New wood stoves

[keegs]

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.

+1

....the risks to yourself of operating a chain saw or of felling trees.

We have a small Jotul 602 in the TV room. It's real cozy, heats the room and then some and doesn't put us out. There's some dust and debris from the small amount of wood being cycled into the house but it's nothing a broom and dustpan or the vacuum can't fix.

A lot of the wood I burn comes free off craigslist or off the side of the road after the power company does line maint.

We had a third flu added to the chimney when it was being built. The cost was maybe an extra $1k. and the stove cost about $600. or so.. can't remember either for sure.

If you're looking for cozy, nothing beats a crackling fire IMHO.

 

[s219]

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!

Maybe 2-3 times in a season when I go to start a fire from scratch, I can feel cold air running down the chimney, likely due to just the right combination of conditions beyond my control. So I try to get an upward draft going before lighting off the kindling, and usually just 10-15 seconds with a wadded sheet of newspaper is enough. Though I have seen stubborn cases where the cold downdraft just blows out the newspaper and makes a smoky mess. In those cases, I stick a hair dryer or small heater in there and give it a few minutes to create an updraft.

 

[NorTracNY]

Thanks for the feedback. I guess one item that I wasn't clear on was that I have over 10 acres of mostly young (~30yo trees) but some old trees. I have been helping other get trees off my place for several years. Because of a one time project, I have a few years worth of logs sitting for me to cut up. I also already produce more electricity in a year than I use.

Since I have radiant floor heat already, I have though about putting in a system to supplement the boiler in the basement, but I'm more inclined to walk outside to a separate boiler than down in my basement. I also wouldn't need to get the wood into the basement every year. It looks like I just need to do more research. The comments on cleaning out the ashes being the likely largest source of the dust is helpful.

 

[Egon]

Just for information. No idea if it is code compliant.

A simple air makeup is a down commer pipe from outside terminating in a bucket.

 

[Creamer]

Can somebody explain what makes the new stoves more efficient? I understand the better insulation - more firebrick - helps hold the heat in to keep the fire hotter and burn cleaner. I see the air pipes that both distribute the air more evenly in the fireplace and provide it at the top to ensure more complete combustion before the exhaust leaves. The air down the front to keep the smoke away from the glass which both keeps it clean and allows more radiant heat.

I assume there are controlled blowers to these air supply tubes? Doesn't the additional air also make it burn faster because if the flue backed up the exhaust the burn swirl would be messed up.

I ask because I modified an old fireplace insert a couple of years ago in which I added a baffle inside the combustion are to create a more convoluted exhaust path so that the heat had to travel by more steel to allow the jacket with a blower to extract more heat. i also changed the flue control to give me more control than the old one had. This combination of changes probably doubled the amount of heat I get out of the wood and also cleaned up the exhaust dramatically. Often I cannot see anything but some heat coming out of the chimney after 10 minutes or so to get the system warmed up. So I like what I did but I am trying to understand the value of the new inserts over what I have.

 

[arrow]

Can somebody explain what makes the new stoves more efficient? I understand the better insulation - more firebrick - helps hold the heat in to keep the fire hotter and burn cleaner. I see the air pipes that both distribute the air more evenly in the fireplace and provide it at the top to ensure more complete combustion before the exhaust leaves. The air down the front to keep the smoke away from the glass which both keeps it clean and allows more radiant heat.

I assume there are controlled blowers to these air supply tubes? Doesn't the additional air also make it burn faster because if the flue backed up the exhaust the burn swirl would be messed up.

I ask because I modified an old fireplace insert a couple of years ago in which I added a baffle inside the combustion are to create a more convoluted exhaust path so that the heat had to travel by more steel to allow the jacket with a blower to extract more heat. i also changed the flue control to give me more control than the old one had. This combination of changes probably doubled the amount of heat I get out of the wood and also cleaned up the exhaust dramatically. Often I cannot see anything but some heat coming out of the chimney after 10 minutes or so to get the system warmed up. So I like what I did but I am trying to understand the value of the new inserts over what I have.

I'll attempt this Creamer: Of course there is the catalytic stove that burns smoke through the heated converter. Then there is the air tube type which you make reference to. This type of stove has no blowers to add outside air to heat more. What these do is route super heated air from the burn process itself, through pathways in the stove and on to the air tubes that have holes in them. This super heated air ignites the particles in the smoke before it leaves the stove and up the draft. That is how the air tube stoves operate. They basically burn up the smoke. Like you, I cannot see smoke coming out of my chimney within 10-15 minutes of throwing in more wood.

There is yet another technology in wood stoves which "gasifies" the fuel by having a fire in one part of the stove and having the flame "blow down" into another part of the stove as a result of flame travel convection. This burns much like a blow torch would to further get as much out of the fuel as possible. . The Kuuma wood furnace works this way along with a few of the European stoves.

 

[MH8675309]

Wood heat warms you 3 different ways - cutting splitting and burning! And besides - after looking high and low through my woods I cant seem to find a pellet tree,,,

 

[Creamer]

Thanks Arrow! My old insert just has a couple of hand operated vents in the front doors. It makes sense that to put air in at the top of the combustion chamber would help oxidize the particulates that would otherwise go up the chimney. the other one is the route the air over the doors and the fire pulls the air down for combustion and this pushes the soot away from the glass for improved appearance and radiative heat transfer. I will have to look up the Kuuma furnace to understand that one.