Pellet stoves work differently compared to other forms of wood stove in that they use an integrated distribution blower to help distribute the heat from the fire inside through the circulation of warm air.
This is compared to traditional wood burning stoves which typically only distribute heat by radiating it out into the room through the body of the stove.
The heat from a pellet stove can therefore usually spread further around a room or home and the use of electronic and mechanical components within pellet stoves can offer the user a greater range of control when it comes to how forcefully the heat is being distributed.
Pellet stoves can also come with a variety of options that can help you heat more of your home, but there are a few things that you can do to help distribute this heat.
Ways in which to help distribute heat from a pellet stove include:
- Increase the fan speed for the distribution blower to push the warm air further out into the room or home.
- If your home has a ceiling fan, use it in the clockwise direction to help force warm air downwards.
- Use floor fans to push warm air further around a house.
- Install floor vents, or a ducted pellet stove that spreads heat to other rooms via ducts.
- Install a hydro pellet stove and connect it up to the central heating.
We’ve discussed these points in more detail below, explaining how we help distribute as much heat as possible from our own pellet stove.
How To Distribute Heat From A Pellet Stove
1) Increase The Blower Speed
Traditional air-heating pellet stoves use a distribution blower to force air around the outside of the combustion chamber, which heats up as it passes over the heat exchanger and provides warmth to the room as it passes out through the front of the stove.
This distribution blower will be electronically controlled and although this blower can commonly be automatically controlled by the central control unit on the stove, many pellet stoves offer the ability to manually set the blower speed.
Increasing the blower speed on a pellet stove can help to distribute heat further across the room.
Our pellet stove has touch screen controls and we usually set the fan to ‘Auto’.
However, we can also set the fan speed to 1 of 3 settings for more control over the speed.
Other models of pellet stove may have physical buttons, commonly found on the side of the unit, that you can press to increase or decrease the blower speed.
Increasing the blower speed to the maximum can therefore help to distribute the heat from a pellet stove further around a room or home.
See our article on pellet stove blowers for more information.
2) Use A Ceiling Fan
As hot air rises, using a ceiling fan, typically rotating clockwise, can help to force the hot air generated by a pellet stove back down into the room.
3) Use Floor Fans
If your home doesn’t have any ceiling fans installed (like ours) then it’s possible to use a series of one or more floor fans to help distribute heat from a pellet stove into other rooms of a home.
As every situation is different you’ll need to figure out which combination of fans will help to spread heat around your home.
Even try facing fans towards the stove as this can help to displace cooler air from the area you want to heat and in turn replace it with warmer air.
We only intend to heat the living room in which our pellet stove is installed in and so we haven’t personally tried using fans.
The force from the distribution blower within the stove itself is enough to heat our living room as the hot air is forced out the front of the stove through the grille.
As pellet stoves already blow out hot air, the use of a stove fan may not be as useful as using a stove fan for a wood burning stove.
4) Install Floor Vents Or Ducted Pellet Stove
Having floor vents installed across the home can help spread the heat produced by a pellet stove to the floors above.
A ducted pellet stoves can also be installed instead of a regular air-heating one to help spread the heat to other rooms more effectively.
See our article on using a pellet stove to heat a whole house for more information on ducted pellet stoves.
5) Install A Hydro Pellet Stove
A hydro pellet stove connects up to the central heating system of a pellet stove to help provide warmth to all the rooms in a home with radiators rather than simply the room in which the pellet stove is installed in.
Hydro pellet stoves can sometimes replace the need for a traditional gas boiler entirely and even provide domestic hot water.
We’ve also covered hydro pellet stoves in more detail in our article on using a pellet stove to heat a whole house.
Further Reading
Parts Of A Pellet Stove Explained
How To Keep A Pellet Stove Burning