New wood stoves

[brokenknee]

As far as pellet stoves I am not a big fan, I purchased a harman P68 the same time I purchased my wood stove, I used it the first part of the year last year. While it was able to heat the house fine, it is not the same type of heat of a wood stove. They are very noisy and they require weekly cleaning which you have to let the stove cool down 2 hours then cleaning and vacuuming witch takes another 15 to 20 minutes.

We purchased the pellet stove thinking it would be easier for the wife when I travel for work, but she does not care for it either and would rather feed the wood stove. I just make sure I bring in enough wood for the 3 or 4 days that I am gone.

 

[Industrial Toys]

I too cannot for the life of me understand the merits of a pellet or corn stove unless you could make that fuel yourself.

A wise friend of mine was always going on about the benefits of a down draft stove.

I guess, I can accept the life style argument. My firewood generally all comes from trimming, storm damage and removing unwanted trees. But as far as saving money, your time would be better rewarded financially by delivering Pizzas or driving a cab! And that's not even figuring things that went wrong. I had a brand new Stihl 036 and was cutting down possibly my biggest tree yet, some years a ago. My stupid mistake, but the saw got jammed, the tree fell, saw fell out, and the tree bounced onto the saw! That could have paid for a lot of oil or hydro! i

 

[Egon]

I too cannot for the life of me understand the merits of a pellet or corn stove unless you could make that fuel yourself.

A wise friend of mine was always going on about the benefits of a down draft stove.

I guess, I can accept the life style argument. My firewood generally all comes from trimming, storm damage and removing unwanted trees. But as far as saving money, your time would be better rewarded financially by delivering Pizzas or driving a cab! And that's not even figuring things that went wrong. I had a brand new Stihl 036 and was cutting down possibly my biggest tree yet, some years a ago. My stupid mistake, but the saw got jammed, the tree fell, saw fell out, and the tree bounced onto the saw! That could have paid for a lot of oil or hydro! i

What?? Firewood one cuts oneself is not Free!

 

[dave1949]

Pellet stoves are good for people who don't have wood to cut, or have wood and don't want to mess with it.

Another benefit is pellet stoves don't require a chimney. A through-the-wall inlet/outlet double pipe is all that is needed.

I don't care for the fan, or that they need power to operate, or the expensive control boards that fail sometimes, but they have their uses. My son uses one in his early 1900's no insulation house to keep the oil bill within sane levels. With the pellet stove he can actually afford to be warm.

 

[Industrial Toys]

A customer of mine who owns a machine shop got one **** of a deal on a pellet stove through Kijiji or Craigs list. It didn't work! So he called me, and after my time and invoice, a new main board and some other parts, it was finally working again. No deal there!

I have a thousand square foot electrically heated house. It was not uncommon this winter to have a living room temperature of 12 c! And yet, I am still not totally commited to the work of wood heating!

 

[arrow]

One thing that has not been brought up yet is that the new epa stoves if a downdraft type (which I own Harman tl300) or a cat type stove, you do not get the fire show once the afterburner or cat is kicked in. Once I kick in the afterburner on my stove you will see some flame for a short time and then you are looking at a glowing mass.

I went to the new epa stove in the middle of last winter, this winter it looks like I will go through 8 (full) cords of ash. The last full year I heated with my old air tight furnace I went through 12 (full) cords, the new stove are much more efficient so they require less feeding.

As already stated heating with wood is more of a life style, one were you can save a few bucks, but if you figure in your time to process the wood and feed the stove and the cost and maintenance of the equipment. The cost savings are not that great, but then it is all how you value your time. For me it gets me outside and some exercise to boot.

As far as the comment on the outside air intake for wood stoves there is an interesting thread over on hearth.com on the value of them. There are different opinions as if they are effective or not. My harman dealer said he as a rule does not recommend them unless the house is very tight.

This brings up another point. Wood furnaces work best as a central heating system. Usually tucked in the cellar. This mitigates a lot of the mess in the upstairs living space. I feel as long as you are having to clean ashes out of a wood burning device, you are prone to dust even upstairs.

As a result of being in the cellar, it is another space for it's heat to go however some of these wood furnaces (few made here) are following epa certification. What is the difference? A regular out door wood boiler or wood stove from old technology has a ppm of burn particulates of 70-80. Modern wood burning devices have anywhere from a 1-7 ppm. This efficiency is translated into less fuel being used as smoke that would normally go up the chimney is being "wrung out" so to speak and residue within the smoke is burned as well.

My wood stove is in an uninsulated cellar. I burn the same amount of wood from Oct-May that I used to burn from Dec-March with the old Timberline stove I used to have.

I believe the aspect of an outdoor air intake in this discussion was about reduction of interior dust. As I have never used one, I cannot comment on the matter however I can understand if one is living in a super insulated/air tight house how an o.a.i can help with draw of the wood burning device.

 

[Egon]

New air tight houses should have an whole house air makeup system in place with the original construction.

 

[MotorSeven]

Arrow, I replaced my big hunkin' Hearthstone H1 with a new Yukon Husky. I burned 7-8 cords winter before last, and with the Yukon I burned about 4.5 & the house was a lot warmer...from 68 with the H1 to 72 with the Yukon. It was a $6K investment, but I have 100ac and c/s/s my own wood so I figure it will keep me in shape and heat my house at the same time. I have no A/C, so our power bill stays in the $70 range.

I was a skeptic on the outdoor air kit....not anymore. My house is anything but airtight, but the Yukon just did not run right at all until I installed the 6" diameter kit.

The wood pile:

 

[KennyG]

I see a lot people here with wood stoves in basements (as I have). Keep in mind that no matter how tight or leaky the house is, the basement will tend to be at negative pressure in cold weather due to the buoyancy effects. Unless you have an outside air intake you will be working against that negative pressure trying to establish a good draft and combustion air inlet flow.

As Egon noted, houses should have vents in basements to make up for the negative pressure. This can be as simple as a pipe with a trap to limit the outside air intake to the amount needed to make up for exfiltration at the top of the house.

 

[scott_vt]

I started the basement stove a couple of months back with cardboard and kindling. The smoke started billowing into the room through the intake vents and filled the room with putrid smoke to the extent that I could not see accross the room. I doused it with water and had doors and windows open for the next twelve hours or so, to try and keep my furnishings from taking on the smell of a burned out building. I was sure that some animal had compromised my grating on the chimney and risked life and limb on an icy roof to check, but found nothing! A week later, the fire started as if nothing had happended. Just a down draft, cold chimney or something, but a major PITA!

Good Morning IT,
Depending on outside atmospheric conditions, it is usually advisable to heat your flue up before starting a new fire. You do not mention it in your previous post, so not sure if you tried that.

I usually make it a practice to loosely roll some newspaper up, light it and attempt to get an updraft in the flue before lighting my cardboard and kindling !

 

[keegs]

One thing that has not been brought up yet is that the new epa stoves if a downdraft type (which I own Harman tl300) or a cat type stove, you do not get the fire show once the afterburner or cat is kicked in. Once I kick in the afterburner on my stove you will see some flame for a short time and then you are looking at a glowing mass.

I went to the new epa stove in the middle of last winter, this winter it looks like I will go through 8 (full) cords of ash. The last full year I heated with my old air tight furnace I went through 12 (full) cords, the new stove are much more efficient so they require less feeding.

As already stated heating with wood is more of a life style, one were you can save a few bucks, but if you figure in your time to process the wood and feed the stove and the cost and maintenance of the equipment. The cost savings are not that great, but then it is all how you value your time. For me it gets me outside and some exercise to boot.

As far as the comment on the outside air intake for wood stoves there is an interesting thread over on hearth.com on the value of them. There are different opinions as if they are effective or not. My harman dealer said he as a rule does not recommend them unless the house is very tight.

+1

....the risks to yourself of operating a chain saw or of felling trees.

We have a small Jotul 602 in the TV room. It's real cozy, heats the room and then some and doesn't put us out. There's some dust and debris from the small amount of wood being cycled into the house but it's nothing a broom and dustpan or the vacuum can't fix.

A lot of the wood I burn comes free off craigslist or off the side of the road after the power company does line maint.

We had a third flu added to the chimney when it was being built. The cost was maybe an extra $1k. and the stove cost about $600. or so.. can't remember either for sure.

If you're looking for cozy, nothing beats a crackling fire IMHO.

 

[s219]

I started the basement stove a couple of months back with cardboard and kindling. The smoke started billowing into the room through the intake vents and filled the room with putrid smoke to the extent that I could not see accross the room. I doused it with water and had doors and windows open for the next twelve hours or so, to try and keep my furnishings from taking on the smell of a burned out building. I was sure that some animal had compromised my grating on the chimney and risked life and limb on an icy roof to check, but found nothing! A week later, the fire started as if nothing had happended. Just a down draft, cold chimney or something, but a major PITA!

Maybe 2-3 times in a season when I go to start a fire from scratch, I can feel cold air running down the chimney, likely due to just the right combination of conditions beyond my control. So I try to get an upward draft going before lighting off the kindling, and usually just 10-15 seconds with a wadded sheet of newspaper is enough. Though I have seen stubborn cases where the cold downdraft just blows out the newspaper and makes a smoky mess. In those cases, I stick a hair dryer or small heater in there and give it a few minutes to create an updraft.

 

[NorTracNY]

Thanks for the feedback. I guess one item that I wasn't clear on was that I have over 10 acres of mostly young (~30yo trees) but some old trees. I have been helping other get trees off my place for several years. Because of a one time project, I have a few years worth of logs sitting for me to cut up. I also already produce more electricity in a year than I use.

Since I have radiant floor heat already, I have though about putting in a system to supplement the boiler in the basement, but I'm more inclined to walk outside to a separate boiler than down in my basement. I also wouldn't need to get the wood into the basement every year. It looks like I just need to do more research. The comments on cleaning out the ashes being the likely largest source of the dust is helpful.

 

[Egon]

Just for information. No idea if it is code compliant.

A simple air makeup is a down commer pipe from outside terminating in a bucket.

 

[Creamer]

Can somebody explain what makes the new stoves more efficient? I understand the better insulation - more firebrick - helps hold the heat in to keep the fire hotter and burn cleaner. I see the air pipes that both distribute the air more evenly in the fireplace and provide it at the top to ensure more complete combustion before the exhaust leaves. The air down the front to keep the smoke away from the glass which both keeps it clean and allows more radiant heat.

I assume there are controlled blowers to these air supply tubes? Doesn't the additional air also make it burn faster because if the flue backed up the exhaust the burn swirl would be messed up.

I ask because I modified an old fireplace insert a couple of years ago in which I added a baffle inside the combustion are to create a more convoluted exhaust path so that the heat had to travel by more steel to allow the jacket with a blower to extract more heat. i also changed the flue control to give me more control than the old one had. This combination of changes probably doubled the amount of heat I get out of the wood and also cleaned up the exhaust dramatically. Often I cannot see anything but some heat coming out of the chimney after 10 minutes or so to get the system warmed up. So I like what I did but I am trying to understand the value of the new inserts over what I have.

 

[arrow]

Can somebody explain what makes the new stoves more efficient? I understand the better insulation - more firebrick - helps hold the heat in to keep the fire hotter and burn cleaner. I see the air pipes that both distribute the air more evenly in the fireplace and provide it at the top to ensure more complete combustion before the exhaust leaves. The air down the front to keep the smoke away from the glass which both keeps it clean and allows more radiant heat.

I assume there are controlled blowers to these air supply tubes? Doesn't the additional air also make it burn faster because if the flue backed up the exhaust the burn swirl would be messed up.

I ask because I modified an old fireplace insert a couple of years ago in which I added a baffle inside the combustion are to create a more convoluted exhaust path so that the heat had to travel by more steel to allow the jacket with a blower to extract more heat. i also changed the flue control to give me more control than the old one had. This combination of changes probably doubled the amount of heat I get out of the wood and also cleaned up the exhaust dramatically. Often I cannot see anything but some heat coming out of the chimney after 10 minutes or so to get the system warmed up. So I like what I did but I am trying to understand the value of the new inserts over what I have.

I'll attempt this Creamer: Of course there is the catalytic stove that burns smoke through the heated converter. Then there is the air tube type which you make reference to. This type of stove has no blowers to add outside air to heat more. What these do is route super heated air from the burn process itself, through pathways in the stove and on to the air tubes that have holes in them. This super heated air ignites the particles in the smoke before it leaves the stove and up the draft. That is how the air tube stoves operate. They basically burn up the smoke. Like you, I cannot see smoke coming out of my chimney within 10-15 minutes of throwing in more wood.

There is yet another technology in wood stoves which "gasifies" the fuel by having a fire in one part of the stove and having the flame "blow down" into another part of the stove as a result of flame travel convection. This burns much like a blow torch would to further get as much out of the fuel as possible. . The Kuuma wood furnace works this way along with a few of the European stoves.

 

[MH8675309]

Wood heat warms you 3 different ways - cutting splitting and burning! And besides - after looking high and low through my woods I cant seem to find a pellet tree,,,

 

[Creamer]

Thanks Arrow! My old insert just has a couple of hand operated vents in the front doors. It makes sense that to put air in at the top of the combustion chamber would help oxidize the particulates that would otherwise go up the chimney. the other one is the route the air over the doors and the fire pulls the air down for combustion and this pushes the soot away from the glass for improved appearance and radiative heat transfer. I will have to look up the Kuuma furnace to understand that one.