Wood Burning Stove

M

munk

Joined
Mar 22, 2002
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It's hovering around zero F here, with several inches of snow on the ground, and the wood burning stove is in it's prime. Without it, we'd be warm enough with propane, but never lose the chill in the air, as well as watching our bank book recede. There's nothing like a stove to make a home truly warm and comfortable.

Recently I've taken the 20" AK away from the firewood trimming chores and have been using other khuks. The big AK builds a lot of momentum. Not always a good thing. Try that on your living room rug. I keep several larger rounds of wood for a cutting board. These are usually more 'green' than the split and sectioned wood. After a time being the board, they've dried and can be sectioned or trimmed enough to throw into the stove.

The chiruwa size khuks I'm really likeing right now for trimming. They build up energy quick, aren't too long, and can shave the wood chunks fast. All the chips thrown are perfect for starting the fire later. When it's this cold I usually just clean the stove of ash as I go, and it does not go out completely. But sometimes I'll get up in the morning and find it almost cold.
Atmospheric pressure and moisture content of the air, wind speed, blaa blaa blaa, all influence the burn rate. The shaved chips are excellent. We don't have a shredder for paperwork so the stove does all that, too.

Every night before retiring I'll turn the flue down until the stove is just barely breathing. It can work on a couple logs all night, and keep the lower house warm enough so in the morning you don't gasp when you hit the kitchen. I start the coffee upon rising, then build the stove up. When the kids pound downstairs from their rooms the house is starting to warm.

I'm glad I've a lot of khuks to choose from. I don't know what I'd do without them.

Beater Truck is outside by the backdoor loaded with wood. One thing I'll not do when it's this cold is use a khuk to section. This is strictly chainsaw time. It's cold out there.

The Wild Turkeys still climb down from their roosts behind the house every morning and go in search of free corn from the neighbors. No matter the cold, I'll see them in the yard digging through the snow, I believe to find the small pebbles for their digestion, and the sight let's me know I'm not alone.



munk
 
I don't miss the prairie; still waiting for our first real drop of snow here. Heck, I spent part of yesterday getting storm windows on. We've more rain scheduled for this week, but proximity to the Atlantic sure keeps the temp more moderate than when I lived in howling, frigid Edmonton. Brr.

But I entirely agree with you about keeping the woodstove kicking over slowly, so that keeping the house livable doesn't also make the bankbook whimper. You have any issues with creosote building up in the chimney from the long slow overnight burns?

I've a retired friend who lives aboard a 40' sailboat - it has a small woodstove in it too, enough to keep everything toasty. I asked Jamie about how it is over the winter .... he said the advantage of a boat is you just sail to where it's warm. Grr.
 
I love the woodstove at grandads cabin. What a workhorse. I'm always impressed by the massive amount of heat he gets outta that thing.
 
I heat entirely with wood using a forced air wood furnace. I can always walk around the house in shirt sleeves and barefoot. Oil is a rip-off at 75 cents a liter, and wood can be had for 80 dollars a full cord.

I replaced the old selkirk chimney this year. It was 25 years old and needed to go. The new chimney works fine. I just cleaned it for the first time, and noted that the build up is about the same as for the old pipes. So keep up your cleaning schedual if you decide to replace yours with new pipes.

It's getting colder now, so now is a good time to check your pipes.
 
TomFetter said:
But I entirely agree with you about keeping the woodstove kicking over slowly, so that keeping the house livable doesn't also make the bankbook doesn't whimper. You have any issues with creosote building up in the chimney from the long slow overnight burns?
Click to expand...

When I heated solely with wood I used to damp the stove down overnight. Creosote does build up when you burn without enough O2. We had some spectacular burnouts in the stovepipe, when the pipe would glow cherry red and it made a sound like a jet engine. Can get to be scary, not to mention dangerous. There are some commercial products you can toss in the fire to reduce creosote build-up. I've heard that aluminum cans will do the same thing.

Now that I just supplement my oil heat with wood heat, I burn my stove with ample air supply. This gives a more efficient burn, you get more of the energy in the wood, and there is much less creosote build-up. Of course, the fire does not last as long this way. It takes more tending and frequent small feedings too. I have an automatic thermostat that kicks on the oil heat in the mornings, so I don't have to worry about getting up to a cold house if the wood stove is out.

I don't have enough wood stockpiled to last through the whole winter solely heating my house with wood, so I burn what wood I have in the most efficient manner, to keep my oil bills down.
 
I usually let the fire burn open for around 5 minutes every day. It is a catalytic converter stove, and can burn quite hot even when partially dampened. I try not to let the crud buildup get to the point of a cherry red stove pipe. You can always hear the burn, can't you? I wait until the roof and area is snow covered before blasting away.

The house is nestled in a small mountain valley, and we don't get the full prarrie wind just several miles away. A banana belt. It's generally warmer here than either on the prarrie or down in the river valley along US route 2.


munk
 
Have you found that wood stove heat just kind of feels nicer than any other kind?

I assembled a wood stove kit made by Sotz once. It used two 35 gallon drums and took logs 36 inches long. It heated two 1100 square foot floors just fine. Since it was in the basement it made the first story floor nice and warm on your feet.

Went through 7-8 cords of wood each winter though.
 
The house is 3300 sq feet, so it's a job for any stove. A catalytic converter stove is more efficient than a simple wood burner, so I don't go through 8 cords. Maybe 4, not sure. I just keep cutting until Spring comes.


munk
 
I love wood stoves. There's a huge one in the cabin. It took 8 of us all we had to carry it thru the creek up one bank and then straight up the hill to the cabin. I need to go over there and fire it up some this winter. It's an Armstrong with fire brick on the bottom and part way up the sides, and is probably 4' long and 2' wide and up on legs. The thing is a beast!
 
I'm curious: I've read that (under at least some circumstances), a fire in a stove can end up sucking in enough cold air (by the low pressure created when the hot air goes up the chimney) to counteract a lot of the heating effect of the fire. Comments, anyone? Are there particular circumstances where this creates a real problem?

2. As a newcomer to the wood-stove scene, I wonder what one does to prevent carbon monoxide poisoning, especially if one's got the fire going overnight. If there's a "right way" and a "wrong way" to do this, I'd be interested to know from those of you who know.
 
I just started the first fire of the season in ours two days ago. Lenore, the new kitten, is in love. It only took her about twenty minutes to figure out the glory that is the woodstove.
 
Modern houses are often built too air-tight for their own good. I'd be more cautious with a stove in one of those. My house has lots of leaks, and I'm not worried about poisened air. Once the stove door is closed, I know of no way it cannot provide more heat than it sucks out of the air. Ours has a pipe vent to the outside, anyway, though would work fine without it.

I think fireplaces are the heat stealing culprits, not wood burning stoves. None of the stoves in our dwellings in Idaho, Wyoming or Montana ever took more than they gave.

lf you've never used a pellet, wood burning, or catalytic converter stove you just can't believe the amount of radiant heat these things produce. I like my catalytic stove because when the electricity goes off and the fan no longer works it still heats passively.

munk
 
You brought back some good woodstove memories Munk--Thank you.:)

I never lived with a woodstove (yet) but I spent some great times at my friend's father's hunting camp that was heated by a wood stove. We cooked on the top bunks while the old men snoozed in comfortable warmth on the bottom ones--but that's the way it was and we accepted it. After all they were the ones who spent each day teaching us to hunt and working at their jobs to pay for the camp. We had a good deal in my eyes:thumbup: Both those men are gone now, and I miss them. But they live on in my memories...
 
I've got a small wood stove here at the house. But, I'm afraid to use it :rolleyes:. The house is small... I mean, probably 400 sq ft. The stove itself isn't really big, about 18" deep by 30" wide. It has a small wood box/burner area, with the iron plates on top (that you can lift out). I'm just afraid that the radiant heat would be too much and melt my air mattress (about four feet away) or start my desk to cooking (about 2.5-3 feet away). I guess I'm a newbie when it comes to stoves...

I've got one electric baseboard heater and a really small one in the back area (I'm in a one room house with a bathroom/closet in back). The electric is going to kill me this winter ($89 for my first month... and it wasn't too cold at all). But I'm still hesitant to fire up the stove, especially since I know squat about using one.
 
i cannot remember the last time i have seen anything but concrete and steel.

i am envious.
 
I grew up with concrete and steel.

ACStudios; I was nervous about my first two wood burners. They were of different types. One was conventional and in a small trailer outside Bighorn Wy. YOu'll learn to dampen it down properly, and let it burn itself clean with your windows open if its that hot. Try some experiments when you are home for a day.

munk
 
Summer we harvest with an old friend of my dad's as a favor to a local landowner. The stuff is non native and always falling over and needing clean up in the sandy soils it has taken to in Scotts Valley. Burns pretty good and it doesn't cost anything but my labor.
My next woodstove is going to be a masonary stove. Expenisive as all get out, but massive and burns at extremely high temps and maximum efficiency.
 
We have a wood burning stove in our living room too - not too big, but enough we did not have to use our gas-heating in the ground-floor, where living room, kichen and my office are. Even the bedroom and Simon´s roomin the first floor get a bit warmer because the walls have contact with the chimney. We have lots of forest around here and the cubic meter of wood is about 20 Euros if you take the pieces about 1 meter long and then saw and split it yourself - that is if you have to buy it. We have about eight cubic meters of wood around the house that did not cost anything but a bit of work - recently I brought home five cubic meters of maple wood from some trees we had to fell on the areal of my archery club - it will have to dry until next late winter but then it is again a heat-source that did not cost us anything. That is a very nice thing when you know you depend on Russian gas for the central heating (Gazprom just anounced the costs will rise by 15 % next winter:grumpy: - guess I will have to build more racks to store more wood.

How long do you let your wood dry before you heat with it?

Andreas
 
Sutcliffe said:
My next woodstove is going to be a masonary stove. Expenisive as all get out, but massive and burns at extremely high temps and maximum efficiency.
Click to expand...
That's the ticket, alright. If I ever build a house, a masonry heater is going smack in the middle of it ... with a nice built-in bench so I can lean up against the warm stone.
 
ACStudios said:
I've got a small wood stove here at the house. But, I'm afraid to use it :rolleyes:. The house is small... I mean, probably 400 sq ft. The stove itself isn't really big, about 18" deep by 30" wide. It has a small wood box/burner area, with the iron plates on top (that you can lift out). I'm just afraid that the radiant heat would be too much and melt my air mattress (about four feet away) or start my desk to cooking (about 2.5-3 feet away). I guess I'm a newbie when it comes to stoves...

I've got one electric baseboard heater and a really small one in the back area (I'm in a one room house with a bathroom/closet in back). The electric is going to kill me this winter ($89 for my first month... and it wasn't too cold at all). But I'm still hesitant to fire up the stove, especially since I know squat about using one.
Click to expand...

You will never know until you try. Yes electric heat sucks, and they belong in the dump. Heck you should see our dumps over the recent years- baseboard heaters dumped like logs!:D

Anyways, take a look at your stove and pipes. If it has a clean-out at the rear of the stove pop it open and see how much build-up is in their. Take a look down the inside of the chimney from up on the roof, and check the build-up and the condition of the pipes if you are uncertain about its health. Alternatively, call in a chimney sweep or wood stove dealer they can help you out and advise you on sizing up a chimney brush etc.

Fire it up and try it out, chances are you will keep it going all winter long. I enjoy the thorough warmth of wood heat. It is -8 C outside, and I am toasty warm with barefeet right now.:p
 
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