Wood stoves for heat,

[phideaux]

Been heating with wood for about 10 years,
I am curious what your using to heat with. I almost went with an outside wood furnace , but decided , a stov inside the house, for us, would be most convenient, and most independent (no electric needed) ,
A side benefit is.... we could cook on it if we had to.

This is the one I settled on, 3.5 cu ft, firebox.
Has a controlled ,outside air intake, does not pull air form inside house.
Holds a lot of wood for overnight , on a really cold night.
Don't need cleaning out as often.(once a week)
It has held heat for 3 days, and still had hot coals buried in the bottom,

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Englander-2-400-sq-ft-Wood-Burning-Stove-30-NCH/100291302

Jim

 

[zoomzoom]

I have 2 wood stoves, both inserted into the fireplaces of the house. Each are rated to 75,000 BTU's.

We're heating about 3,400 sq/ft. If the outside temps are 20° or above, we use one stove and it'll heat the house. We fire up the 2nd one when temps go below 20° and with both running, they'll keep the house warm down to about -15 to -20°. At 20-below zero, we need to consider having the furnace run.

Each has blowers to circulate the heat. I keep a pair of deep-cycle batteries with inverters available to run the blowers if the power goes out.

We go through about 4 or 5 full cord per year. Considering the one stove runs pretty much constant for nearly 6 months, that's not bad.

https://www.regency-fire.com/en/Products/Wood/Wood-Inserts/I2400

 

[Chris]

I just put a woodstove in my shop and love it. Raises the temp in my 24 x 36 shop from 32 to 50 in an hour

 

[zoomzoom]

I just put a woodstove in my shop and love it. Raises the temp in my 24 x 36 shop from 32 to 50 in an hour

My insurance company wouldn't let me do that. I use propane Reznor shop heaters.

 

[Chris]

My insurance company wouldn't let me do that. I use propane Reznor shop heaters.

Mine must have been there when I bought the place.....

 

[Sentry18]

I just have a regular nothing to speak of gas furnace, but my Aunt & Uncle who live in the country have something called a biomass furnace in their basement. It can burn a variety of different things like corn, corn cobs, wood pellets, dried cherry pits, etc. But it is supposed to be very flexible so you can use what's available and the least expensive. It feeds from a sort of hopper. Very interesting furnace.

 

[SheepDog]

In Washington if you buy a stove it has to meet the EPA specifications for clean burn. Insurance companies require the same thing for coverage. There is no way to enforce in private sales or if you build your own. I have always built my own stoves and they are heat efficient but don't necessarily meat the clean burn standards. After having studied many designs I found the keys to making a stove produce heat. I have rough design drawn up and one that I built for the cabin. It keeps the 480 square foot two story cabin very warm throughout the winter on less than a cord of wood, has outside air intake that is throttled and a dampened flue. The fire can be "banked" to last more than 12 hours. It has a small cook top with a 1.8 cu. ft. firebox. It's made of 3/16" plate from industrial battery casing. No firebrick but has a removable ash pan and a double baffle system that keeps most of the heat in the stove instead of going up the chimney. I just gave the design drawings to a friend of my son to build one for his new shop. Right now the plans are free but don't include hinges and latch for the door. I used pipe and bolts for the hinges for the one in the cabin and a simple lever latch to seal the door which uses the fireplace door seal glued on using Sodium Silicate fireplace glue.

 

[phideaux]

I only use mine (normally) Nov-mid Mar)
Mine has a ceramic plate ceiling in it, to keep heat in , not out the chimney.
The bottom and all sides are lined with firebrick that holds heat for long time after fire dies.

It has a small ash tray , I've never used,
I just use a shovel and metal 5 gal bucket , once a week.



Him

 

[Spikedriver]

I only use mine (normally) Nov-mid Mar)
Mine has a ceramic plate ceiling in it, to keep heat in , not out the chimney.
The bottom and all sides are lined with firebrick that holds heat for long time after fire dies.

It has a small ash tray , I've never used,
I just use a shovel and metal 5 gal bucket , once a week.



Him

Who is "Him"?

 

[phideaux]

The mailman...????


Jim

 

[katlupe]

This is our wood stove in the living room. It is called an Alaska and has a Griswold Bolo oven on top in this photo. I use it for baking and cooking during the winter. Not usually on top of the stove it was just being used that day. What I like about this stove is the two levels on top. I can put 4 canning kettles on top and still have room left over.

This stove is too hot in the early fall or warmer fall like we had this year.

So we replaced our old wood cook stove with this little stove for now, but I am not crazy about it. We will be getting a new cook stove but not yet. I don't want to buy a cheaper one and settle. I will wait till I can get the one I want. This one works and heats but not very well made.

 

[camo2460]

I have Three sources of Heat Propane (which I don't use), Electricity (which I use sometimes), and Wood (which I use most of the time). Phideaux my Wood Stove is just like yours, and can Heat my Home to the point that I have to open the Front Door to cool down.

 

[UncleJoe]

Been heating with wood exclusively for 10 years, starting the 11th now. Have a parlor stove similar to the one @katlupe has pictured above but ours is much older and has a lower draft control as well as the damper in the flue. It will heat the entire 2000sf ranch house until the temp drops into the single digits. When it can't keep up we fire up the Baker fireplace insert, and usually get cooked out.

During the winter of '14-'15 we had a 3-4 week spell where it never rose above 32° and would drop below 0° overnight on many occasions. We had them both running the entire time. Turn a lot of wood to ashes that winter.

 

[*Andi]

I have The Sweetheart Wood Cook stove with Water Reservoir and bread warm ... She keeps us warm in the winter, with a back up for cooking when needs be.

 

[AtomicFarmer]

I have a Hardy outdoor wood boiler. I've had it for almost 11 years now and I love it.

Pros: I don't have to buy heating oil. I enjoy cutting and splitting wood. I'm more self sufficient-I use wood that was either harvested here at home or given to me by neighbors.

Cons: This is the most grid-dependent wood heating system I can think of. The furnace is in the yard and relies on a blower fan and a water pump to burn the wood and transfer hot water to my household baseboards. It's hungry-I go through the biggest part of a pickup load (8 foot bed) per week. Once lit, it needs to stay lit or the 100+ gallons of water in the water jacket and piping will freeze and break something.

This is a good furnace for me because I enjoy it. I have a generator for when the power goes out but without electricity from some source the furnace is useless.

I recommend them highly, but with caution-you have to know what you're getting into with these outdoor furnaces or you'll end up hating them.

 

[hashbrown]

I have two Vermont Castings a Defiant in the basement and an Encore on the middle floor. My shop has a no name cast stove. We usually burn a tremendous amount of wood but the last couple of years have been so mild I have a good stockpile but we continue to pile it up.

 

[zoomzoom]

What do y'all do with your ashes? I keep them around to help with traction on icy days. They work well but don't use them where you regularly walk into the house! In the spring or when I have excess, most go in the garden.

 

[squirrelhunter]

I put a corn/wood pellet furnace in a few years ago but because of the size of it it wouldn't fit in the house so I had to put it in the garage (my stupidity for not measuring things first ). It looses a lot of heat out there and didn't work for heating the house so I'm going to have them unhook it from the duct work and use it for heating the garage instead. All that money I put into I might as well get some use out of it.

 

[marlas1too]

I have a airtight flat top wood stove and last year I found a tin oven at a yard sale for a 1.00 and if I use the stove to cook on then i make my biscuits first than take the oven off to use the top to cook whatever--don't worry about any insurance as the house came with a fire place but it leaked around the roof so we had it removed and the stove installed and fixed the roof love cooking on wood and if you ever learn to cook on one you can cook on anything

 

[backlash]

Pellet stove during the day and propane furnace at night.

 

[Cnsper]

I am going to get a wood cook stove for the kitchen and I am going to take the drums that came off the semi and weld them into kind of a horizontal barrel stove.

 

[katlupe]

This is the stove we took out this spring. It literally fell apart otherwise I was going to use it for displaying my cast iron cookware collection when my kitchen was finished being remodeled. I used it for almost 20 years and we bought it in an antique store. Once we took it out, I didn't want to replace it with another big one because it blocks all the light. Still not sure we are going to replace it. I am thinking of retiring from this life.

 

[Redbeard]

Central boiler outdoor wood pellet boiler. I could heat my neighborhood with it. I love it! 4 to 5 tons of pellets but i start early and run late.

 

[AtomicFarmer]

What do y'all do with your ashes? I keep them around to help with traction on icy days. They work well but don't use them where you regularly walk into the house! In the spring or when I have excess, most go in the garden.

I just pile mine up beside the furnace and sometime later on into the summer (after there's NO chance of hot embers) I'll scoop them up with the tractor and cart them off to the edge of the woods and just dump them. I burn pallets or old fence posts occasionally so the odd piece of metal will end up in my ashes making them unfit for spreading on the driveway. Now that I'm trying to make soap I might try getting some lye out of the ashes but that's a future endeavor.

 

[marlas1too]

I use the ashs to spread on the garden in the winter before spring planting to add potassium in the soil and if there is an odd burned up nail well iron never hurt plants

 

[UncleJoe]

I use the ashs to spread on the garden in the winter before spring planting to add potassium in the soil and if there is an odd burned up nail well iron never hurt plants

But if you use a tiller with pneumatic tires you may run into a problem.

 

[gumpy]

I am going to get a wood cook stove for the kitchen and I am going to take the drums that came off the semi and weld them into kind of a horizontal barrel stove.

I'm going to build something similar in my shop. Please show pics when you get done!

 

[Country Living]

We've heated the house with a Savannah Drolet woodstove for almost 15 years. The stove is in the back corner of the living room that shares a wall with the bedroom. We put a "through the wall" fan near the top of that wall to bring the warm heat from the stove into the bedroom. It works pretty well. We wired the fan into a wall switch so all it takes to turn on the fan is to flip the switch.

 

[Redbeard]

I just pile mine up beside the furnace and sometime later on into the summer (after there's NO chance of hot embers) I'll scoop them up with the tractor and cart them off to the edge of the woods and just dump them. I burn pallets or old fence posts occasionally so the odd piece of metal will end up in my ashes making them unfit for spreading on the driveway. Now that I'm trying to make soap I might try getting some lye out of the ashes but that's a future endeavor.

You probably already know but you want hard wood ash for the lye.

 

[phideaux]

Like I said earlier, I clean out my stove , on average, once a week , into a metal 5 gal bucket.
I only burn clean hardwood firewood,
I use to pie it high behind the house, then scoop it with front loader and spread in garden.

No more garden.. now I'll just put it in the woods..

Somebody said dump it in my pond... I', a skeered it might kill my fish.



Jim