For those who have a wood burner in the front room, Best accessory?

[jyoutz]

Convection is very slow. And each stove configuration is different from the next. Most convection rises, so the heat moves upwards more-so. With the thermo-fan, it will send the heat across a room and down a 30FT long hall easily. In 20mins, those rooms off the 30FT long hall begin to receive the heat as well. Been doing this for 12 years with great success.

True convection is when the stove has vertical rails or fins. The cool air from the floor will rise, fill the open spaces between the fins, rapidly heat and rise.

Stove pipe fins work too.
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Some of the stoves work well with the aluminum side wall heatsink fins.

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This is the same low tech as base board heating, but for stoves.

Base boards sit too low and collect all kinds of crap. Not so with the stoves using them with fans.
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I just have the fan on the forces air furnace turn on every 30 minutes to circulate air throughout the house. The circulated air doesn’t feel hot, but over several hours it will equalize the temperature in the house, taking the heat from the living room stove area and warming the back rooms.

 

[CalG]

For Amy and I (and the dog as well), the best accessory to the biomass stove is a large humidifier. Keeping the RH up keeps the heat feeling more comfortable. Only issue is, we have hard water so we use store bought distilled water in it.

68 feels better with humidity in the air than 75 and drier than a desert.

I run a "mister" most every winter's night.

The distilled water is a must. About $2 a gallon at the store IIRC/

My nose appreciates it.

 

[ruffdog]

I have 2 pans of water on the top and run tap water. I get the white crusty stuff but clean it out often.

 

[mikester]

I took a metal ash scoop and drilled a bunch of holes in it to make a sifter. About once a week, I scoop everything to the left side, sift out the coals and charcoal from the ash, toss them to the right side, then shovel the ash down the chute to the bin below the stove.

Then I move the charcoal and coals back to the middle, stack new wood in the stove, open the dampers and wait a few minutes.... POOF! Fire starts right back up.

Worst winter we had, the stove ran non-stop from Oct 1 through April 1 and we only used 4 matches! That was only when we'd leave town for several days.

I did something similar- I made a shovel-rake using steel rod that lets me sift coals out of the ashes, rake the ash bed level, push logs around.

 

[Oaktree]

Leather welding gloves. Second is a small plastic brush and dust pan combo.

I prefer a metal dust pan. Plastic one is good for about a year before hot-ish ashes, etc start to melt it.

I do run the ceiling fan nearly constantly. We have cathedral ceilings and an open floor plan.

I don't get cathedral ceilings in cold climates. Lots of heat wasted in places where it does no good. Makes way more sense in warmer regions.

These are a must for wood stoves and fireplaces. No more ash bucket and shovel mess. You can vacuum hot ashes with these.

We run our stove 24/7 from about mid-November 'til April. It's our primary source of heat. Can't see myself vacuuming really hot ashes out of the firebox. Our stove has a grating, and an ash pan below it. Easy enough to pull out & empty outside.

For Amy and I (and the dog as well), the best accessory to the biomass stove is a large humidifier. Keeping the RH up keeps the heat feeling more comfortable. Only issue is, we have hard water so we use store bought distilled water in it.

68 feels better with humidity in the air than 75 and drier than a desert.

Agree on adding humidity. We just have a cast iron pot on top of the stove we keep topped off with water. Water's quite soft here, just a little bit of sediment collects on the bottom of the pot, easy enough to clean out end of season.

Cut not only your heating bills, but ALSO save on burning way less, this is the answer,

Brother in law has one of those, doesn't seem to move very much air, more for looks than anything else. We do have a 4" desktop fan mounted to the ceiling beam above the stove that we use when it's really cold.

 

[groundcover]

Wood cart, lots of cords brought in with this old girl !

 

[ericm979]

I prefer a metal dust pan. Plastic one is good for about a year before hot-ish ashes, etc start to melt it.

I only use it to clean up ashes and dirt on the hearth. I'm pretty good about not dropping hot coals on the hearth and dealing with them with appropriate utensils if I do. The plastic pan's lasted four years so far. It was on my wife's discard pile when I spotted it and grabbed it for the stove.

Another useful wood stove item my wife had around is plastic tote boxes. They're large enough to hold a couple stove loads of wood (2.5 cu ft firebox, not huge). They're small enough that I can carry them around when full of wood. Being solid plastic the dirt from the wood stays inside the boxes. They have lids so I can stack four of them outside on the porch, keeping a couple days' worth of wood handy.

 

[Mendonsy]

Another thing to consider is a type ABC fire extinguisher if you don't already have one. You can never be too careful.

 

[CalG]

Another thing to consider is a type ABC fire extinguisher if you don't already have one. You can never be too careful.

See the last part of the original post ;-)

 

[newbury]

Metal dust pan and fire extinguisher.