Happy Heat! Wood Stove Help

[westcliffe01]

For Class A chimney (ceiling upwards) we get the best price at our local Menards hardware. Really shop around for class A because it is expensive and prices can vary by 200-300%. Ventingpipe.com is a good benchmark, but if you have a Menards try them. ALWAYS get the longest lengths you can so you can have the fewest pieces. Seal the class A joints with Silicone to keep water out. The outside of the class A is cool, so everything above the roofline use silicone sealer to make it 100% watertight. If you manage to get the insulation packing waterlogged and then make a nice hot fire the steam generated might cause a problem.

Be very deliberate regarding positioning the stove so that your chimney can be straight up. Don't use double wall stovepipe (stove to ceiling) since you will loose a substantial amount of heat up the chimney that would otherwise be heating your home. I made that mistake with my Morso and fixed it when I got the PE.

Add a flue damper to the stovepipe as high in the stovepipe as is comfortable for you. In a cold climate, the draft of a straight chimney will be too strong about 90% of the time. It is much harder and messier to add a damper later. Put it in when everything is brand new and clean and leave it open initially until you learn how things are working with your stove and chimney. Usually you will need the damper when the outside temperature is low since the temperature differential will drastically increase the draft strength and you will have a hard time preventing a modern stove from "running away". This was also something I experienced with the Morso and I fitted a damper to the PE when it was installed. Don't worry about the damper fouling, there is never any deposit in the first 8 feet of stovepipe anyway.

 

[WayneB]

We just installed a new Vermont Castings Defiant and it is really working fine for us. It replaced an older Vermont Castings stove and we wanted to use the same type of stove as we like the size of the fire box, that it is top loading, has a separate ash pan for removing the ashes and the output of the stove. We have used it for about a month now with zero problems, a warm house and the length of the fire burn is excellent.






We have heated with wood since 1980 and only use oil if we are going to be away for multiple days and there is no one around to maintain the wood fire. One nice thing about heating with wood it warm us many times, when I am cutting down trees, hauling the logs to the staging area, cutting to size, splitting, stacking, hauling into the house and the when hauling ashes out. Mostly great exercise!

 

[JRobyn]

..... Don't worry about the damper fouling, there is never any deposit in the first 8 feet of stovepipe anyway.

This may not ALWAYS be the case - my FIL uses a small woodstove in his little (600sqft) cabin so he almost always has the fire slow and air starved to keep heat output modest. He runs a single-wall flue up to the ceiling where there is a double wall chimney through the roof. The single wall part of the flue, plus the low fire, cools the smoke so much that creosote condenses and hardens in copious quantities, particularly in the lower parts of the flue. He has TWO dampers, one right at the stove flue collar, and one about 4ft up. They are usually wide open, but get so coated/clogged with creosote that they sometimes can barely be turned. Me and the local fireplace/woodstove/chimney guy have tried to convince him to use double or triple wall all the way and to try to keep his flue temp up to at least 200-250 deg but he knows better. Has chimney fires once or twice a month. Good thing he has a tin roof! :firefighter:

- Jay

 

[westcliffe01]

Sounds like someone with a pre-epa stove. They really were airtight and the fire could be starved. But thats not what the originator of this thread is planning on. Any EPA 2 stove is very leaky. The air control can never be closed fully and then they have fixed openings for the air wash at the door and the secondary air for the baffle. So it is a completely different animal and for that reason you DO need a damper unless you are living in Florida. The test setup that the EPA uses simulates the minimum legal chimney height and a climate comparable to a Florida winter, since this provides the worst possible draft conditions. Any setup that is able to pass that test and meet the emissions will have a tendency to run away when used with a much taller chimney and outside temperatures of 0F or lower.

This may not ALWAYS be the case - my FIL uses a small woodstove in his little (600sqft) cabin so he almost always has the fire slow and air starved to keep heat output modest. He runs a single-wall flue up to the ceiling where there is a double wall chimney through the roof. The single wall part of the flue, plus the low fire, cools the smoke so much that creosote condenses and hardens in copious quantities, particularly in the lower parts of the flue. He has TWO dampers, one right at the stove flue collar, and one about 4ft up. They are usually wide open, but get so coated/clogged with creosote that they sometimes can barely be turned. Me and the local fireplace/woodstove/chimney guy have tried to convince him to use double or triple wall all the way and to try to keep his flue temp up to at least 200-250 deg but he knows better. Has chimney fires once or twice a month. Good thing he has a tin roof! :firefighter:

- Jay

 

[KennyG]

I have an Osbourne stove , EPA with outside air intake, about three years old. The instructions specifically say to not install a damper. I use a chimney thermometer and find it hard to get outside the operating range with the combustion air control full open or closed. My understanding is that no stove with outside air capability should have a flue damper.

 

[Tollster]

The best ones are typically 1/8" to 1/4" welded steel, lined with fire brick, have a 1/2 set of grates and a ash pan that catches every ash, and needs to be emptied once a week..

The laws have changed over the years, so if you can find an older no catalytic wood/coal stove, you'll be better off when its get unbearable outside.. Look for a 24" door for bigger stuff, and remember, if your stove has a 6" flue and you have an 8" chimney flue, you are good to go, but if you have a 6" chimney flue, and an 8" stove flu, keep looking as you run a fire hazard... you can step down to a stove flu, but not the other way around..

You'll get better heat off a convection wood burner, but it will require power to cycle the fan, look for one with a thermostat if this is the way you want to go, radiant heat is just that, but no power is needed..
Good luck

 

[sd455dan]

On the other hand standing there in your underwear, in the dark, shivering so bad you can barely keep a match lit to re-light a cold stove is character building!

in my old age -trying to avoid To much character building
the main point about burn times is that the Blaze kings have the capability to go a very long time without re -stoking -in the case of the large Blaze King, 40 hours on a low burn setting is not uncommon. I am sure there are others but getting up at night just for the stove is a chore I do not not miss.

 

[joshuabardwell]

the main point about burn times is that the Blaze kings have the capability to go a very long time without re -stoking -in the case of the large Blaze King, 40 hours on a low burn setting is not uncommon. I am sure there are others but getting up at night just for the stove is a chore I do not not miss.

It's hard to believe that a stove can run for 40 hours on a single load without dropping below the optimum burn temperature of around 250 degrees. I can leave my stove smoldering for a long time, but it's not good for the chimney, and it's not keeping my house warm in the mean time. A stove running at a given efficiency will extract a certain number of BTUs from a certain number of pounds of wood. I don't see how a long burn time is desirable, unless it is accompanied by a significant increase in efficiency, since it will just mean extracting the BTUs from the wood at a slower rate, resulting in a colder house.

EDIT TO ADD: I guess the one caveat would be that a stove should be able to be loaded in the evening before bed, and still have viable coals in it the next morning, so you're not building a fire from scratch every day. But that's something like a 12 hour burn time at most.

 

[corl]

I always load the Jotul Oslo stove before I go to bed in the evening and set the air intake at about half which is what I do during the day as well when the fire burns hot enough to keep the house warm. I use to choke the fire down at night but as mentioned above all you do is create chimney problems and limit heating at night. I never have to light a fire in the morning and I'm not always an early riser. The coals are always enough to get the fire blazing again, and the temperature usually drops about 5-6 degrees by morning when its cold outside. When it is below 0 outside the backup oil furnace kicks in at around 65 degrees before I get out of bed to stoke the fire in the morning. Gotta love the toasty wood stove heat!

 

[sd455dan]

it may not be the (optimum) temp but it does allow the stove to keep a house heated when you have to be somewhere else for a day.
You can return home - re stoke and yet never have to strike a match... and most times the stove temp is reading around 1/3 ( in the normal operating range) or it could be this


Blaze King manufacturers the top 2 most efficient wood stoves in North America. The King being #1 at 88% LHV an 82% EPA Listed Efficiency and #2 is the Princess at 88% LHV and an 81% EPA Listed Efficiency. We also build 5 of the top 8 most efficient wood stoves listed on the US EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) web site. The true efficiency for a wood stove is the measured efficiency number published by the US EPA on its web site. When comparing efficiencies of different brands you should always compare the EPA measured efficiency. This number is a true reading of how your stove performs in the real world. Follow this link to the EPA web site for confirmation. Here you will see most other wood stoves listed at 63% while the Blaze King stoves are listed as high as 82%. Our efficiencies keep the heat in your home and saves you up to 33% on your wood use.
From Blaze kings site

One other thing -as for stove and pipe cleaning , from late August thru May, we run our (Princess 24/7) and never have to clean the stove/pipe more often than every 3 1/2 months, I find this acceptable.

The Op may not want or need one that has the burn time abilities of these stoves, but for myself this is a feature that I find a necessity.