Wood stove heat

[Altissimus]

Took many years but now have Vermont Castings Vigilants , one on each floor with excellent chimneys. House is old and drafty. Every fall I fell about a log truck loads worth on my land and have a Tractor in the next summer to skid them out , refuse to run my furnace.

 

[Frankie]

Sasha and Oliver loafing by the stove ...

 

[SeanKroll]

I like putting some dry, deadwood from a day's job into that night's fire.

Time to refill.
Burning exclusively for heat at the GFs house, as the lower apartment is on the same electric forced-air heating system, and one of the renters has a high-contact social work/ homelessness job. So far, so good. Often November with clear skies can have some cold stretches. Once the clouds come in more regularly, we have less cold/ freezing weather.

 

[cory]

I like putting some dry, deadwood from a day's job into that night's fire.

Totally same here. But every time I do, the deadwood that looked many years dead and bone dry in the tree, hisses and burns poorly. Oak usually

 

[CurSedVoyce]

Our live oak is notorious for that. Holds moisture. Little hiss of steam.

 

[cory]

For sure. Dry oak is the bomb but it takes at least 2 years after splitting for that, IME

 

[Tree09]

So, this might be the year i finally do something intelligent, as I'm stuck at home and am even more useless than normal. I have a smaller ranch house, and rebuilt most of it when i got it. I have a hot water coil in my furnace to hook up whatever with, but have just run the backup electric coil for years. I originally was gonna do some huge outdoor boiler, but i still haven't found time and money. I've been thinking about grabbing a used insert tho, but i know nothing about them. How much wood they use a year, flue requirements, will it even work with my house setup? I saw this on craigslist, was thinking of calling soon if so.




I've never seen a flue setup like that so no clue on how to hook up on that for a flue pipe, which i have to run even though my fireplace chimney is fine? I would imagine that would pump bunch of heat out especially with the blowers, which would be welcome improvement over my fireplace, which i hardly use because it's such a waste. My fireplace is also in a side of my living room, away from the door, which almost leads me to think it wouldn't heat the rest of the house much. I can set up fans, and i even have large shop fans that really move air, but at some point just no right? Here's the layout, please excuse my crappy drawing.




It's not the end of the world, but it would be cool to lower my costs this year, and would be a good project for me if it's gonna be worthwhile. I know buying a nice new one would be best, but that's not gonna happen at the moment. Any thoughts would be cool guys, thx.

 

[cory]

I don't have any experience with inserts but go full steam ahead with the wood heat, imo. Especially since you get your wood "free"

 

[Nutball]

They are good for warming up in front of, but not for heating the ends of a house unless you could extract and pump the heat through the house more efficiently. You can just stick that insert into your fireplace and light it up. That's how mine was for a while, then we had the chimney cleaned and inspected, 3" of soot, ash, & creosote piles up behind it over the years and dirtied the chimney. After cleaning they found the mortar between the chimney liner tiles had holes, or maybe the tiles were cracked. Anyway of the available options we opted for a 8" stainless pipe $2000 or something. It now has a super powerful draft and can easily burn too hot.

It will heat the room it is in easily to 95deg, maybe 105F at the ceiling, and 85F on the floor as a guesstimate, I can check tonight. The next rooms over could be up to 75deg, and the next rooms over still 60-68deg. I've tried using the central air fan to help blow heat around, but it is super slow at it, and I don't know how cost effective that power bill is in combination with the 200W blower on the stove. Also consider the heat will want to naturally rise until it overflows to the ceiling of other rooms, so it somewhat naturally spreads through the house with an extra 10deg out of reach in the upper foot or two from the ceiling.

 

[lxskllr]

If you have the hearth for it, it's nice having an insert that can act as a woodstove, where it protrudes from the front of the fireplace. Allows you to cook on it, boil water for drinking or humidity, and presumably will get more heat in the house.

 

[Nutball]

And don't forget a firplace must draw in cold air from outside through cracks in the doors and windows or wherever, so the outer rooms can certainly be colder. I've found it hard to boil water on a stove, and it gets up to 500deg on top. Poor heat transfer or something, but it will humidify.

My house, I have a couple thermometer clocks, otherwise guesstimates.

 

[lxskllr]

I /could/ boil water, but it takes awhile. "Cooking water" kinda sounds stupid to say though :^D

I heat up soup, heat water for coffee/tea, heat up leftovers... Nothing fancy, but it's kinda like getting one over on the system. Heat for the house AND warm food with no gas spent.

I'm in a long ass rancher, so the stove room will be hot as shit, and the rest of the house is pretty cool. It's kinda alright for me. I don't dig the heat so much, but I like the contrast and different temperature zones. Not for everyone I'm sure...

edit:
@Frankie, what's up with the bricks between the cats. What do they do?

 

[Nutball]

Lots going on around Frankie's firplace

 

[kevin bingham]

i have an insert. it doesn't heat as well as a stove. mostly heats up the chimney. it has blowers that really help but they are too noisy so i only turn it on when we are not in the room. . if you are concerned about really heating your house, i would lean towards an efficient air tight wood stove. the space efficiency is good with the insert its miles better than a fireplace and it has great ambience.

 

[Frankie]

Just holding down a pc of carpet over the furnace duct otherwise the cats will drag it all over the house ... The bricks around the stove are thermal mass ... each weighs 25lbs and I have 40 of them ... It allows you to “bank” heat and once up to operating temperature I can get 6-10hr burn times on the coldest of days ... To get the most from your wood you need to : 1) produce heat , 2) capture it , 3) store it , and 4) finally release it ... oh , once up to operating temp it burns very little wood !

 

[lxskllr]

I have a few bricks on top of my stove. Not a whole lot of thermal mass, but it gives me temperature zones for heating things on top. Dead center iron is the hottest. Level 1 brick is hot, and level 2 brick a bit less hot. The bricks are from the ruins of a ≤18th century house on a job I was on years ago. I saved them at the time cause I thought they were cool, and the stove gives me practical use.

 

[Tree09]

I would love to do a stove, but honestly it would kinda have to go right in front of the existing fireplace, so I'm thinking insert. I could handle one that kinda stuck out more, but like I said im not in the market for a new one. I was considering piping in a hot water coil to it and then using the coil to heat the house utilizing the hot water coil in the furnace, which would be nice because i wouldn't have to run glycol because it would all be inside.

You can just stick that insert into your fireplace and light it up. That's how mine was for a while, then we had the chimney cleaned and inspected, 3" of soot, ash, & creosote piles up behind it over the years and dirtied the chimney. After cleaning they found the mortar between the chimney liner tiles had holes, or maybe the tiles were cracked. Anyway of the available options we opted for a 8" stainless pipe $2000 or something. It now has a super powerful draft and can easily burn too hot.

Are you saying i can simply slide it in and be good or doing so will kill me? If needed i could fabricate an adapter and run a liner, just buying a used stove i won't have any installation info so i was asking here.

 

[lxskllr]

I don't see why you couldn't run it pipeless, but it would be difficult(impossible?) to clean. Better is a stovepipe that runs down the masonry chimney. That's how mine's setup.

 

[Tree09]

Would it be hard to simply pull it out once a year? Or just pull it out and pipe it next year?

 

[Nutball]

That would work. They are heavy, like 400lbs or whatever. Just make sure the shroud seals reasonably well, so smoke doesn't come in the house, but that probably won't happen.

 

[lxskllr]

It's a big ass lump of cast iron(I think mine's 800#). That's something I'd want to move as little as possible. If there's decent room around it, you could remove the back guard(?), and vacuum around the insert. If it's a tight fit, that could be tricky.

 

[cory]

I would love to do a stove, but honestly it would kinda have to go right in front of the existing fireplace,

I just texted you a pic of my stove, it sits just outside of the fireplace opening

 

[Burnham]

Wood heat, to be really effective, needs to be part of the initial design of a house. Check out the opening post of this thread, where I describe ours...last paragraph. Planned for woodstove heat from the first sketches. 1500 sq. ft.

We don't have any thing like the high variations from room to room, as has been mentioned. At 75 in the living/dining room, it will be 70 upstairs in the farthest away bedroom.

Wood stove heat

A follow-up to a tangent Brendon and I wandered down for a couple of posts in another thread... Bren, here's the new stove, and a link to it on the Hearthstone website. Hearthstone is a Vermont company, assembles cast iron and also soapstone stoves there. The castings are done in Spain...

www.masterblasterhome.com

 

[Cobleskill]

Slip in inserts like that usually clog up a chimney with creosote. The flue for a fireplace is bigger than needed for a wood stove, so it doesn't stay hot enough to not condense. You could weld up a pipe connection easily. Liner is not cheap but it is the way to go. Either flex corrugated or rigid straight pipe.

 

[Tree09]

Well i definitely can't redesign the house, and am not willing to do an additional chimney just to stick a stove elsewhere in the house. If the layout of my house isn't going to work well, maybe I'll just finally do an outdoor one and pipe it in, which was the original plan. It's so stupid i literally weld piping and boilers for a living but can't build a wood stove inside the house because of insurance.