I've tried searching but haven't been able to come up with what I'm looking for. Namely, how accurate are the stated BTU numbers on wood stoves?
My reason for asking is that I'm building a small and very well insulated house this spring and will be heating it with wood, hopefully 100% (electric backup). It will be a single level, open floor plan, and probably a little over 900 sq. ft.
I've run it through Rescheck and done some online heat loss calculations and while I realize they're probably not entirely accurate I'm coming up with a heat loss for the structure of between 17,000-20,000 BTU/hour at -20 degrees.
I've already ordered an Englander 17-VL since it was on sale so I'm kind of locked in on that but I need to nail down placement. Englander gives the stove a peak BTU reading of 40,000 BTU/hour. I'm assuming this is ideal conditions and that I can't expect to get that much heat out of it for very long before it starts tapering off. But what can I expect to get out of it? What percentage of peak output can I expect for a stove with a nice load of oak after burning for 3 hours? 5 hours? 8 hours? A nice graph showing the BTU output of a wood stove stove over an 8 hour burn would sure be helpful.
If I can realistically expect to get 30-40K BTU out of the stove I'll be more inclined to put it where I want, which is pretty close to some windows. If real world numbers will be considerably lower I'll look at a more centrally located position along an interior wall.
Any input appreciated.
Alan
My reason for asking is that I'm building a small and very well insulated house this spring and will be heating it with wood, hopefully 100% (electric backup). It will be a single level, open floor plan, and probably a little over 900 sq. ft.
I've run it through Rescheck and done some online heat loss calculations and while I realize they're probably not entirely accurate I'm coming up with a heat loss for the structure of between 17,000-20,000 BTU/hour at -20 degrees.
I've already ordered an Englander 17-VL since it was on sale so I'm kind of locked in on that but I need to nail down placement. Englander gives the stove a peak BTU reading of 40,000 BTU/hour. I'm assuming this is ideal conditions and that I can't expect to get that much heat out of it for very long before it starts tapering off. But what can I expect to get out of it? What percentage of peak output can I expect for a stove with a nice load of oak after burning for 3 hours? 5 hours? 8 hours? A nice graph showing the BTU output of a wood stove stove over an 8 hour burn would sure be helpful.
If I can realistically expect to get 30-40K BTU out of the stove I'll be more inclined to put it where I want, which is pretty close to some windows. If real world numbers will be considerably lower I'll look at a more centrally located position along an interior wall.
Any input appreciated.
Alan