reduce heating bill with Wood Stove

[magicheater]

MERRY CHRISTMAS I have been thinking about a wood stove more and more lately. I recently had an event at my place we cut wood for an campfire to keep eveybody warm and it only took about 3 hours to get almost a cord of wood out cut
up in 4 foot lengths for fire. I really never wanted a wood stove before due to
work of the wood, but fuel prices are changing my mind. I have a hot air furnace and still want to use it but my house is very open. Living room, kitchen and dinning room all one big room with cathedral ceiling. The house is well insultated with R44 in ceiling, r21 in walls and r22 in the floors. House is on a crawl space. But I think I could save a great deal by using a wood stove. I know nothing about wood stoves and would like some suggestions on ones people like and use, I would like to get some brand names and ball park prices if someone recently brought theirs. Here is a floor plane of my place and My model does not have a fire place. I was thinking of placing the stove in the left back corner. Near where blue print shows fireplace. I also do not have a staircase in my house. Man have prices increase I bought my house for $68,000 and now they start at $90,000 about 6 years ago. I do know a few things I do want and dont want. My house is 15 sq feet, and open area is about 700 sq feet, that is all open. My plan is too cut wood place on pallet and use tractor to place full and empty wood pallet on deck cut out handling so much. Will have teenager in summer to stack wood for me.
Do want Stove Pipe will go through the roof of the house.
Fan or blower to help push heat out in the room.
Pan in bottom to empty ashes out.
Be able to fire must have a glass front.
Want to keep stove on left side of house as you look at floor planes as there is a deck and sliding glass doorsto bring wood in.
Do not want
Top loading stove
Will not use as primary heat source on supplement

I would put in a small masonry stove where the door to the stairway you don't have is. Tear out the wall that is towards the living room, seems to be a short distance. Ingress for your wood would be short and you would only have to burn the thing once a day or twice in extreme cold for an hour or so. You want your bedrooms cool so your floor plan is perfect. Add a bake oven on the kitchen side if you want to go that route. Don't need a fan or blower, and you can burn cut up pallets, been doing that for over 10 years and you get the wood for nothing!

 

[dex3361]

I have a Harmon wood/coal stove and that is the friendliest stove I have ever used. I have previously had Black Bart, Buck, Warm Morning, Fisher stoves and I love the way this one works. It Works great with the blower but does fine without it. We had a power outage last week and it was 9 degrees F outside and the power was off for 8 hours but you couldn't tell from the temp in the house.
HARMAN WOOD/COAL STOVE

 

[whistlepig]

Cutting wood for heat is a tremendous amount of work and very time consuming. I did this as a young pup and want no part of it anymore. If you have cut wood for heat in the past and are comfortable doing so that would be the way to go. I've shoveled enough coal and hand split enough wood that the novelty of this is all gone now.

 

[FredH]

Although our floor plan is a little different , we did have a factory install So Called Fireplace that was useless to say the least .

So our local Big R store , ( similar to Tractor Supply or Agri Supply ) is a dealer for Quadra-fire . This is the one we purchased :

Quadra-Fire | 7100 Wood Fireplace

Yes the price listed is about what we paid . Info sheet said up to 3475 sq. ft , so being that our house is 1828 sq. ft. , I think we are covered .

If you click on the " Brochure " link at far right , it brings up another window similar to a pdf file showing better pictures and diagrams . I WILL testify that the listed 570 lbs. is correct if not a little on the light side .:confused2:

The link below is a listing of all their stoves , wood , pellet , gas .

Quadra-Fire | Stoves


Not sure were you live , but you can look up at their site to find dealers .

Fred H.

 

[crazyal]

I hate wood stoves. I hate them with a passion. They are dirty, from the dirt on the wood to the ashes you need to clean out of them. That being said I have one and it's got a nice warm fire in it right now. I started off with the idea of just using it to warm the house up occasionally. But with 40 acres of hardwoods and about 6 cords a year that get blown down I really couldn't not burn wood.

If you are going to do it you need to make sure you have the proper sheilds or your wood stove will end up being so far away from the walls it'll kill your living room space. Most wood stove dealers will help you with that part. I went with a Hearthstone. It has a steel frame with stone walls. They have a lifetime warranty for the glass and an ash tray that can be removed without opening the front door. It loads from the front only, the larger models load from the front or the sides.

A few years ago when I bought it I was told from dealers to avoid Vermont Castings. They made great stoves but were bought out by another company that wanted their casting ability and really didn't have their hearts in keeping the wood stove line updated.

Do not buy a stove too big for your house. If you do one it warms up it'll cook you out and you'll either fire it up, over heat your house, and then let the fire die or you'll always leave it on low and you'll not burn your wood correctly and it will cause lots of soot to build up in your chimney (not a good thing).

I went with a through the wall then up. It requires more double wall pipe that's more expensive than single wall pipe (single wall can only be used inside). I did so because if water leaks around the pipe it's not going to come into the house. When the stove is not running I'm not going to loose heat because of a 14" hole in the ceiling (the pipe could be as small as 6" but you need clearance around the pipe so the hole through your insulation is much bigger - a dealer will help you).

Finally once a year you need to clean your pipes. Since most of them are outside the soot stays outside the house. The elbow on the outside of the house is a Tee with a cover that can be removed so I can stand on the ground and clean the pipe with a brush by pushing it up the pipe (I use a plastic bag with the cleaning brush rod through a small hole so I don't get soot all over me). If you go through the roof you have to either do what I'm talking about from your living room or get up on your roof and do it from the top down.

I could go on but what I'm trying to say is you really want to think out what you want to do. If you have the wood an investment now will save you plenty of money down the road. Even if you have to buy the wood you'll most likely still save money, be able to keep your house at a warmer temp than you may otherwise, and not have to split it.

 

[westcliffe01]

Take care, stove clearances vary substantially. Some of the European stoves have amazingly small clearances. I had a Morso 7110 and it had the smallest clearances of any stove I found. Pacific Energy stoves tend to have smaller clearances too since they have either steel or cast iron cladding. Most of the time, the limiting factor is the clearance to the stovepipe. There are heat shields which attach to the stovepipe and reduce the clearance by 1/3.

I would recommend going with good quality single wall stovepipe in the longest lengths (4ft) with a slip joint to the stove, these are up to 6 foot long. The long lengths and fewer joints look far better. Put the stove as central in the home as possible and position the chimney next to the roof peak. This results in the best drafting least complicated chimney and the best heat distribution in the house.

I can't tell where you live, but the number of heating degree days has a substantial impact on the size of stove you need, the amount of firewood that needs to be stacked and the rate at which it is consumed. Generally, the worst thing you can do is get too small a stove. It will have too short a burn and increase workload in tending to it constantly. If you get too large a stove, the most you may have to do is out in a few extra firebricks to reduce the open space and hold the heat longer. And if one has bags of space in the stove one can load it half full if that is all you need.

Having an organized place to stack your wood is very important to avoid frustration. A wood shed is the ideal, what is possible in your location depends on your lot, codes, and any covenants. Organization with any heavy fuel is key to sustainability. If schlepping the wood becomes a pain, you will quit. If the wood is dry and access easy and you have a nice cart you can load up and park outside a convenient door, it goes a long way to staying in the game. Having to go outside in 2-3ft of snow and dig for wood under tarps is not going to work for most people after the novelty wears off.

 

[inveresk]

We have five woodstoves in three buildings on our farm. We have two Vermont Castings, two pacific Energy and one Scan Andersen 10. The Scan beats the other two on performance and looks but is more expensive.

The main supplier of woodstoves in our area does trade ins so has quite a few used ones for sale. You might want to check with your supplier. You could save quite a bit.

Wood heat involves work but I don't mind the labour and a high efficiency stove burns so hot there isn't a lot of ash. I prefer the ash pan as I can riddle the grille while the door is shut. We also save a lot having our own woodlot.

 

[mrcaptainbob]

I had an indoor wood stove in the basement at my last house. The worst winter thee and we went through seen full cords. The basement, as well as the entire house was toasty warm. It was messy, though, and a real chore, even with two sons helping, to keep t supplied through the week. Now, I live in a rather drafty old farm house twice as big (4K sq. ft.) that is now warmed by an outside wood burner. 350 G of propane a month is what this house used to go through on cold and windy winter days. The wood stove changed that, but it does get hungry. I now go through about 14 full C's a year. That heats the two water heaters for domestic supply, the two baths with hydronic floor heat and a four zone baseboard hot water system. It takes me about a.75 hours of felling, cutting, splitting and stacking per one weeks worth of heat. Most of the wood is courtesy of generous neighbors. Regardless of health issues or lousy weather, remember, 'baby' must be fed. If I have the chance to re-do this heating system, I will go for geothermal.

 

[Qapla]

We have two fireplaces in our home. We use them to augment our main heat. Don't use either on that much, but when needed, can't beat it.

Like was already said, it can be much work.

Now, looking at your floor plan, I'd have to ask ,,, is your home a manufactured house or mobile home? The floor plan has that "double-wide" look.

The reason I bring this up is because, Mobile homes have to have specially certified wood stoves or fireplaces for safety and insurance, They usually require "triple-wall" pipe.

Just be sure whatever home you have that you check with your local building codes AND your insurance carrier before you buy.

 

[Dano97471]

I have a Charmaster wood stove in my basement...take a look.

www.charmaster.com