Who burns wood to heat their house? What wood stove do you have? We are looking to replace our old Garrison wood stove with something more efficent and a longer burn time. Let me have your thoughts.
I've got a 30 year old wood/oil combination furnace that seems to suck the wood down quickly - I've gone through 7 of my 8 cords of wood already, though I think the solid month of well below normal temperatures had much to do with that. The fact that it's a poorly insulated 100 year old two story house with old wooden single pane windows and aluminum storm windows probably doesn't help. It's still much, much cheaper than furnace oil though - the oil part of my furnace only kicks in between about 6:00 and 8:00AM until I go down and stuff more wood into it. A cord of wood costs about what a quarter tank of oil does, and a quarter tank of oil would only last a week in these temperatures.
I've got a newer wood stove at the cottage and that thing is great - a 10" diameter maple log, when put in at about 10:00PM and with the drafts and flue closed up, will throw plenty of heat and still be burning at dawn.
I've heard pellet stoves are the way to go as far as wood burning stoves go.
I do now. Since I bought a house yesterday. :D It has a Kerr wood furnace with an oil next to it. Great, unless the power goes out. Then I can burn as much wood as I want, but with no forced air it's just going to cause a meltdown. I'll be investing in a little generator soon, just to run the furnace fan, if I have to. My parents have a Kerr, as well as the inlaws, and I've never seen any problem with them.
My friend uses one to supplement his gas furnace, im not sure on what model it is but he did say that they got it from TSC (Tractor Supply Company).
pellets are good, BUT are very problematic, if you lose power, you lose heat, if the pellets get damp, they jam up the screw gear, which breaks the safety gear, and the whole stove gets riped apart to be fixed. I install stoves with my grandfather so i know a few things, not sure about helping with picking a stove, but id stay away from pellets
DABOSS:
You're in your domain here:D ...
Have a nice Day,
Dom.
i know some not allot, I can install a wood stove no problem, give you info not so much
Congrats on your house purchase :D
You would be surprised how much heat you'll get out of that furnace even with no electricity. Mine blew its fan motor one day shortly before Christmas, so I basically had to follow the "power out" procedures printed on the door until I could get a motor (Princess Auto FTW - a new 1/2 horse motor was on sale for $60 the next day, so I even upgraded from the 1/3 horse original). These instructions involved opening up the fan access door and opening the drafts on the door of the furnace. About 1/2 hour later I closed the drafts because the furnace was getting way too hot (as was the house interior - even with no fan there was plenty of convective action), and left it like that all night. The temp in the house didn't dip below 65, even though it was about 20 degrees (F) out.
That being said, living in rural NS I'd definitely get a generator if I were you. I'm sure you've heard all about how "reliable" the power grid has been since hurricane Juan. I've got a 5000 watt (6850 surge) Coleman. It's similar to the ones they have at CTC except those ones are only 6250 surge, the CTC ones only have three outlets (two 110V, one 220V) and only have a 10-horse engine. Mine's got 4 110V outlets plus the 220, and an 11 horse engine with overhead valves. It's still a Tespoogeseh, though, so it's noisy as hell. I run it in the garage (I've had to use it several times), and only use the 220 outlet, tapped into my main power service. I juts shut the main house switch off, go out to the garage, start the generator, and flip a switch in the garage's electrical panel, and voila - power to house AND garage (although the garage fills with exhaust so it's unusable). The only disadvantage to this setup is that I have no way of telling when the power comes back on, so I have to check every so often. Some day I'll rewire mine so that the generator powers everything except one circuit (say the dining room) - that way I can leave a light on in the unpowered room, and when it comes on I know the grid is back up.
I use only wood heat in my mobile home. It's a Heatwave model that is no longer made. Works great. My parent's have a Jotul soapstone stove that is really efficient.
The Vermont Castings Dutchwest Cast Large (non-catalytic), Vermont Castings Dutchwest Extra-Large Convection (catalytic), Vermont Castings Defiant (non-catalytic) and a Lennox Spectra Elite CI2000HT (non-catalytic) have been recomended to us. All are about the same price and all except the Lennox have an optional blower fan that can be added. From what I have been reading, we are staying away from the catalytic type stove because these are tempermental and hard to get burning.
Our current stove has an 8" pipe which reduces down to 7" going through the wall to the masonary chimney which measures 7" x 11" (inside). I know that you are not supposed to reduce the size but we bought our house with the stove installed in the basp00get this way. I think this is why we may have a small draft problem. Our total chimney measure roughly 278" from stove to top. I'm thinking of going with a stove that has a 6" top outlet in hopes to get a better draft.
We have probably going through about 1/2 cord of wood in a couple days with only a 4 hour burn time. I'm trying to figure out how to get a longer burn time with our current stove.
I've installed a few defiant's heavy suckers they are yea go with a non catalyst if you want simple. Catalysts make them more efficient, but not by much. As long as theres a stove there you don't have to get it inspected so you can do illegal things. If you really need i can ask my grandfather this has been his profession for a long time.
http://www.hardyheater.com/Products/products.html
I hate wood heat. But my grandfather has this at the farm house. Thank god its not here.
Here is my heater ,, for the house
http://kansascity.craigslist.org/hsh/271605312.html
someone is selling one just like ours. That is a good price and you really dont have to mount it in a fireplace at all the way its designed.
If i load this stove up with about 6-8 pieces of locust or red oak, at 10pm,, i have coals 8hours later,, but i know just how to set the damper,, every stove is different. its amazing how many people burn too much wood cause they allow too much air in.
things to consider when buying one primarily comes down to two things you can do when there is no power. Will it provide.....
a means of heat(i have a blower and if power goes out, i have a 500watt inverter mounted next to the mantel with the wiring leading outside. I pull up a vehicle to the house and hook up to the battery. This power allows us to use Dish network, the tv, dvd player and the blower) Consider getting a power inverter just for this instance. A second power inverter is located at the garage and a vehicle can be hooked up there as well to keep food froze incase power goes out in the summer for the deep freeze)
a means to cook(my stove makes this difficult and nearly impossible. I wish our fireplace insert stuck out enough to use for cook as well. I have tried to cook on the coals but without a grate rigged up high enough off the coals,, you can at best cook eggs quickly , bacon real fast and boil water. I guess its possible, just wear welding gloves when cooking)
I have a Pellet stove i was just so facinated with that i just had to have one for my shop. I quickly learned the ins and outs of the speed of the auger bit vs the forced air and what happens when the darn thing cloggs up. Those things eat up corn and pellets. But,, the main problem i had with it was the Leaks. Seems that the hopper you load the pellets into is only siliconed and when you have a leak, its usually a real toxic one instead of just smoke. I got real bad headaches and burning eyes from the pellet stove in the garage and finally decided to go back to wood. The pellet stove will also have a couple blowers for heat and another blower for forced air.
With good attention to detail, and a watchful eye, a pellet stove would make good for someone who cant do all the heavy lifting of wood.
Reliablity scale 1-10 , 10=best
4 pellet stoves (sitting off to the side waiting to be converted to wood)
10 wood
10 wood/coal (in my garage now)
7 homemade oil heaters *homemade only without all the mechanical electrical wingdings that make them go bad. This would be a gravity feed system with a resource of oil that can be thinned with kerosine
Labor Intensive scale 1-10 , 1=hightest labor
10pellet stoves (sitting off to the side waiting to be converted to wood)
3 wood
3 wood/coal (in my garage now)
5 homemade oil heaters *homemade only without all the mechanical electrical wingdings that make them go bad. This would be a gravity feed system with a resource of oil that can be thinned with kerosine
Wood no matter how you dice it is labor intensive even if you dont cut your own. Your a$$ has to deal with it every day and you have your certain way you hand the whole episode from how the door is opened right down to how much the damper is set. God forbid anyone touch it other than you,,lol My wood each year is from a down tree that i cut up and i avoid cutting down a new tree. I consider it easier to get the free pickins already on the ground and most of the time i dont have to deal with the brush. There are a lot of good hardwood just lying waiting to be had if you decide to go that route.,, its better for nature anyway. Sawmills will practically give away slab lumber also so there you have another resource of easy wood.
Oil burners have a certain Stink value to them and you can smell the fact its much different than wood.
If you go for a wood heat source that is radiant, then invest in fans that mount in the corner of the doorways / hallways to circulate. Make sure if you get a radiant wood heater, its long enough for a good surface to possibly cook on also.
it may appear that my scale puts homemade oil heaters out on top. Actually i dont like them cause the of the filth. They stink and i know the toxins going in the air are bad. On the flip side,, fire occures naturally in nature from wood or forest fires,,, oil fires are not that natural. I feel like im hurting the enviroment the least by burning wood.
Another resource for heat is dont allow the dryer to vent outside in the winter. Devise you a way to allow that heat to reenter the house via a duct you could mount somewhere. I go under the house in the winter and plug in my dryer duct to a homemade heat duct that travels up the underside of my stair case and heats the upstairs. My wood stove takes care of the downstairs but its hard to reach upstairs due to the floor plan.
if your really inventive, and you have a septic system, you can capture methane safely if you had an auger to stirr the slurry. a couple times a week. I had a puffing orange flame on a cook stove in my garage powered from my septic. I know why it puffed and i know why it was orange. When i feel like doing it, i know what is needed to "correctly" do this and its not that expensive. The ultimate enemy at hand is the vent we all have on top of the house,, there is a solution to that. The byproduct to burning methane is carbon dioxide and plants love it.
A fan does help get the house warmer quicker, once its warmed up you dont really need the fan though. The guy I got my house from never used a fan for the 20+ years he was here and it was always warm in the winter whenever I visited. Our thermometer is on the other side of the livingroom and this is the warmest temp we've reached this year, no fan, 20-25 below outside.
(http://i68.photobucket.com/albums/i11/turbosprunt/hot.jpg?t=1171340301)
The only fan in the house is a 6" wall mounted one pushing air from the livingroom (where the stove is) into the master bedroom. The stove is an acorn voyageur. I can fit 6-7 pieces of average sized wood into it and will easily keep the house above 20 till I get home from work (about 11 hours)
I love wood heat, couldnt live without it.
Scott
I want to add one even though I live in a warm climate. Be nice to have for a couple of months and it's cheaper than replacing the heat pump with geothermal.... never been thrilled with the heating capacity of a heat pump. BUT I have a couple of things I can't figure out...
My problem is finding a stove and someone that knows how to install it here in sunny Florida (actually it's Lower Alabama) . I could install it but I'm not sure it wouldn't burn the house down first time I lit it. Where do I find the codes and what would I ask a contractor to verify he really knows what he's doing? Is there a good online source for stoves other than Harbor Freight? All the local hardware stores sell the same make and model stove as HF (Vogelstang) and that's about all I can find. Used market is sparse as you might expect.
Today we were told not to buy any Dutchwest stove. We were reccomended the Quadra-Fire 4300 Millennium and / or the 4300 Step Top, both are non-catalyst. Quadra-Fire is to be ranked the cleanest burning and most efficient on the market according to the research we have done on the internet. We have read a lot of review and everyone seems to be satisfied and would buy another Quadra-Fire stove. There were a few that wished the fire box was bigger.
ive installed a few quads not either of those, but they are nice stoves.
I have an old sealed non catalyst stove, and it heats my 1100sqfoot place all winter on about a 1 1/2 - 2 cords a year (of birch,poplar,spruce mix). Just to clarify, y'all call 4'X4'X8' of quartered timber a cord right?
Some of the newer models of wood stove have a small fan built into them to give a small improvement over just air movement through convection alone and they are much cheaper than a newer forced air wood setup. A friend has this type and he likes it, made by "Century American" I think (and still sold at "Canadian" Tire?). Around here the code requirements on wood stoves are quite strict, so check your local regulations carefully. You don't want to put a stove in and then not be able to get insurance or something like that.
I didn't even realize that heating oil is still used. The last distributor around here closed up shop in 1999 after the fuel oil price hikes. However, we only pay 4.8 cents per Kw/H for electric, so many people have switched to electric forced air, in newer buildings. I however get all the wood I can cut down for free, so I'll stick to cutting down trees.
A backup system for power outages is very important too. You don't wanna see what happens when your pipes freeze in two hours because the electric heat cut out at -30*. Actually I just replaced a thermocouple in a gas stove out here in Montreal, at my friends house because we were getting cold waiting for the repair guy.
Eleven Thousand?
[SIZE="7"]SIZE[/SIZE] matters with fire boxes. trust us all with wood stoves. the link i posted last gives the firebox size of mine. you really dont have to fill every corner of my firebox and it will last for an entire nights sleep.
A "nights sleep qualified" firebox is what you want to be shopping for. you should just make your own stove. Would you like me to post a pic of the one i built my mother in law?
We run a pellet stove here. My main reason going this way, I travel a lot for work, and its VERY easy for my wife to keep in tended. If we were burning raw wood, it would probably be out when I'm not around, and I would be using gas ;)
The economics on them have changed a bit with the recent run on them as the pellets have creeped up in price. I buy mine in the summer at discount, but its still about $30.00 a ton over where we started.
Also, keep an eye on Lowes about this time of year. They might not carry the brand you prefer, but they put their on 50% clearance about this time of year, huge savings if you can fnd something to fit your bill. My $1200.00 pellet stove was $500.00 out the door when I was done.
Bob myers
Thats 'cause you gotta train her better! ;) I taught my girl how to keep a fire while i'm at work and she grew up with 100% gas heat. well her parents do have a fire place, they burn candles in it on holidays!...
My box measures 33"X22"X20"
Scott