anyone heat from basement with registers to 1st floor?

[cbc58]

Does anyone here heat their cabin from below (basement or crawl) and have registers open to all their first floor rooms.  I am investigating ways to heat a cabin in the winter other then having a wood stove in the corner of the first floor.   

I have found an old oil heating unit called a "duo-therm" heater that acts like a woodstove but uses oil by gravity feed.  It puts out 65k BTU's and was thinking of putting that in the basement and let the heat rise through floor registers.  Would also give us a heated basement.

[MountainDon]

Homes used to use convection current warm air systems for distributing heat before forced air systems became vogue. I recall one on my uncle's old farm. It used monstrously sized round ductwork. The furnace was apted referred to as the octopus. It took up a great portion of the basement with many duct arms going here and there.

I believe what you want could be done but you'll need very large registers and a way to provide a cool air return to the basement. One problem would be getting the warm air distributed to where it's needed and avoiding having the warm air take the short circuit route to the cold air return path. Yes hot air wants to rise and cold air wants to fall, but making the distribution even is almost an art, if not a science.

[glenn kangiser]

The cold air from the first floor would probably have to be ducted to the floor of the basement.  From a far corner of the house or more than one far corner,  could help to draw warm air through the house first floor.

[MountainDon]

I think the old octopus sent the hot air to the perimeter and had the cold air drop centrally. Of course it was in a 2 story house that was probably 20 to 25 wide by 30+ long.

[cbc58]

Here is a link to the type of heater that I had in mind.  My idea was to put this in the basement and put registers in rooms and just let the heat rise.... no octopus tenticles....  only turned on when it gets real cold.

http://cgi.ebay.com/VINTAGE-DUO-THERM-FUEL-OIL-FURNACE-CABIN-STOVE-HEATER_W0QQitemZ150202850682QQihZ005QQcategoryZ41987QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Would this work... just have registers in the rooms?   Don't know how I'd do a cold air return for something like this as I would imagine that the heat would rise pretty evenly throughout the floor.   Or is this not feasible....  tks.

[Willy]

As the heat rises it will stagnet and sorta stop flowing just using the registers. Your system would work better if you could put some kind of forsed air plemium ducting the lower air space on the upper floor to the bottom of the basement. I heat my entire 1,680 sq ft home with wood only. I have no fans or ducting and the wood sove is on the first floor. I have a staircase near the wood stove and it allows the warm air to flow up and the cooler air flows down over the steps but the top of my staircase is totaly open. Now this heats the home nice even when it gets to 15 below zero out and windy. You may be able to just use a whole house fan and a 6 inch duct to do this mounted in a central location. I also leave my bedroom doors open for more air flow and the heat also goes thru the non/insulated floor. Mark