I wonder if your aux heat is blown air...or if you have central AC. In either case I would think there is a setting (fan?) that simply circulates air thru the house. Would this not move the warm air from downstairs, into the system and throught the home?

Thanks for your response andrelaplume2. Yes, our aux heat is forced air. Because our corn stove is slightly under-sized, the furnace kicks on periodically - circulating the warm basement air nicely. We try to minimize the amount the furnace runs because of the propane use.

We have an old-style dial thermostat without a fan setting, so simply circulating the air with the furnace hadn't really occured to me. We will have to investigate getting a new thermostat. (Does anyone know if all furnaces are capable of running on a "fan" setting? Ours came with the house, so I know little about it.) You've also helped me see a potential problem with our plan to enclose our furnace in a closet. Currently the return air isn't ducted. We will now be sure that the return air is at least ducted to a grille in the closet wall, allowing the furnace to capture and circulate the warm basement air more readily. Thanks for bringing that to my attention.

Other ideas we had for allowing more heat to just rise through the house have been:
* not running the dropped ceiling all the way to the wall (we'd probably use the ceilinglink direct mount system). The thought was that leaving 8 inches or so around the perimeter would allow heat to rise more easily there.

* running the ceiling all the way to the perimeter walls, but including a few of those grid panels that are used for fluorescent lights instead of ceiling tiles to allow heat to rise.

Any other thoughts or suggestions?