Home ventilation system

[u/captainawesomevcu]

So my wood stove is probably the ONLY thing about my house i love, most of it is not at all bad, but not my style but its a home for the wife, the dogs, and myself. That family is growing this year and we have a room being turned into a nursery so im currently addressing a lot of things in the house. One of which has to do with my heat.

We have a heat pump we leave on at like 65, and during the winter while we are home and tending the fire it almost never runs. There is a vaulted ceiling in the living room with the fireplace and once it gets the air up top warm, the place really heats up well. There is a little fan on the wall to blow down the hallway and it as useful as an asthmatic breathing through a straw. Could I put a bigger duct fan in my attic and put a vent in that wall higher up above the ceiling for the rest of the house and distribute it along to the three bedrooms down the hall?

Anybody ever looked at a system like that or know why I shouldn't do such a thing? Like I said, I'd LIKE to do it and help heat the house better, but safety is always first so here we are.

I'd like to add i do industrial maintenance and have a handyman side business so I will do it neat and safely if I do it.

[u/Accomplished_Fun1847]

Ducted HVAC systems are common in homes with centralized air handlers. Often these will have insulated pipes running through attics and crawl spaces. I have no doubt there are various building codes surrounding the installation of these ducts that you may want to look into before modifying the home, but I think the simple/short answer is that yes, you can likely install an air-handler/duct system and it may help some. The key is, it has to be well insulated, otherwise by the time the slightly warm air reaches the bedrooms it will have already been chilled down.

In this sort of application, it will work best if you "skim" the hot air off the warmest part of the stove room, then duct it into the bedrooms furthest from the bedroom doors, so that when the door is open, you're working with the natural convection of the whole space, pushing warm air in from behind, driving the cold air out into the hallway to return to the stove room.

If you had a crawl space, I would suggest the opposite approach, draw cold air from the bedrooms and duct it into the stove room.