those worked fine and heated that old HUGE house nicely. Heat rises. I don't know the economics, or what their gas bill was, I was a kid at the time but I do remember my father and uncles marveled at how they had no furnace or central heat of any kind and the house stayed warm.

I think if you put in a couple registers in the floors, vents on each side of the walls like floor located HVAC units use, the heat could transfer upstairs a lot easier and insure it is warm enough.

I think that would prevent any freeze problems you posted on here as well.

Id also definitely VENT any propane type heater. That is a dangerous gas in enclosed spaces.

I have this 3 brick radiant heater running right now in my cabin. It heats 700 sq ft and keeps it comfortable. I also have a 2 brick in the bathroom that is way more than needed in there:

jp chase bank near me

I think one very important consideration is whether or not you will be living there? If you live there and keep it warm all the time it might be ok to put it in the basement. If you are going to just go on weekends, I would definitely put it on the first floor. My heater will raise the air temp quickly, but it takes a long time to warm up the walls when I first get here. The heater must come on a lot more the first night here than it does the second night and any after. Good luck deciding

Good experienced advice PCP. Looks like it will keep it warm there for sure.

Well... I bit the bullet today and just bought a mini-split system. It arrives on Thursday and my brother and I are going to install it. My son-in-law who is an HVAC tech is going to do the final pressure test and pull a vacuum on it.

It has A/C and a heat pump and is supposed to be a pretty efficient system. It comes with everything to install it including 25' of line and extra charge for the lines. So no additional coolant required.

I'm still thinking of using the LP heater in the basement to keep the floor warm and I think between the EPA certified European wood stove, the mini-split and the LP heater in the basement, we should be able to keep it pretty cozy up there even on the coldest winter nights.

If you are going to have a wood burner on main floor id probably just put another wood burner in basement and have the Lp one for bu as well. Your place pretty well insulated and have good windows?

It's well insulated. I'm not going to put a wood burner in the basement. I don't want to have to run another chimney and I don't want to have to go down there and tend another fire.