Needing some advise on heating a shop

This place where I worked a long time ago had one of those double barrel stoves made out of two drums and the kit that you buy to make them was cheap.
Thing was over 5 years old and still going strong!
It would throw some big heat but it used a lot of wood doing it to heat a large shop.

The thing with a shop is you throw everything burnable in it & the cat stoves don't work well & the combustor won't last very long.
Good clean dry wood only for cat stoves.
Can you put in a ceiling fan?
Get the highest BTU output stove you can. 30NC is max 75,00 BTU, pretty good, big fire box, BrotherBart is the guru for the NC-30
http://www.acehardware.com/product/index.jsp?productId=3933665
Some stoves with more BTU output
Here is a list, look down the BTU chart for a big one. :
http://www.epa.gov/Compliance/resources/publications/monitoring/caa/woodstoves/certifiedwood.pdf
Here is a BEAST: 53,000 to 123,000 BTU out put stove.
U.S. Stove Company, Model 3000: https://www.usstove.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=309&product_id=500 ,
Says this baby cranks out some heat

My Dad runs a Brunco wood/coal furnace in his shop with no duct work. It blows straight up. He has very high ceilings though. His place is also very well insulated. It does a great job, but eats the wood.

What problem are you trying to solve? Burning to much wood. Shop cold. Old stove shot. Safety.

Having no duct work is not a problem. You can either let it blow straight up or you can put a 90 degree bend on the top and point it any which way you want. Look at the outlet as a big heat register that you can use to blow the heat in any direction.

I like to see the fire and I like clean burning EPA certified stoves so the NC30 is in the plans for my new 30x60 shop with 14' ceilings. Get that thing cranking along at 750 and you should be making some serious heat.

+1 on tightening up the building. especially if by "all open" you mean there is no ceiling. I heat a 32x34 garage burning pine slab in an old double barrel stove. My experience with Pine is it's better to burn it real hot and not try to get long burn times. When I used to choke down Pine fires it loaded my chimney like nobody's business. I think that's a big factor in what stove you choose.

I heat my shop with a Wondercoal stove it gets things up to temp quick and i burn wood in it. It is a smoke dragon but it heats my shop well.

I have a 36 x 40 x 10 metal pole barn with exposed rafters, and I heat it with an NC30. I only heat when I'm working out there. I have R15 OSB covered walls with R5 vapor barrier at the roof (more planned). I can take it from 35 to 55 degrees in about 1 1/2 hrs. with a 500 degree stove top, at 20 degrees outdoor. If I choose I can get it to 65-70...but that"s just wasting wood. A blower on the stove & ceiling fan is a must have.

The biggest heat loss battles you will have will be the ceiling/roof, and the floor. The walls are a bit easier.....you need something to block the wind/ air infiltration.

If you could do something with the insulation & the air infiltration you can reasonably do somthing with the 30. If not a furnace would probably work better. It would be easy to install a short trunk distribution system.

I'm the only person that going to make another suggestion and that is the Vermont Elm. It is an EPA stove that can fired very hot, has very large capacity and is already proven to be able to heat large open spaces. Fire box sizes can be had to over 6cu ft and burn times will easily last over 12hrs. Even Jesse James bought one for his shop, even though I don't how it could heat that warehouse sized space.

Thing is, the Englander is cheap, available, and proven. Good to hear that the elm got an EPA certification though. Doesn't matter since nothing about a garage install will be legal anyways.

I don't think that you will want to be loading it up and slamming the draft shut. You should want the heat while you're out there and then the stove can go out when you leave. I actually prefer a stove with a short and hot burn time in a shop so that it isn't an unattended fire hazard. Long burn times are great for the house.

Highbeam said:

Thing is, the Englander is cheap, available, and proven. Good to hear that the elm got an EPA certification though. Doesn't matter since nothing about a garage install will be legal anyways.

I don't think that you will want to be loading it up and slamming the draft shut. You should want the heat while you're out there and then the stove can go out when you leave. I actually prefer a stove with a short and hot burn time in a shop so that it isn't an unattended fire hazard. Long burn times are great for the house.

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Sorry didn't want to mislead anyone. It has no certification. But it does perform as such and based on its size and capacity would be perfect for a tough to heat space. Trying to intermittently heat a shop with any wood appliance will be very hard or nearly impossible. My neighbor heats a machine shop (smaller than Jeese's) with a monster pre epa stove and it is very warm in there. In fact warmer than my house. But he keeps the stove going 24/7. He loads it before leaving for night and the next morning there is just coals but the shop is still warm. Reload and go again for the next day.

I once saw a shop stove made out of 24" steel pipe with 1/2" plate welded on the ends and an old stove door welded on one end. It had a 12" diameter piece of pipe for the chimney. The guy would load whole logs into that beast and it heated the heck out of the shop. It smoked like my mother in law, if he had understood about baffles and burn tubes he probably would have gotten a lot more heat and less smoke.

[quote author="Pine_burner" date="1328690975"]Hey everybody, im needing advise on buying an englander NC30 to heat my 36X40 (1440sq feet) shop.our shop is not the best insulated. it is all open no walls or anything. currently i have an old buck wood insert, and it burns wood as fast as i can shove it full. hahaha. no joke either. One problem i will run into is we only burn pine out here in Wyoming. Thats about all we got out here. Our wood is seasoned for 2 years so it is plenty dry. does everybody think the NC30 will be enough? ive looked at the add on furnace but dont have any duck work in the shop so it would just blow straight up. also ive never used a non cat stove so all advise, tips, tricks would be a huge help. i plan on running the blower on the stove most of the time. currently we have a heat-a-later above the buck stove now, do i need that with a new non cat stove? or would that cause problems? im thinking of the englander NC30 because of the price, but am not limited to it either. just dont want to put a super nice cast iron stove out there and have somebody grinding by it, they would probably find out what the inside of the stove looks like hahahahhaha. is there other stoves that would be around the same price that might be better? add on furnace? help please








Doubt It would be affordable or available, but sound like the perfect application for a BIG Bullerjan. I would like to mess with one, cool stove.

I put a Lakewood unicorn (free) in my shop but once done, I'd lost a good bit of space. Chimney cost me about $600 to install. If I was to do it again, I'd put in one of those gas hot dawg heaters (propane is what we use for some appliances and there is a line run to the shop sitting unused). Constant heat, about the same money, maybe less and no loss of floor or wall space.