Saw a Bad Installation Last Night

I went to a party in a little house in the country outside Asheville NC last night. I saw a scary wood stove install in the little living room.
This was a giant old smoke dragon. A big cast iron stove it looked like a VC Defiant, but, it said SCANDIA on the right side. The guy said it was a VC knockoff made in Taiwan. Never heard of a Taiwan cast iron stove.
This thing had the big old 8 inch pipe running up from the stove, it was old single wall pipe, faded silver in color it looked like old duct pipe from a central heat/air system. This pipe was 5 inches from the wall. For heat protection they had glued some of those little 1/2 inch thick brick to the wall, no air space.
The stove was about 8 inches from the sheetrock wall.
There was a little metal pad directly beneath the stove, no hearth sticking out in front.

The guy is renting the house and just moved in in April. The stove came with the house. I told him he had a very dangerous install and should install metal heat shields. He said "Yeah, yeah..." I doubt he listened to me.

The only reason this house will still be standing a year from now is, the stove is so huge for the room that if you fired it up, it would become about 105 degrees in that little room.

Don't do that to me Brother Bart it is too early in the morning.
My Scandia install would fit right in with your group but unfortunately I didn't have a camera. To us guys that install screamed "Danger!" but to this guy it meant nothing. He works as a "handyman" but he just doesn't know about wood stoves.

Yes, indeed. I live in the NC mountains. My neighbor was a Florida Yankee, he installed a wood stove and his house burned down.

Frank had lots of money, and he grew up in Buffalo. So he grew up with an oil furnace. Age 20 he moved to Ft. Lauderdale, and lived there 25 years and made a lot of money. He moved up here and bought a log cabin. This house had a framed up fireplace, all metal in a framed enclosure.
Frank took out the metal fireplace, and in October installed a wood stove on that hearth, and ran the wood stove pipe up into the fireplace pipe.
I gave Frank a book that had real good details about how to install a wood stove.
Problem was, between downtown Buffalo, and Ft. Lauderdale, Frank had never seen a wood stove.
He was an experienced contractor, problem was, he thought he knew it all.
In November, one morning he lit up the wood stove, for the second time, and he went off to work, and his wife left for work also. About 10 am the house caught fire and burned to the ground.

A few days later I asked him, "Frank did you ever get a chance to read that book about wood stove installs?"
He said "No, I didn't have time to read it, your book burned up in the fire."

I read the report from the Fire Inspector, it said "Fire caused by improper wood stove installation."

Look up the word "irony" in the dictionary and you will see a pic of Frank.

You can safely burn a 55 gallon drum stove in the house, it must be airtight and never glow cherry red, and it must be properly installed.
I had one down in Georgia for 4 years and I loved that stove.

This is the beast I used to have, the Sotz. You sent in mail order for the door, legs and pipe kit and you were off and running. You could build up a wood stove in about an hour, for $45.
Dry wood, green wood, the Sotz didn't care it burned 'em all. No problem getting a 12 hour burn with that huge fire box.
I kept the same drum for 4 years, but, I knew guys who used the same drum for 20 years.

Yes, three inches of sand in the bottom to keep the hot coals off of the metal. But, every spring, you had to take the stove outside, dump out the sand, let it dry in the sun, and then oil down the inside of the bottom barrel.
If you left the stove in the house all summer the sand would absorb moisture from the air and rust out the barrel.
No problem to take the stove outside, you could disconnect it in five minutes and it only weighed 45 pounds.

But, those days are behind me, I just paid $2,500 for a new Jotul Oslo and will get it installed in a few weeks. I mean, the girlfriend hates barrel stoves and threatened to leave me if I get another one. Women, go figure.