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 !