We just bought a lovely house in the woods w/ Harman high-efficiency woodstove insert in the fireplace -- I previous owners said it was three years old -- it's like they never used it, provided us with records of chimney cleaning, etc. The stove is in a custom-built open-space kitchen/sitting area w/ a hallway/utility room (about 800 square feet) and I am finding that it makes that area way TOO HOT while the back half of the house (traditional ranch style) is TOO COLD. I don't know which is worse -- the hot or the cold.

Anyway, My husband said that he thinks he could tap into the stove and run venting (like they use in forced hot air) underneath the floorboards and then cut vents in each floor of the living room, bedrooms, and bathrooms in the back half of the house to distribute the heat of the Harman more evenly--also about 800 square feet. That plan sounds good to me since obviously the Harman is too big for the area it sits in and one of the main reason we bought our property was to make use of all the wood we have. And my husband is a master craftsman/carpenter so I don't doubt he could do the job.

The thing is...his expertise is not in home heating, per se, and in our previous home we only had oil/baseboard heat. Plus like many men,he has difficulty asking for directions. ; ) So I'm asking instead:

Do any of you have experience with a similar project? What problems did you run into? What, in retrospect, do you wish you had done differently? What considerations do we need to factor? Any recommendations from whom to buy the materials? Any other thoughts/warnings/suggestions?

Thank you!