Masonry Heater Combo with Forced Air

Looking forward to everyone thoughts.

I live in an old house in-which has under gone many renovations. As my wife and I are always looking for ways to supplement our heating costs living in NY. A friend of ours built a Masonry Heater 30 plus years ago and has loved it, heating his 1600 sq ft house with a single face cord of wood a season. the funny part is he was in the oil furnace business for 20 years. I brought him over to talk about my crazy thought. The question begins in our basement. We have an old wood stove that we have left as a back up, our primary heat source is a propane forced air unit. my thoughts are as followed.
The Plan is to remove the old wood stove that is piped into our chimney and then clean out an area and build a short but stocky Masonry heater. the thought is feed the heater the way you would on a normal heater, but while i understand that the heat would have a hard time reaching the rest of the house. i would then let the forced air take over and exchange the air for me. i would do this by cutting a secondary cold air return duct, which would pull the radiant heated air and then circulate thought out the house.
I understand that the ideal situation is to build the beautiful heater in the center of the house so then i would not have to rely on my forced air system, but i am using what i have in this situation. i believe that it would work in theory with some trial and error with how much cold air is from the current air exchange ratio to how much i would need to pull the warmed air from the new heater.
I hope i didn’t lose anyone with my crazy thoughts welcoming all constructive thoughts!!

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