Not completely lost, but need some guidance

Hi Everybody! I'm a recent lurker, learner, and re-convert to wood heat.

After many years of neglect my stoves, rising electricity prices are forcing me to go back to using wood heat. Yes, I've been heating with electric heat since moving into this 1970's-era closed floor plan, 2100 sq foot colonial. We heated our tiny old house with wood and coal, but this big beast needs a lot of heat.

It is not financially feasible for me to upgrade my old 1970's era stoves before winter. There's a huge,scary stove in the cellar which I'm sure can throw a ton of heat, but since the cellar is finished and fully insulated, including the ceiling, it's useless for heating the main house. Past experience has proven that heat does not escape the basement. We also have a typical useless fireplace in our large living room, which serves mainly to suck heat out of the house.

That leaves an aged but solid stove in our "family room" - which is basically a "breezeway" room between the garage and the main house. There's only a 34" wide doorway between it and the rest of the house. We tried in the past to use that stove, with the result that the family room would be about 90d F and the rest of the house stone cold.

That's all the bad news. The good news is the old stove is in decent shape, although it is strictly bygone technology. I had the chimney inspected, and it should be good for this year. I replaced all gaskets and put a new grate in, and best of all discovered that the stove had the ability to support a blower, which I purchased and installed.

I got to test drive the upgraded system this weekend. Both Saturday and Sunday nights got down to the mid-low 30s. Thanks to that 240CFM blower, more heat than I ever thought possible makes it out of the family room and into the rest of the house. That's good news.

I'm definitely going for the bricks this year. I have no source for good, dry wood this late in the game. I'm getting quotes of $350/cord for "semi-seasoned" wood. Electric rates will jump a whopping 47% on November 1, and there is competition here in southern NH for alternate fuel. I've purchased some bricks locally, and tried them out this last weekend on 2 nights when it got down to the low 30's. The whole first floor stayed a cozy high 69-71d.

It looks like there's a reliable source of bricks, albeit overpriced, nearby. I'll be paying $330-$350/ton without delivery. Still, from my crude calculations it looks like I will save close to 50% on heating costs by burning bricks.

My plan is to get through the winter, then either install a good fireplace insert in the living room (main house) or upgrade the stove in the family room. I'll definitely have the cash to do that in the spring. I have lots of research to do between now and then, but the main trade-offs are much higher cost for the insert, but much better location for a wood heat source. I have no idea yet whether I'll pursue pellet or wood heat, but I'm leaning toward wood/bricks over pellets.

So please, punch holes in my plan, offer suggestions and insights, and tell me how little I know or what I'm overlooking. I'm urgently looking for basic guidance on getting the most from an old "airtight" stove, and safe/effective use of what I have to work with this winter. I've found some good reading, but I'm basically a near-total newb who forgot everything he ever knew about burning wood for heat.

Sorry for the classic wall-of-text. I'm a terrible writer.

Thanks!

Brian

Charles1981 said:

Are these chimney's with stoves attached lined with stainless steel liners? That would be the big thing I would want as far as creosote and safety concerns go.

Everything else aside. You have fuel. You have stove. And it is going to save you money. Until you can upgrade you deal with what you got.

And then get 2-3 average plastic box fans and use them to experiment with airflow in the house to get that heat moving around.

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They are not, and that is my highest priority for an upgrade. The chimney sweep who inspected the chimney said the tiles are a little swollen from absorbing moisture, mainly because I haven't used the stoves in 10 years. So he suggested starting out slowly, not burning too hot initially to dry out he tiles, and he'll come back and take another look. He does think I'll get another year or two out of them before a steel liner is necessary. The family room chimney is small, and the old tiles will have to come out to make clearance for the new liner, if I want to burn wood instead of pellets. A pellet chimney will fit.

begreen said:

Agreed. I'd like to know and see what old stove is currently being used along with a rough sketch of the floor plan with some room sizes before recommending changes. In the meantime the fan trick will help even out the heat.

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I'll try to get a floor plan and photos uploaded later. For now, the stove is an old Salvo Machinery Citation - not the coal burning model, and no catalytic converter.

cookin2night said:

I agree. If you can swing it this year buy an insert for your fireplace. I don't know what your current electricity price is but judging on what you have said you will probably recoup the money in half a season. Good luck.

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My highest monthly electric bill last year was $690, my lowest bill of the year was $190 - so in the coldest part of the year it cost $500 to heat the house. The approved increase applies only to the electricity, not the transmission costs etc., so the net increase is about 23% over last year. With a new chimney liner, the insert will be around $4300 installed, so it'll be more than one year to recover the cost.

Woody Stover said:

I would consider what Grisu suggested, a value stove, and go ahead and install the liner for better stove performance. A modern re-burn stove may not work well with your present flue system and you will need the liner sooner or later, the way it sounds. What is the ID of the chimney tile, and how tall is it? If you've got the fireplaces, use 'em. A liner will make it easy to clean yourself, saving you money on a sweep. Then the family room stove can be a backup heat source when the power goes out and your insert fan doesn't run. As you saw, the stove blower enhances the convection loop of warm air out of the stove room, but blowing cool air back to the stove with a fan on the floor will really get the loop going.

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I spent 20 minutes on the phone this morning with the guy who did the chimney inspection. He'll be here on Saturday to do a more thorough video inspection of the flue, and to give me an exact quote on a liner installation. The existing flue is small, inside dimension less than 7 inches. It's most likely that the tile will have to be removed to do a proper installation.That's not a job I'm willing to do myself.

Well here's the floorplan, in case anyone has any feedback.

• The red stars represent the FR wood stove and LR fireplace
• The up arrow is the staircase going upstairs
• Solid lines between two rooms represent the presence of a transom over the doorway

There are no transoms between the LR, hallways, and kitchen. Once heat makes it out of the FR it travels pretty well.

I don't know if this information helps, but during the summer months I manage to cool the whole house pretty well with 2 window A/C units, one at the top of the stairs on the 2nd floor, and one in the Dining Room. They are 12,000 btu units.

Chimney pro is coming today, I'm anxious to heat what he says after the video inspection. Regardless, I want to get a firm quote for the chimney.

I'll try to post photos of the stove later today, tomorrow at the latest.

Thanks everybody!

The kitchen, living room and hallways are one continuous ceiling. the stairway is open. The bathroom has a standard interior door. The entry into the dining room is 4 feet wide, centered, but does not extend all the way to the ceiling, it's about 1 foot lower than the ceiling.

With the little burning I've done so far, heat makes it around the first floor better than I expected. However, it seems to get locked from getting upstairs very well. There's a pretty solid barrier that forms in the stairs, where the cold air just doesn't seem to want to sink down the stairs. I would love to find a good location to put a cold air return upstairs.

Thanks for the suggestions, everybody. And hey, those fans from Tjernlnd look pretty neat!

Well, the video inspection of the chimney revealed a chimney in worse shape than I'd hoped - plenty of glazing on the tiles, and what look like at least 2 cracked tiles. Unfortunately, it's no DIY job as the tiles are too narrow to install a chimney without removing the old tiles. It looks like the best deal is to install a 6" liner, which will also force me to install a new stove, since the old stove has a 7" pipe, which the former owner stepped down to fit to a 6" fitting. What a mess.

No matter what, that chimney needs a new liner, or the right thing to do is abandon the stove. My ultimate goal is to have a stove in the family room, and an insert in the living room. It's cheaper to do the chimney in the living room, but when I go for the fireplace insert I'm going to be looking for best quality, so that's not going to happen until next year.

In the meantime - a couple of you mentioned getting a budget stove, or moving the stove downstairs into the family room. Either option would work - the stove in the cellar is a 6" stove, it's on "Old Mill." Great looking stove, but still older tech. I'd have to have to hire someone to hoist it upstairs; there's no way I could even assist on that effort. I'm not young, and I have a bad shoulder which is fine as long as I don't aggravate it.

So as far as new, EPA-rated stoves, what's the "best of the cheap" if I may ask. I looked at the Englander 30-NC, but I'm also considering it's little sister, the 17-NC. I'm thinking use it to augment the electric heat this year, and go for a Harman pellet insert in the living room come spring.


Any thoughts?

Thanks again, this forum has already saved me from making expensive mistakes!