the joy of old houses and previous owners

[strider3700]

I was looking into the easiest way to get the heat from my woodstove into the cold air return on my furnace yesterday. When the stove is going that one room gets cooking but it takes hours to get the heat upstairs and then the outside bedrooms don't really get much gain.

Last winter I used the furnace fan to push the air around and it helped but the outside rooms were still cold. Even when the furnace heat was turned on some rooms didn't really heat up.

So yesterday I decided to take a look at a strange vent on the roof above the woodstove. I had originally thought it was a straight pass through to the floor above but since that's illegal they had blocked the vent upstairs and repaired the floor. I did however notice a bit of a breeze when the furnace fan was on so I was perplexed.

Here's the hole for the vent


and here's what I found


My guess is there was originally another vent somewhere in that room that they disconnected when they put up the roof. Getting in there to fix this is almost impossible from that side. I'll hit it at the main connection and disconnect it there. Hopefully that will help in getting some air to the outside bedrooms...

my plans to get the heat from the stove to the cold air return involve pulling the air through those bricks with holes into the cold air return is is just on the far side of that wall. I've got a bit of work getting some ducting through to the back side but it's nothing major.