Barndominium/Shop or "real" House?

[WinterDeere]

I'll get with a reputable wood stove company to advise on stove size, type and install. I'm leaning towards a non-catalytic like an Osburn 3500 or similar.

You'd do well to join up at hearth.com, the tractorbynet of the wood stove world.

I heat my house with two wood stoves, and like most who do this full time, made the transition from non-cat to catalytic, many years ago. Non-cats can work fine, if you're only running them when heat demand is high, or size them well below your maximum need such that you never need to run them on very low burn rates. But catalytic stoves have a much wider range of burn rate, for those of us really using them as primary heat.

Put otherwise, non-cats have a burn rate range of maybe 3:1, whereas cat stoves have a burn rate range of maybe 7:1. The trade-off for the wider range of performance is extra maintenance of a catlyic combustor.

 

[ETD66SS]

"- Speaking of bringing in the groceries, I would not make my retirement home a place where I had to climb stairs. While I'm currently fit and able, a 1st story master, kitchen, bathroom, living room, are all necessities."
I agree with all these guys, I'm 76 now still perky and able but I see the handwritng on the wall. Avoid stairs. I would think about an almost "tiny house" (maybe double) and your large shop/garage. Good idea preparing early....

My father died a few years ago at 89, he pretty much used the staris up until the end.

My mother is currently 89 and still carries laundry up and down two sets of stairs.

I have about 40 years before I need to worry about the starirs. If something happens before then, I'll figure it out.

 

[ETD66SS]

Working on the last bit of framing before I can get to the upper level radiant pex installation.

I am surprised by the open web floor joists, they are not very precise. They are twisted up more than I expected, takes some prying to get them vertical.

They also have about a 1/2" arch to them. I suspect that will decrease when the subfloor is attached.

 

[LittleBittyBigJohn]

I also used open joists on my 2nd floor. I wonder if the I-Joists would be any better from a performance standpoint after the house is completed.

 

[EddieWalker]

Looking at the side view of your concrete, I have to say that I'm impressed. That looks fantastic!!!

I've never seen trusses that didn't have metal plates on them. These must be some new technology with the finger joints and glue. I really like this style of floor truss for running everything through them.

 

[ETD66SS]

Finished framing the sub-floor. Just a few more walls to go then I can move on to something that is not framing...

 

[Duds13]

Coming along nicely! I remember a few pages back you asked about kitchen countertops. What did you decide on?

I'll vote for a catalytic woodstove too. Switched to a Blaze King 3-4 years ago and the ability to turn them way down but also run hot when needed is an excellent feature.

 

[ning]

Coming along nicely! I remember a few pages back you asked about kitchen countertops. What did you decide on?

I'll vote for a catalytic woodstove too. Switched to a Blaze King 3-4 years ago and the ability to turn them way down but also run hot when needed is an excellent feature.

Our catalyst-equipped stove really cooks, but everything I've read says you basically have to keep it hot enough for catalytic action or the catalyst will get clogged up.

Given how hot it runs though I opt for a middle ground and just make sure it gets cooked fairly often and hope it runs like my tractor's DPF that I can just "burn off" occasionally...

 

[WinterDeere]

Our catalyst-equipped stove really cooks, but everything I've read says you basically have to keep it hot enough for catalytic action or the catalyst will get clogged up.

I know a lot more about catalytic stoves than I do tractors, so we could go into quite a rabbit hole, here. Basically no, you do not have to keep the stove above catalytic reburn temperature, you only need to ensure enough fuel (wood gas) is being fed into the catalytic combustor to keep that above reburn temperature, usually right around 500F. It's common for me to run my stoves down around 250F stove top and chimney, but the combustor inside is still cruising at 500F.

Basic principle of operation is to get the whole stove up to 500F while running with catalyst bypassed, to get the fire going well and the catalytic combustor (aka "cat") pre-heated to near "light-off" temperature. Then you close bypass damper to force exhaust through the cat, which thanks to some special heavy-metals coatings will "light off", burning any of the volatile wood gas products remaining in the exhaust.

After you achieve light off, you can lower the burn rate of the stove way down to the threshold of just providing enough combustion byproducts to the cat to keep it active. Many of the better catalytic stoves can turn down so far that they appear to be not burning at all, like a picture box with barely-smouldering or even apparently un-lit wood sitting in it. How far you can actually turn down is very dependent on how dry the wood is, as less-dry wood can tend to burn out when you try to smoulder it very low, and evaporation of any water remaining in the wood is a cooling process that can lower combustor temperature below 500F.

The real advantage of the cat stoves is that the best ones can achieve better than 10 hours burn time per cubic foot of firebox, whereas non-cats are generally limited to 4 hours or less per cubic foot of firebox. The trade-off is that you're not exactly getting huge BTU's/hour at those very low burn rates, but often that's what you want to avoid overheating the house.

 

[WinterDeere]

I should add, if anyone here is looking for a catalytic stove, you’d do well to limit your search to Blaze King (BK) and Woodstock. Many other companies engineered catalytic stoves 35 years ago, and some continue to produce them, but most are finicky and more trouble than they need to be… hence the bad reputation catalytic technology developed 25-30 years ago.

BK and Woodstock are really the only two companies that have not only continued to develop and refine this technology, but also have top-notch customer support and warranties. They’re not the cheapest out there, by a long shot, but there are very good reasons for this.

I’d go so far as to say I’d not even buy a catalytic stove, if it were not one of these two brands… and I’m a guy who cycled through a clean half-dozen wood stoves in my first 5 years in the present house. I put 6 - 10 full cords thru my stoves every year now, which is less than what I used to burn, but still double or triple what most “full time” burners do per year, due to owning a large and older home.