Help with project

Hi all, I hope a kind soul can help me with this project of mine.
I have an old basement fireplace that I would like to transform into some sort of central wood burning heating unit for the whole house which is upstairs. I think it will probably need to be restructured and piping added. Do any of you have any experience with something similar or any advice? I am attaching a pic. The flat upstairs is made up of 2 bedroom, kitchen and bathroom, roughly 45 m². It's in southern Italy so it doesn't need to be super powerful.

Thanks in advance.
Y

Yagharek,

You've got a situation very much like my own.  I've decided the best path forward for me is to dedicate one side of the fireplace wall to the RHM or Batchbox and a bench.  I've thought about it a lot and a great concern of mine is that I retain the ability to clean or inspect the chimney without having to dismantle a big chunk of my installation.
I think this can be achieved by covering the fireplace opening with a removable piece of steel plate that has an opening cut in it for the ductwork from the bench, which can be removed for inspection or cleaning.  Of course this leaves some rather unaesthetic details hanging out, but with some creativity and some stacked stone or brick with clay mortar, it could be easily disguised and would not require a great effort to remove and replace it when necessary.

While a lot of people would tell you not to put a RMH in a basement due to the fact that many people will not be inclined to spend much time down there tending it, I disagree, as I spend a great deal of time in my basement working on projects, inter-web surfing, reading, or just relaxing.  Hopefully by next winter I will have a nice warm bench to warm my bones on as the winters here in N.W. Ohio do get pretty cold.

Now, if you want to heat the whole house, that gets a little more complicated.  How many square feet are we talking about upstairs?  Is there already ductwork installed for an HVAC system that you could utilize?  What regulatory considerations do you have regarding your local housing codes?  

I could imagine putting a hole in the ceiling for your riser to be as high as possible, with barrels stacked up until they reach well up into the room above.  This might require some carpentry work to bolster your ceiling joists since you will most likely have to cut one out to make room for the barrel tower.  You'll need to tell us what the diameter is of your chimney at the exhaust point on the roof.  That should indicate the smallest cross sectional diameter of the chimney.  This determines your potential system size.

I'm hoping others here who have basement dragons will chime in.

Hi Yagharek;

Is the chimney in good condition?
Do you know what size/shape it is?
Were you thinking this chimney needs a new pipe installed inside of it?
As long as your chimney is usable with a 150mm pipe, then you can build a 6" batch box with a brick bell attached to the existing brickwork.

No problem with a batch stove being downstairs, as the burn times are long compared to a J-Tube rocket.
Being in a basement you might want/like heat registers thru your floor to let the heat rise faster.
You may need to burn several loads to get the upstairs feeling the heat.