Fireplaces, Heating Stoves, Flues and Chimneys - Coal Stove Heat??

Hi, I have a kitchen coal stove in my basement which keep the basement pretty warm along with the floor above the area where the stove is. Is there a way I can channel the heat that radiates from the top of the stove into my vent system so I can have that heat throughout the whole house and maybe save some money? I have a gas warm air system right now.
Thanks,
Joe

I would not go cutting into the heat ducts. Best I would try is a say 20 inch box fan hung near the ceiling running on low or medium blowing toward the stairs.

There could be a problem with your house insurance if you make any modifications to your structure or ductwork to move the heat from this stove to the rest of the house.

Insurance rules are pretty specific on your house meeting codes and mods to suck heat from the stove into your furnace could easily spread fire should something happen.............even if the fire did not originate in the bsmt.

Is the coal burner specifically listed on your insurance policy?

The best thing you can do is to leave the basement door open and maybe a fan that is far from the stove to blow heat up the stairs as badeyeben suggested.

My advice is to make sure your stove is totally compliant with the most stringent code requirements known. Also make sure you have working CO detectors throughout the house. I had a Franklin wood stove in my 1st floor den that I used to heat the entire house for a season in the late 1980's, except for 2 days (My Loc=SE PA, house=3300sf). When I bought it, I asked my insurance company if there were any special installation specs to follow. They told me to follow the manufacturer's instructions and left it at that. I had a return air duct in high the wall near the stove that sucked the hot air into the forced air system and I used the adjustable pulley to boost the RPM on my furnace blower to get enough circulation. We also had some regular fans blowing here and there. I had a dial thermometer poked into the return register by the stove. I'm embarrassed to say it often peaked at over 125 degrees! (My fire detectors trip at 135.) The den was totally uninhabitable during the heavy heating season. My conclusion: The stove was a nice touch for a warm den with supplemental heat. The fire was pretty, too, but it was no solution for whole-home heating. An insurance underwriter eventually came around and looked over my stove installation. He had a printed drawing that showed certain side clearances (which I met but without the kind of additional wall protection they wanted) plus so many inches of brick underneath with air channels and a short list of other little things that I was totally unaware of. When the Franklin stove was made it could not have possibly had instructions that resembled these rigid requirements. My installation flunked his inspection outright. Soon my policy was cancelled and I had to beg them to reinstate it, promising that the stove had been completely removed from the premises. A few years later they did refuse to renew because underground oil storage tanks had become a problem. I ended up with another carrier anyway. In the "old days" there was a big grate in the living room floor for the coal furnace heat to rise through. That would probably be a fire code violation all by itself today, even without a stove. My current solution is an outdoor wood burning furnace with a pair of 1" pex water lines and a duct coil in the output plenum of the old, original oil burning furnace. I also have a flat-plate heat exchanger and a separate circ pump that heats the domestic hot water tank, so I use my furnace year round. There are several manufacturers but mine happens to be "The #150 free heat machine." I invested about $12k in the entire installation and did most of the work myself with some help from my son. It requires a few minutes of work each day or two. It needs skill and careful attention to minimize the smoke but I'm happy with it and the heat is indeed virtually... "free." My wife is very happy not to have the mess in the house from handling wood and ashes. The only oil I've used in the last 12 months is a test burn of the 2 original backup burners plus one morning when I let the fire go out I ran the o/b on the dwh - maybe 2 gallons total.

When I was a kid, my father cut a hole in the basement ceiling (hole in the floor above), installed a register cover plate upstairs so it looked nice and mounted a blower/fan to the basement ceiling blowing through the hole. On the other side of the room he did another hole but with no blower to act as a cold air return. Nothing tied into the houses ducting or was anywhere near the stove to cause draft or CO problems. It worked quite well.

As mentioned already. Get several good carbon monoxide detectors. You want to make sure you wake up in the morning.