Generally these types of old rooming / farm houses had small wall openings from the room with the wood burner into all the other rooms including ceiling vents to the upstairs. What does yours have besides the stairwell? is that open?hwillm1977 said:It was built in 1883, all original windows and door (we replaced one door with an energy star steel door)... about 900 square feet... originally it was built as a rooming house for sawmill workers in the area.
So does that means the wood stove is in the single story annex? has the original 2 story chimney been abandoned and sealed? Cutting a hole high on the wall between the kitchen and main house and installing one of those low profile window fans would probably solve that 104F degrees problem. I can't recommend it though because most newer building codes don't allow you to force wood heat into sleeping areas. Having multiple smoke and monoxide detectors are highly encouraged, I have one in every room.hwillm1977 said:There is no foundation under the kitchen, and it is sinking so will be torn off and rebuilt after weatherproofing the main house. The woodstove is in the far end of the kitchen, so that room would be around 40C degrees when the rest of the house is comfortable... even with the wood burning most of the baseboards stay on a lot of the time.
As is mine, I bought 1" polyisocyanate foam boards (4'x8' = $15) and cut into strip and mounted around the foundation wall using 3' metal fence poles. My floors are much warmer now - just remove and store once spring comes.hwillm1977 said:The space underneath the main house is a crawl space (half is barely deep enough to get under the house, half has been dug out and holds potato bins, our well pump, and lots of mud). The stone foundation has holes large enough to stick your arm through.
Hard to believe it settled that low without getting really wet. I too put cellulose in all my outside walls and even built a sub-wall in my stove room with twice the insulation.hwillm1977 said:There was blown in insulation in the walls, but that has settled so the bottom 2 feet of each wall is insulated and nothing else is. There is blown in insulation in the attics, but it is less than 6 inches thick and really not adequate.
If the new stove is not getting it's combustion air from a dedicated outside vent you may want to try cracking a window in the kitchen so as not to pull cold air through the rest of the house. Warning if you don't allow enough air infiltration the wood stove will deplete your oxygen.hwillm1977 said:This is where our water heater is, although that stove has been replaced with an airtight heating stove:
Since you are spending $800 a month with likely more than half on the electric baseboard heaters I would hunker down and buy $500 worth of rolled fiberglass R19 unfaced attic batts and insulate both of the attics, when you tear down the annex just move the rolls to the main attic for R40 up there. I would also insulate the foundation as said before.