Enviro Omega Upgrade. Convection blower to start with! More additions to come!

These mods to my stove are not recommended by the stove gods! So don't do as I do.

For a while now I have been meaning to upgrade the convection blower(from 200 CFM to 455 CFM) on my Omega to the same as the Maxx or Maxx M. I took the time to tear it apart as I was doing a cleaning anyway of the old blower. The chassis of the Omega is the exact same as the sister stoves. So the holes for the new larger blower were already drilled. I only needed to tap them to 8-32. The fun part! The tin was different and there is no part number listed for the Maxx or Maxx M. So I had to do some tin work to make it fit. Took about a hour with a die grinder. A little bending, some drilling and a few pop rivets. But the new blower is in and WOW, So much more CFMs. My convection temps dropped about 100ºF. But the force of the air is far more. Some pictures so it really happened(some bandaids for the tin smith were also needed! I hates tin work!)

Next up is a bit scary. I am going to fab a baffle so I can attach duct work right to the stove. With the lower temps and more blower force, I should be able to have duct attached and blow the air upstairs were its needed most! The duct temps are now cool enough to avoid hotfoot syndrome(Hot floor registers)! Just tired of an over heated basement! But thats another day/story to tell!

J

Great upgrade! My old stove did not blow the air enough to heat the upstairs very good. The Maxx with the big blower is much better!!

Nice mod Jay. I am always trying to improve on things and make them work for my needs.

The only draw back so far is noise. It sounds like a jet engine is running in the basement. But still can't hear it upstairs.

I was going to ask how much louder it was now.

Jay,

That looks great ! Same as inside of my maxx .
Mmm... an Omega with a maxx blower , sure like that !
Yes, the stove does sound like a jet engine, but
the blower sures moves air !
Where did you buy blower & cost ?

I ordered it from Long Pond. He's a fellow member here, goes by the name pelletdude. Cost was $170 something plus shipping. I have had the blower for over a year now. Just never got to install it.

Thanks alot for the info !

If I knew what I have learned from this site at stove purchase,
I would have bought an Omega . Powerful multi-fuel stove that seems
to burn anything, and now you have a maxx blower in it to boot !

I thoroughly enjoy good equipment modifications (former equipment technician) ,
and yours is very good .

Had some spare time yesterday and finished the install this evening. Snorkel added to adapt the duct work to the stove. Just need a register boot and some 8" ducting to finish this and see how much more heat I an pump upstairs. Oops got to paint it too!

Looks good Jay, but don't bother w/ the paint until you're sure it will work.

time to update your screen name to j-tinknocker

She'll work! Well it will get the heat upstairs anyway. Painted and drying.

With my minimal hand tools I have at home, this is amateur and ugly. With a decent brake and sheer? I'm sure it would have been somewhat pretty. Well maybe 20 years ago anyway, Spent some time in aircraft and forgot a few things over the years.

Off to HD/Lowes or the local hardware tomorrow. Need Duct!

Glad you said duct as I'm pretty sure those places don't sell bandaids :lol: .

Wifey had plenty after the blower install wiped out the spongebob and scoobydoo's supply.

:lol:

Final installment.

Well its done(sort of). I installed the duct and have been running for over 24 hours on high/low. Heat upstairs is a real comfy 76ºF and the basement is a warm 69ºF. Stove is raising the temps better than a degree an hour. No more duct fans running either(should drop the electric bill some too). I was burnig 1 1/2 per day before the duct. Today I used about a bag. Only thing I plan on doing is replacing the feed(from the stove to the first tee) with 8 inch duct. Its all 6 inch and I think its still choking off some of the convection air flow. Pictures for proof.

I'll have to call it my furnace for now(until I can afford one or Enviro makes one).

Neat o I like it

Jay,

What is the total area of the blowers two exhaust outlets?

If that is less than the area of that 6" duct work you aren't restricting the air flow because of the size of the duct work.

The question would be if there was a lot of back pressure in the duct work.

The cross sectional area of the six inch duct is on the order of 28.27 square inches.

Bear the area is just under 48 inches.

And are there 11 air outlets on that stove and what are their sizes?

The 8" has a 50.27 square inch cross sectional area.

Each outlet is 1 1/2 x 2 1/2 ID. There is also a 1 inch slot that is 18 inches long behind the air tubes. I got 59.25 but Enviro lists the heat exchanger at

I am thinking the 8 inch might be a wee bit large, But The 6 is definetly too small. I wanted to go 7 inches. But the register boot is not available in 6x14x7 at the supply house. So I went with what I can get at 6x14x8 for the boot. Ordered and should be in next week. I got the 8 inch pipe, 8 to 6 reducers and tee at Lowes while picking up some pellets tonight(Nations Pride to try). I can always go back to the 6 inch if things do go as planned. Or I can always go back(NOT) to the duct hood and fans if need be. Just trying to get all I can from it.

Really nice job Jay! Enjoy the extra heat.

Looks like the 8" is just about right at least whatever you can get through the blower can make it through the stove and out of the duct work. You might want to do a bit of duct insulation as that larger stuff might leave more of the heat in the basement. But you'll find that out if it does, always a trade off.

I was thinking about the duct hose. But finding insulation rated at what the stove can produce maxed out is tough. But I am searching for some. Any pointers?

for your 550 cfm blower you should go to at least 8 inch 8 inch at .1 static is rated at 200 cfm 6 inch 100 cfm to try to push that much air tho the 6 inch probily raises the static to well over .2 i do bet it blows hard tho. 10 inch round at .5 is rated at 400 cfm I can not seem to find my ductlator right now. I could give you much better numbers. for 550 cfm I would have started with 10 inch to your first tee it would raise the static a bit the pipe would take it you could go with 2 8 inch branches and 2 6 inch branches off each 8 if you wanted to