There is, yet again, building work going on in the house. The layout is pretty simple downstairs, or was before we started adding bits, as it comprises two rooms - the salon with the big woodburner in and an adjacent room down a couple of steps.
The builder has been removing the ancient place in the second room and has discovered a round hole, about 10 cm in diameter running directly through the wall, horizontally, to the back of the fireplace, in which the woodburner stands. we always wondred what that little metal plate at the back of the fireplace was.
My question is. would it be feasible to e.g. put a fan in the hole to transfer some heat to room number two? Any recommendations?
Thanks so much for reading the rather long-winded explanation…
I had one in my huge breton chimney that we cut down in width and it was for cleaning the chimney so that brushes could be put down from the roof and the debris would fall down behind the little door and then cleaned out from the inside of the fireplace to keep things cleaner or it could be something for a previous type of stove whereby a flue went out through the wall. To be honest I doubt a fan would achieve very much especially if its low down. What does your artisan say about the idea?
Thanks @shiba. It does look like it might have been a flue from a previous stove but it arrives in quite an odd place for that. Yes the hole is quite low down but the main room gets seriously warm with the woodburner so I was rather hoping …
That is definitely a possibility @hairbear . It looks like it predates the hideous 1960s’ish fireplace and we did think, originally of having a backboiler on the woodburner but hadn’t found the hole at that point and were rather daunted by the idea of making one in metre-thick stone walls…
I honestly don’t think a lot of heat would transfer passively through a 10 cm diameter horizontal hole. A fan might help, something like an in line/ in vent shower fan but they can be quite noisy.
I think you’re right about the noise. Perhaps I need to rethink the back boiler concept. It’s a bit low down to be aesthetic for use as a connector from a little woodburner in room 2 to a separate liner in the chimney, which was also a possible thought…
You really dont need a high powered noisy fan, a 100mm speed controllable computer fan would easily do it and the later ones are near silent. A stove fan doesn’t make much sound so neither should a little fan to duct the heat.
I am going to do the same with a 150mm fan for upstairs. It works quite well passively and the exit is currently under the bed . I would like it to circulate the heat a little further into the room hence the project.
I have a new wood burner installed and have a hole in the external wall with a PVC pipe going to the back of the burner. This is for controlling the air coming to either increase or decrease the flames.
Not sure if we’re talking about the same thing.
. I would like it to circulate the heat a little further into the room hence the project.