Need help: Unemployed, but have a kent tile stove. Now what?

Dave A. said:

Good point.

I think that's pretty commonly known now -- you don't insulate walls with knob and tube wiring in them, that type wiring requires an air space and you need to be careful about it.

Am pretty sure that by the mid 1920's romex (non-metalic NM) type wiring was being used in a lot of housing, though knob and tube continued well into the 1930's -- particularly in lower priced construction.

Click to expand...

When I did the blow-in insulation in the attic last-summer, I noticed that some of the old wiring was run through the attic. It is knob and tube wiring. While the house has had the electric breaker replaced and about half of the outlets converted over to 3 prong (new wire run from box to terminal, ie correctly), the other outlets are the old 2-prong outlets and wrapped wire. I have no idea why they wouldn't have converted the rest of the outlets and wiring, but they didn't. Anyways, the house is exactly as you predicted, stone exterior, firing strips and plaster walls inside, no insulation, 10ft ceilings. Great in the summer, not so much in the winter.

I think that on the project list will be to finish converting the rest of the wiring, and disconnecting the remaining knob and tubes.

[quote="Joful, post: 1560863, member: 22094"

I really expected a few to jump on the wood supply issue, so I'll get on it now. Heating your house with wood cut this year may be very difficult. Wood above 20% moisture content will cause difficulties in getting your secondary combustion system to function properly, thus causing creosote issues, and you will waste many BTU's boiling water out of any wood much above 20% moisture content. Not all is lost, as there are some species that can be cut standing dead, in which you may find wood in the top half of the tree already at 20% moisture content. Any wood lower in the tree (even standing dead), as well as anything lying directly on the ground, will not likely be ready to burn this year.

Your best weapon in your search for dry wood, is an electronic moisture meter. Many of us use a General, which can be purchase for $30 at Lowes.[/quote]

I've done some searching around here, and I think what we're going to do is buy a couple of cords of seasoned wood. Unknown to me before I started this quest, my girlfriend's uncle leases some land to a lumber outfit. I've got a call into them to price out some wood. Her Uncle said that because it's his land, they will give me a pretty good discount, but I won't know how much until I talk to them. Along with that, I'm going to cut a couple of cords to stack for next year.

After reading the different posts on wood, I figured it would be worth the money to get seasoned wood instead of trying to force the issue with unsuitable wood. In addition, there's a bit of making sure this all works to keep the gf happy, since she's a bit skeptical about this whole deal.

EatenByLimestone said:

My first year I used pallets to get me though the winter. I found a hot tub/pool dealer had lots of large, oak pallets for free. Use a sawzall to cut them up. I was stupid and used my chainsaw and ruined a few chains.

Matt

Click to expand...

I was able to get a truck full of pallets yesterday from Home Depot. They were happy to get rid of them (they reuse good ones, but have to pay to recycle the ones that are broken). Brought home 14. Using some as the bottom for my future wood stack, and will start breaking down the rest to burn. Lots of nails/braids that need to be pulled, but it's pretty easy to pull them out. Lots of big box stores around me, so I will be visiting a bunch more in the coming days. If nothing else it should be great kindling, and can't beat the price.

dafattkidd said:

Welcome to the forum. Your girlfriend's house is really cool. PA has some interesting houses. Good news is that old stove you cleaned up is a great unit! It might be helpful to directly reach out to precaud, a forum member who has a Kent tile stove. So sorry to hear that you lost your job. My insert saved us from losing our house when I was unemployed a few years ago. We have oil heat which is like $800-$850/month in winter. That happened to be the coldest winter in years, so we were super grateful for wood heat.

A quick note on the unemployment: Sounds like you're a very mechanical person, and a hard worker. Something tells me you won't be unemployed for long. Loosing my old job was the best thing to happen to my profession career. God bless you, dude. I wish the best for you and your girlfriend.

Click to expand...

This house is very cool and has a lot of personality. My house (the one that I rented out) is an incredibly boring pre-fab townhouse in a college town (PSU). So it's fun to dig into things here and see some of the original craftsmanship. Granted a lot of the original things have been retrofitted and "modernized" (shag carpet in the basement, what were people thinking?!?!?) and a lot of layers of paint, but there is still the enough of the original features to make it interesting, like 8" wide baseboards.

It's also been great for me to be able to work on it during my down time. Keeps me occupied and doing productive things. I'd rather spend the money and time to make an improvement on the house than pay to sit and watch cable tv.

When I bought my house ~11 years ago, I quickly found out how much it cost to have a contractor do work, and how shoddy the work really was. I vowed then that I would do as much work on my house as possible and not pay the outrageous costs to have someone else do it for me. Granted the first time I do something, it usually takes about 3 times as long for me to figure it out myself, but I don't mind because its a heck of a lot cheaper, sense of satisfaction of not having to rely on someone else to do it for you, I know the quality is sound (unless you look closely at the crown molding I put in lol) and learn great skill sets.

Thank you for the best wishes for employment. Hopefully something will break soon for us. We're both interviewing, and I think my girlfriend is getting close with a company, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed. May take me a little longer because of the nature of my background. We both do medical device sales, but I've been doing international sales and channel management while she focuses on the domestic side, and the pool of device companies that have international departments in the area is much, much smaller. Regardless, I'm confident it's going to work out, and I am incredibly thankful for everyone's best wises, advice and encouragement.

blades said:

Different subject: if that fireplace was a fireplace originally then that flue is likely a fair size and slipping a liner( perferably insulated) down it should not be particularly difficult ( smoke shelf is the hard spot). You will need to fab a block off plate at bottom and one for top , 10-14 gauge steel sheet on bottom, stainless same spec for top. Might have to get a shop to put a 6" (?) hole in it for you. digging on the net or library should get you enough info to be more than real dangerous . A pair of band clamps for either end of the liner to keep it in place. some fireplace brick cement ( sold in caulking gun cartridges) to seal around block off on bottom same thing but mortar on top. A extra body wouldn't hurt either with the liner. ( Real simple over view of what is required) give us some dimensions of that flue and we can be more specific. Dave A beat to some of this as well.

Click to expand...

Here are the dimensions for the block off plate 2" above opening;
Front - 35"
Rear - 31"
Front-to-back - 20"

I went around to a couple of places today, and found a piece of 24 gauge stainless steel at a plumbing supply company. They had it laying around scrap and I was able to pick it up for $10. It's 3' x 2'. I've never bought sheet metal, so I don't know if that's a good price, but it didn't seem bad. I know its a tad short on the front, but I'm hoping it will be enough.

I'm thinking that I'll get it cut and bent according the instructions on: https://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/articles/making_a_block_off_plate/
Once I get it in, I'll mock up the plate and stove, and mark the hole to be cut.

Then for the hole, I picked up a diamond cutting tip for my Dremel, at Harbor Freight for $4 (had two coupons), so I'll try to cut it with that. If it is a big fail, I have an angle grinder that I can use. I'm just thinking that the Dremel will give me a better round. Probably will use a combination of the two. I saw a hole cutting tool for metal, but it was $30. I don't mind buying tools, but I try to stay away from single-use items.

Once I get that settled, I will have a question about the fireplace cement needed to gap the hole around the liner.

Thanks for the help

blades said:

Seeing as you will be making a fair sized hole in the block off plate, you might be able to cut that 24 gauge with a jig saw or a sawsall ( if has variable speed that would be better) and a fine bi-metal cutting blade if you have one. Diamond on steel does not work well more for things like ceramics, glass. Carbide is the better choice. Another note on stainless running a cutting tool on it very fast will cause the surface interface of the tool and metal to become harder than a file. slow speed and something to act as a coolant is the key to dealing with stainless. Another method is to drill a lot of holes on your diameter and then nip out between them spacing the holes a close together as possible. 24 is fairly thin so a board behind the drill point will make life easier. Just some ideas form an old redneck that's been makin due for longer than I can remember.

Click to expand...

All good tips to me, I had no idea about any of this, have never worked with stainless before. Thanks for the heads-up - you probably just saved me a bunch of time and an extra trip to the supply company.

I'm not sure if this is going to give everyone the gratification you all deserve, but I wanted to let you all know that your advice was indispensable. You helped me go from completely ignorant (and probably a little dangerous) to well informed, and most importantly a new wood stove user.


Here's my effort at repaying you all with a narrative of the instal:

I pulled the chimney-topper off; not going to lie, it was really heavy, both physically as well as figuratively, as this was the "point-of-no-return" step for my girlfriend. 6 stone blocks, each of which were easily >70lbs. Some of the posts holding them up had loosened over the years making it a bit dicey, but worked it all out without any problems.

After I got us both (girlfriend was a little skeptical of this whole endeavor but played along nice) fully committed, I pulled the NG line on the log fireplace. Not a big deal at all.

Capped the line, and done. I now have the cap as well as the cut-off valve before any NG can get out.

Once I pulled the log set, i found that the NG line to the fireplace ran through an open brick that had been pulled out. More interesting, was that below the fireplace was a open space all the way down to the foundation. I never mentioned that the chimney extends into the basement and is closed, but I wasn't expecting the 10' deep open hole. I kept imagining the cat falling in which would have been an interesting time . So I made sure to keep it blocked off during the install.



I pushed the copper NG (now unattached) down below the stone (about 14"). Pulling it out would have been a PIA.

Next, I had a chimney sweep come in and inspect the chimney. I wanted to be sure that there wasn't anything interesting going on that I needed to be worried about. Cost me $75, but I would prefer to error on the side of caution. Told him my plans and got a big green light. He also said if I was to pay him to do what I was planning, it would cost ~$900!?!?!?!

Next Chimney Liner installation. This part was no fun. Lots of work and sweat



The chimney is just about 9 inches at the widest, but only 7" and change at the smallest (rectangular), so it was a serious effort to get it down. I was pushing from the top. girlfriend was pulling hard at the bottom (i wrapped a 30' rope with a clove hitch to the bottom of the liner and duct-tapped 3 loops of pull). Took about 4 hours of effort, but got it set.




After that, I had to do a little customizing of the cap to fit the stones on the chimney. Angle-grinders have lots of uses Did the finish work with tin-snips.

Bought some Roxul insulation to fill the chimney at the top and down where I had built the block-off plate.
Sadly, had to buy a large bag of 16 batts, when I only needed 3, but it was the smallest amount sold.

(this is the top of the chimney)

Not sure if i did it right here, but I used chimney cement to fix the metal cap plate to the top of the chimney.



Put the cap on and done on top. This picture is a test fitting, I eventually got the cap on level.

Next I put in the block-off plate that I had built. Ended up installing it a little higher than the 2" above lintel that was suggested in the info article, but that's where it ended up seating, so I am ok with it. Used Fireblock silicone to seal the gaps. When I cut the hole, I knew that I needed a little extra room, so I drew a circle at 7 1/2" (knowing that the chimney liner was close to 7 5/8" around. Then I drilled holes on the exterior of the line using a 3/8" carbide drill bit. Then cutting on the outside of the drill holes with tin snips to cut out the round, I gave myself about 1/2-1 inch of wiggle room which ended up being perfect. The liner fit through snug enough that I didn't need to seal that hole. Plus with the Roxul above the block-off plate there's virtually no space for air to sneak through. The added benefit of this was that I still have some play in the liner for putting the stove in without directly pulling/pushing on the block off plate



After that, I measured how high the stove was and cut the excess liner to height (again, angle-grinder was the way to go), and attached the stove connector. To make the cut, I wrapped a piece of duct-tape around the liner, then used a large rubber band to get a straight line that was the correct length (I think it was 27 3/4") Then I used a sharpy and traced a line around rubber band to give me a cut line on the liner. Took the band off, and made the cut. The other benefit of the duct-tape is it cuts down on the amount of sparks as you cut.



After that, it was just a matter of getting the stove in the fireplace and connected. I found the way to do this was to tilt the stove up at the front (which lowered the back end) and sliding it under the chimney liner, then when in place, setting it down, which very nicely set the connecter into the stove vent.
A little huffing and puffing here as I moved the stove to fit, but a couple of pieces of cardboard under the stove made it slide fairly smoothly into place, then I pulled the cardboard out as I set it level.



Thankfully my measurements were pretty close to spot on (measure twice (or 5 times), cut once), and the stove fit better than I had hoped!

Since it fit so well, I decided not to use stove screws to fix the connector to the chimney. My thought is since it fits tightly, and there is up-pressure from the stove, and down-pressure from the chimney, the screws weren't necessary, and poking holes in the liner (however well-filled by a screw) is just opening up points of weakness, and potential spots for hot-gas to leak out. Not sure if that's the right way of thinking, so I'll go with your advice on this.

After staring at my success for a while (and resting - hard work!), finally decided to get a test burn in. After re-reading precaud's link: http://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/kent-tile-fire-and-sherwood-stoves.60702/page-5#post-1578652
and the information article on the Kent Tile Fire, I felt brave enough to light a small fire. Fire lit well, and once the stove was hot, got a little smoke as the decades of dust burned off, and I got a little smoke from the insulation on the chimney liner. I'm assuming that was a little of the excess adhesive burning off. Only lasted for about 15 minutes, and haven't seen or smelled any since.

The next day, I build a real fire, and started to get acquainted with my new stove. Very impressed with how easily it runs, and most importantly (for my domestic well-being), virtually no smoke seepage.

Obviously being my first wood burner, I'm not qualified to make much in the way of comparison of quality, but this old Kent Tile is a cool stove, and has a pretty ingenious design. Once the fire is established, you close the damper which forces the exhaust up through a secondary burn chamber before it vent into the chimney. With the damper open there is not much heat transferred out (as all of the hot gas escapes directly into the chimney, but once the damper is closed, the stove heats up quite fast. Most of the heat seems to come out from the top, as the tile on the sides are relatively cool for about 30 min- 1 hour. This, however, is where my putting the block-off plate too high is coming back to get me. All of the heated air is going up the fireplace chimney to the block-off plate, then it spills out and goes straight up the ceiling.

Don't get me wrong, it heats the house, but the heat starts at the top and then gradually works it's way down, which is a bummer with 10' ceilings. I experimented a little with an oscillating fan (the only fan I have), blowing into the fireplace, and that is going to be the solution as it creates enough turbulence to blow the radiant heat out from the fireplace. The fan I have is too big, so I'm going to buy a small fan that I can put in front of the fireplace, and that should make everything better.

Other than that, I'm incredible impressed with the stove. I'm sure there are better, more efficient ones out there, but considering the circumstances, this is perfect, and I'm kind of geeky-proud to be running a relic like this.



----------------I've been capped on the number of pictures, so I'm going to post the rest in a new post-----------

Last part of the update is on wood, because this was a concern for a lot of posters (and myself), so I wanted to give you an idea of where I'm at with it.

Once I committed to this endeavor, I have become a wood whore. I've been scouring craigslist, newspaper classifieds etc for free cheap/wood, with mixed success. I spent $30 on a timber permit for the state forest. PA is apparently pretty stingy on what you can cut. For $30, I get 2 cords of wood, and have 2 weeks to cut it. HOWEVER, there is are only 2 places that you can cut firewood (for the entirety of central PA) and the permit is only good for one of them. Further, the permit is specific for a stretch of road, and you can only harvest fallen timber that has been marked


So, I'm late in the game, and the 1 mile road I can harvest on has been picked through pretty well. I'm left scrounging for the pieces that everyone has picked over. Almost entirely beech, and nothing bigger than about 4" rounds, most is 2" or smaller. And for more fun, it's an hour drive.I did pick up a moisture meter, and the average is about 15-20%.

I'm going to fill my permit, but this obviously isn't the solution.


I've had some luck locally, and have been able to take some decent logs from friends of friend's land etc, and I'd say I've gotten roughly 4 truck-loads so far.



I'm not all together sure what kind, but I suspect it's a lot of cherry, with some oak and maple mixed in. Again, mostly reading about 15-20% with the moisture meter. I have no idea how much I'm going to need, so I'm going to continue scrounging until I don't have any more room, then I'm going to block out what ever else I can get, and stack those on the side of the property to split later if I need them later. I'm suspecting I'm going to need a lot, since the couple of fires I've had are eating wood pretty quickly with it being relatively warm outside still (daytime 40s-50's, mid-30's at night). If I'm still short when it starts getting really cold out, I may just bite the bullet and buy a couple of cords, but I'm hopeful that I can keep finding free wood until then.



Here's a picture as I'm beginning to stack. I know it's not the ideal place, but I'm kind of limited for flat ground since we live on a hill.

I'm starting the fires with pallet wood, and tossing in a piece every time I load the fire, just to have some hot dry wood in the firebox with the relatively wet stuff that I'm working with.

Since I don't have any experience with the stove, I'm planning on cleaning the chimney when we get a warm day sometime mid-late January, since I'm anticipating a lot of creosote from the wet wood. Hopefully that will give me a baseline to work from going forward.

So - that's were I am currently. This has been an incredibly satisfying experience so far and I'm looking forward to a nice warm winters from here on.
I'm not going to lie, a lot of this was hard work, the chimney installation alone was a bear. But, I think I avoided a lot of potential pit-falls because of everyone's advice and expertise, and it went as smoothly as could be expected. The only real thing I wish I would have done differently is to set the casters underneath the stove so that it was level before I attached the chimney. Thankfully, that is the only thing that I would redo at this point.



And finally: The Pay-Off






Again, thank you to everyone who helped, can't tell you how much I appreciate all of your advice!

begreen said:

Thanks for the ample documentation. So far my only concern is that there is no sealing top plate at the top of the chimney. They way it is pictured there will be a flood of water coming down the chimney with the first rain. Something has to seal and protect the roxul around the liner. This will not be done by the top rain hat cap.

Click to expand...

There is a plate on top of the chimney that the cap fits onto. It covers the entire chimney hole, and then I sealed it with furnace cement. I'll climb up there and grab a picture tomorrow. I wasn't sure about if furnace cement was the right choice, but that's what I used. But I definitely didn't leave the roxul exposed, lol.

The stove was finished just in time. Lows in the mid-teens tonight and snow.

Picked up 2 truckloads of wood today. A HUGE oak log, about 18" diameter. Cut in half, I barely fit it in my truck, so call it 15'. It was cut this spring, so I may have to let that one sit until next year. And a bunch of walnut and maple, again fairly green, but nice to know that I'm ahead of the game for next year. I'll block them out and stack it at the back of the property to season for next year.