convection vs blower?

My stove has convection chambers which double for the blower chambers. Before I ran the blower I didn't notice anything that led be to believe the convection chambers were doing anything. It just felt like radiant heat. Now the blower makes a huge difference to get heat out and away from the stove.

You won't be sorry. I'm not sure if the lopi takes a special blower, but shop around. A guy with a stove like mine was looking for blowers and the only ones he could find we like $200. I gave him the source for mine which for all intensive purposes is the exact same blower for $70. Buying these types of things from stove part suppliers is a rip off unless it is a very special fan/blower.

Good luck.

http://www.fasco.com/blow1a.asp

Get the specs for your $240 fan and then go to the above website. Chances are the $240 fan is a marked up fasco fan.

This stove is a convection and you can use natural convection or blower powered and the blower moves the heat 20X better than natural convection.. I will warn you the blower adds quite a bit of noise compared to natural convection.. You have to decide which works best for you...BTW I grafted a standard Dayton blower onto this stove for short money compared to original unit..

Ray

We ran our englander 30 last year with no blower. This year we have th eblower, oh my does it even th eheat out, even if its on low. It really makes a huge difference and seems to get cold out of the spots that the stove didnt reach without the blower.

The only time I run my blower is when my stove temp gets too high. I plug the blower in for a few mins. and when my temp gets down to about 450, I unplug it. Doesn't happen very often, usually when i burn hickory, but my blower does get my stove temp back down before it gets into overfiring range. Some people love blowers, but my stove actually does better w/out it using just the convection heat and thats w my thermostat not kicking on unless it gets pretty cold.

blamejane we only use our blower about 25-30% during burning...like when it gets really cold. Being a long time traditionalist I didn't really want or felt we needed a fan. Even though you 'think' you're moving all the heat you can with circular fans...you're not.

The newer stoves are jacketed to allow closer clearances. The blower forces that 'jacketed' heat out into your living space.

Adding a blower totally changed how our Lopi Endeavor distributes its heat. They should be standard on a convection/jacketed stove, IMO.

I have a zero clearance stove. Without the blower it puts out amost no heat.... with the blower, it pumps the heat out! So as soon as it gets warm i am running the blower on high.

BeGreen said:

Pagey said:

Adding a blower totally changed how our Lopi Endeavor distributes its heat. They should be standard on a convection/jacketed stove, IMO.

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It really depends on the house and stove location. We certainly could do without one and do except for the coldest days. No point in adding $250 to the stove cost for users that have a good convective setup.

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I meant that it should be included in the price of a jacketed stove, IMO. But, if wishes were horses...

We had trouble getting heat to the back rooms of our home without the blower. We tried fans blowing down the hall , up the hall ,ceiling fans ,etc . Mid season last year we added a blower and the difference was amazing. It unleashed the hidden potential of the convective chamber. Now we have also added a Stove-Stat to set it and forget it(the blower)thanks to hearth folk suggestions. I did a chimney check last weekend and noticed the build up is already more significant(not a lot , but there)than last year(almost non existent).

To devinsdad:

I find it hard to believe that the addition of the blower is causing more build up in your stack. Granted the air flowing through the jacket could cool the outside of the stove down a tad and the inner box a tad of a tad, but there is no way it should be cooling the exhaust gasess down even a tad of a tad of a tad (I'm just being stupid now). I'm not familiar with the Kuma stove, but does it have a cat or reburn tubes? If it does then the gases should be entering the stack at around the same temp them. If my thermo over my cat is reading 1000 I assume that is the temp of the gases existing it. Anyway, I'd definitely like to here more about this if others think a blower does cool things down that much.

Wouldn't a cooler stove = cooler gases? Nonetheless I have more build up right now than I did at last years end . And the wood can only be better than it was last year.

nonetheless said:

To devinsdad:

I find it hard to believe that the addition of the blower is causing more build up in your stack.

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To offer the contrarian view, I find it easy to believe. Look at all the posts above about how much more heat blowers get out of shrouded stoves, folk's comments on how they use fans to cool runaway stoves, etc. Air movement makes a huge difference in heat transport rate, as everyone has experienced on a cold windy day. That heat has to come from somewhere, and a cooler stove may mean a cooler flue, and more creosote. .

And, as an example, it's been reported in another thread that the BK King's cat can be at 1000* while its flue gases are at 200*, which still amazes me.

I'm not stating this as a fact, and of course every setup is different and will act differently. I'm just saying that to me the possibility is very real.

A blower is definitely good for taming and overheated stove ,but you have to watch ,on low heat settings you could cool down the stove too far and your secondaries go out.
I Turn mine off during the latter half of the burn cycle when on low air & heat output.

I guess my "gripe" with convection stoves is this: they are designed by default in such a way that a blower (usually) greatly enhances their ability to move the heated air around. It was almost a night/day experience for us with our Endeavor. I think if you are going to design a stove that truly performs its best when assisted by a blower, then make the blower a standard on the thing!

I guess it would, to me, feel like buying a Ferrari, then you find out you have to take it back to the dealer and give them some more money to somehow "turn on" the speed. "Oh, yes, it's a fast car, sir, but you just need to let Jim over there install this performance chip for a low, low $10K. Then you'll get the speed you paid for."

The flip side is that I should have researched convection vs. radiant more before making a purchase. Again, it's not the end of the world, it's just me complaining a little.

devinsdad, george, and trump.

I guess I'll have to try and experiment with this. Of course I realized that moving the air through the chambers was taking heat out of the stove. This could have some bearing on another issue I've been experiencing.

That's pretty interesting about the flue temps on the BlazeKings. I wish I had some way to measure my exhaust temps. In retrospect on my statement about existing gas temp = temp of cat, it does seem pretty far fetched. For instance my cat probe was reading 1600 at one point last night. I seriously doubt the exhaust was close to that when it entered my liner at the flue collar. But then again the probe is directly over the cat with about an .5" separation. And with everything being confined within a heated system I would not expect heat lose of greater than 1000 degrees to occur that quickly. Are there in thermophysicists in the house.

I do like having a blower on the stove, it helps tremendously. Noise considered, I'd still recomment it. We keep ours on low or off depending on the mood or need for heat. It is a great option to have if you're having a hard time spreading the heat.

nonetheless said:

You won't be sorry. I'm not sure if the lopi takes a special blower, but shop around. A guy with a stove like mine was looking for blowers and the only ones he could find we like $200. I gave him the source for mine which for all intensive purposes is the exact same blower for $70. Buying these types of things from stove part suppliers is a rip off unless it is a very special fan/blower.

Good luck.

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I second that. I've seen mine for as much as three times what I paid for the same exact one brand new!

BTW, Nonetheless, great looking Avatar, very rustic and perfect lighting!

I'll put a pic of mine in my Avatar as soon as I get the short legs to replace the 2" cement pavers. I'll replace the generic pic of my stove on the Avatar even though it looks great in it.

nonetheless said:

Are there in thermophysicists in the house.

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Is there such a thing? I'm not but I did take heat transfer in college... Let me take a stab at it that hopefully doesnt drone on like a lecture....


All our stoves heat by all 3 means - conduction, convection and radiation. The difference that a blower provides is forced convection that lets you pull more heat energy from the stove in a given time period than would be possible naturally.

You can visualize with an experiment...
Take 2 identical stoves (A and B), with an identical load of wood and identical stage of burning, placed in identical rooms at identical room temp and identical chimney... ehh you get the idea.


Example #1
- Assume that neither stove has any type of thermostatic air control (no bimetal coil)
- Set both stoves air control for exactly 500F on the stovetop.
- Turn on the blower for stove B and let both stoves burn out.

The result:
The BTU/hr rate of heat transfer to the room for stove B will increase. The room temp will initially be higher than A, but the stovetop temp will be lower.

In theory the length of burn and the ending temperature of the rooms at the end of the burn cycle would be the same however, since you keep the amount of fuel and air inlet to the stove constant. But in reality the cooler stove would probably make the fire burn less efficient (smouldering send more unburnt fuel up the chimney as smoke) so you might actually get less overall heat out of the fire over the entire burn cycle.

The cooler, smokier fire could also result in more creosote buildup.

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Example #2
- Assume that the stoves have a thermostatic air control that will maintain the stovetop temp at the set temperature
- Set both stoves air control for exactly 500F on the stovetop.
- Turn on the blower for stove B.

The result:
The BTU/hr rate of heat transfer to the room for stove B will increase. The room temp will be higher than A. The temperature of stove A will start to go down, but the thermostat will compensate by opening up the air control. More air makes the fuel burn down faster but keeps the stove at 500.

The result will be that if you don't reload, stove A will burn out before stove B. Thus after both have burned out the temperature of both rooms should eventually even out.

If you do reload, stove B can keep the room hotter longer, but burns more fuel doing so.


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The bottom line is that a blower can increase the rate at which a stove turns fuel into heat, however the amount of heat that a given mass of wood produces is fixed in either case.

-Jeremy