Greggery Kunkle

Thank you Allen. I have not yet read "The book" I will do that. It makes sense to get myself on the same page and use the same language as everyone else.

I will use the mirror trick and get back to you.

Yes the house is built on a sloped property. The basement wall facing the front of the house (North) is completely underground. The two side walls are about half and half as the basement comes out of the ground as it slopes down. The back wall is completely above ground with about a third of it being covered by a foundation room for the sun room that was added in the mid 2000's. The walk out door is in the right rear side wall.

I just had a thought. I assume I can attach photos here? I see the different tools on this post. If so, I can take some photos of everything in question and post here to help you all see what I am dealing with.

Thank you gentleman. I will check those out.

Quick answers to some of your questions. I have three floors total counting the basement. Square footage is approximately 1600 minus the basement. Roughly 800 more for the basement.

At present there is no real way for heat to get up except through the stairway with the door open. I am working on what will work best that I can do myself. I have a few ideas that I am researching.

The basement is mostly storage space with about a quarter of it being my work shop. One quarter of the basement where the steps come down is partially finished with two pocket doors leading into the rest of the basement. Those doors stay open. The previous owners attempted to finish the room off to be used as a living space but that is not what I use it for. Matter of fact I may have to tear out the finished walls to get to the basement walls to fix a minor water leak if I can't get to or fix it from the outside. The only part of the basement that is finished and that is where the water is entering, go figure. I plan on using this room for food storage mostly.

As I said I am just trying to see if an RMH could work and I appreciate all the tips and info you guys are sending my way. Please keep them coming. I am at work right now so I will check out the info you guys suggested this weekend. Thank you all again.

Thank you all for your advice. I am so sorry it has taken me so long to respond.

While I would like to put an RMH in my living room and move the gas fireplace to the basement, it's not going to happen anytime soon. Far too much work and expense involved then I can handle at the moment. I do understand the stack effect. I am assuming that the reason that RMH's are not a good idea in a basement is because of the stack effect. It competes with the air flow for the RMH.

My initial thought on the stack effect problem with putting the RMH in the basement would be to run an intake pipe from the outside connected to the input of the stove and have a door to feed the wood. This way the stoves air input would be separate from the house stack effect drawing from the basement. Just a thought. I know this would change the dynamic of the stove and would need to be researched.

I of course have looked at wood stoves and pellet stoves. I am researching RMHs to see if they could be a third possibility.

I very much appreciate all the info and suggestions on where to look for further reading. Thank you very much gentleman.

I am brand new here and did look around at some of the posts about RMH's. I am also new to RMH's in general. I have one question about how they are designed and if I can incorporate one into my existing set up. Forgive me if this subject is covered somewhere else on this forum, I did not see it.

I bought my house a year ago. It has a brick chimney with what looks to me to be new stove pipe lining it. It comes into the house in the basement. There is no stove of any kind in the basement, just the pipe stubbed out. I already have a central air/forced hot air furnace(The heat is produced by propane) and a propane fireplace in the living room. Both of these are fed from the same propane tank in the back yard. I was looking at putting a wood stove in the basement for a back up heat source when I was re-introduced to RMH's.

I understand that a certain amount of horizontal distance is required for the exhaust on an RMH before it exits the house. All the designs I have seen show the exhaust leaving at ground level. My question is: Can I build an RMH in my basement to the correct specifications but have the exhaust pop up at the end and connect with the existing pipe coming through the wall at about 4 or 5 feet high and use the existing chimney for the RMH?

Any advice or info is greatly appreciated.