[Shelter] Heat - Wood (was Wood Stoves)

[Ludi]

There aren't many preps you can make that have such a positive impact on your overall situation.

I can't agree with this too strongly! Our woodstove has been the best improvement we've made to our place, in terms of quality of life.

[Revi]

The woodstove gives you a primal feeling. It's the hearth. The cheery glow that it gives off and the warmth pulls every human and creature in the house towards it, and puts them to sleep.

You can feel good about it, because the rest of the house is a little colder, but the oil burner isn't coming on because you stuck the stove near the thermostat. Clever, huh? You can also cook stews and beans and things on the woodstove, slowly.

It is the ultimate emergency thing, providing both heat and cooking.

I am looking forward to April when we stop using it, because we're almost out of wood and I don't feel like fighting the snowdrifts to get more right now.

[uNkNowN ElEmEnt]

Your call. Personally I'd choose too much heat - not enough is just no fun! Neither is getting up in the middle of the night because the fire's out and the house is freezing. At least with the larger firebox you'd get a longer burn at night.

Awesome, I thought that would be the case but its nice to have it confirmed. thanks for the input. I can't wait to get it in and light it up. Hope the cats are ok with it.

[fireplaceguy]

ElEmEnt - Your cats will love it. They sleep right in front of the stove! (You'll like it too!)

[skyemoor]

In summer, install that smaller firebox and use the small feed door to make it an efficient cookstove that doesn't overheat the house so badly. (It'll go in the summer kitchen then.)

Is there history of such things? Anyone?

I would suggest the Solar Cooker thread. Free heat is hard to beat....

[patience]

fireplaceguy,

Yeah, I can cook with less FIRE in summer, if instead of the fire being 2 feet below the cook top, I put the fire 8" under the cook top. That's what the smaller, relocated cooking firebox is for, to get the fire up close to the food. So, instead of building enough fire to heat a church, I only need a small one, with 1" square sticks a foot long, instead of logs the size of my leg.

Antique cast iron cooking ranges did that. Breakfast was usually cooked on a fire made of corncobs, one of which had been dunked in a mason jar of kerosene to start it. The firebox was typically about 6" wide x 8" tall x 16" long, and placed directly under the cook top. The draft pattern went sideways under the cook top toward the stovepipe outlet, giving a gradation to lower heat as you moved a pan further away from the fire. Very convenient for cooking-infinite heat control. These still overheated the house in summer, but nowhere near what a heating stove does. My wife and I used one of these for 13 years, and loved it.

Your safety concerns are appropriate, but I've built and used my own stoves for 30+ years and understand the issues. This stove will go in our "summer kitchen/sunporch", an ALL masonry affair with a metal roof, and heat shield over the stove to protect the ceiling. We don't have zoning in this county, and the building codes are superceded by the Indiana Homestead Act, that says if I do it myself, I can do what I damned well please. I don't have a mortgage, so there is no bank concerned here, and I recently told the insurance guy to take a hike, because his rates were outrageous. So, I'm going to do it, and devil take the hindmost. I plan to cook, eat, stay warm, and do it with the least possible effort, on an affordable basis. I'm in business, and I don't intend to sell this to anyone, because I understand liability. I'll try to get some pictures when I get it done.

Spent most of my life doing stuff people told me wasn't possible.

[patience]

I've heated with wood for 50+ years and built couple dozen log splitters, a couple bandsaw mills, several wood-hauling trailers, some log truck beds, and hydraulic log turners for circular saw mills. Built two gas fired heat treat ovens and an aluminum melt furnace for myself. (Gun-fired oil, about 30 lbs/hr capacity.) A friend and I built a tiny forced air backpacker's stove that will burn solid fuel found in the wild, boils a pint of water in under 2 minutes, and fits in a coat pocket.

Lost count of how many blacksmith forges I've built in the last 40 years. At my day job, I did design work on steel sintering furnaces, a resin impregnating oven, copper-brazing furnaces, integrated circuit chip diffusion furnaces, some work on silicon crystal growers(2588 deg F.), open hearth aluminum melt furnaces, and countless solder pots and wave-solder tanks for production soldering of circuit boards. I don't guess ultrasonic welding or scrub wire bonding fits directly here, but they get hot too. Designed a couple aluminum holding funaces for automatic permanent molding machines, and controlled atmosphere preheaters for the nickel iron inserts in diesel engine pistons.

In 30 years at this, I've never had anything catch fire that wasn't supposed to, nor did anyone ever get hurt on anything I designed or built. UL standards are pretty minimal compared to industrial standards. I think I can design and build (another) wood stove.

Hmm. This may get me nominated for fossil fuel addict of the year...

[FoolYap]

Hmm. This may get me nominated for fossil fuel addict of the year...

--Steve

[Homesteader]

fireplaceguy,

Yeah, I can cook with less FIRE in summer, if instead of the fire being 2 feet below the cook top, I put the fire 8" under the cook top. That's what the smaller, relocated cooking firebox is for, to get the fire up close to the food. So, instead of building enough fire to heat a church, I only need a small one, with 1" square sticks a foot long, instead of logs the size of my leg.

Antique cast iron cooking ranges did that. Breakfast was usually cooked on a fire made of corncobs, one of which had been dunked in a mason jar of kerosene to start it. The firebox was typically about 6" wide x 8" tall x 16" long, and placed directly under the cook top. The draft pattern went sideways under the cook top toward the stovepipe outlet, giving a gradation to lower heat as you moved a pan further away from the fire. Very convenient for cooking-infinite heat control. These still overheated the house in summer, but nowhere near what a heating stove does. My wife and I used one of these for 13 years, and loved it.

Your safety concerns are appropriate, but I've built and used my own stoves for 30+ years and understand the issues. This stove will go in our "summer kitchen/sunporch", an ALL masonry affair with a metal roof, and heat shield over the stove to protect the ceiling. We don't have zoning in this county, and the building codes are superceded by the Indiana Homestead Act, that says if I do it myself, I can do what I damned well please. I don't have a mortgage, so there is no bank concerned here, and I recently told the insurance guy to take a hike, because his rates were outrageous. So, I'm going to do it, and devil take the hindmost. I plan to cook, eat, stay warm, and do it with the least possible effort, on an affordable basis. I'm in business, and I don't intend to sell this to anyone, because I understand liability. I'll try to get some pictures when I get it done.

Spent most of my life doing stuff people told me wasn't possible.

+1 What he said. (your second post is just as good)

[Blacksmith]

The only problem I have with our wood stove is that our house is so well insulated, that unless the temperature is really cold outside it gets too warm in the house. Therefore in the spring we have to use natural gas.

[skyemoor]

Our house is fairly efficient as well, and we seek ways to keep heat out in the summer. So in the spring, summer, and fall, we make use of our two different types of solar ovens.


Parabolic cooker


Oven-style cooker with electric backup (good on partly cloudy days)

.

[patience]

skyemoor,
My daughter and son in law are working on solar cookers and windmills. I've been assigned to make woodstoves for the crowd, and do the solar PV rigs, but I want to try the solar cookers, too. Son in law says it needs a glass cover of some kind to reduce heat loss on windy days, but seems to work okay. We're learning here.

[Ludi]

http://solarcooking.org/plans/

[patience]

Wow! Thanks Ludi, that's a great link! I had found the rocket stove, hadn't seen any of the cookers. The whole family will pursue this.

[pstarr]

Anyone here heard of the Harman Oakwood Cast Iron Woodstove? My concern is that it might be overkill for my modern tight home. It will be 1,800 sq. ft. and this thing puts out 11,000 to 42,000 btus.

Top loading makes adding wood easier and allows the Oakwood to hold more wood than other stoves of the same size. The Oakwood can hold over 40 pounds of cordwood on a three-inch charcoal bed which makes burn times of 12 to 16 hours a reality.

The Oakwood's optional cooking grill allows you to grill your favorite meats and vegetables without altering your home's air quality. This stainless steel grill is easy to remove and clean.

sounds too good to be true. I've contracted an owner and he is really enthused. Want if for our new home.

[patience]

pstarr,
Haven't seen this one before, but at 480 lbs (?) that's a hefty stove! Be sure to frame adequately under it. The only caveat that I know of for top loaders, is be sure to have the draft controls open when loading wood, to reduce smoke being let into the room, and get a pair of long gauntlet welding gloves for loading, and a good hook style poker for helping position the logs, because you will be sticking your hands in directly above the fire.

Not as bad as it sounds, though, and top loaders can be really efficient since it allows good placement of the intake air. The ash pan indicates that it has a grate to let ashes fall through, which is a mixed blessing. It also lets coals fall through when they get small enough, so you will find coals in with the ashes, and it is a little harder to start a fire over a grate, since fast burning kindling can fall through too.

The good part of that is, the ash pan deals effectively with the main problem of top loaders, which is how you clean it out. The old ones required you to have a dipper of some sort to take ashes out the top, and of course, you had to let the fire die down to keep from getting scorched doing it. The ash pan makes it easy.

Sounds pretty good. I'd like to see one going before I buy it, but that's true of any stove.

[pstarr]

thanks for the review patience. This'll be my first stove and will not be the main source of heating, but rather backup. It's going on a concrete pad on grade with hydronic coils in it. That'll be fired by a small condensing boiler.

I'll fire this Harmon up during those big Pacific storms and when I want an indoor bbq

[Specop_007]

Another bump for work reading

[uNkNowN ElEmEnt]

I am so excited... I just ordered my wood stove. Now I have to figure out what to put under it and how to place it. I am so looking forward to setting it up.

[uNkNowN ElEmEnt]

My house is approx 728 sq ft. the stove I bought is for a rrange between 500 and 1200 sq ft. but the guy I bought it from says I'm gonna roast.

He says its goona be so hot in winter we are going to have to keep the windows open just to stay below 83 degrees. I've never used a wood stove in such a small place, but I thought all you'd have to do is turn the damper down so you get a slower burn.

Are we gonna roast? and should I rethink this?