Justify your purchase?

[Fred61]

My father owned an engineering firm, one of their frequent jobs being fire investigation for insurance claims. The worst cases were always those with fans or blowers on thermostats, usually large whole-house exhaust fans on an attic thermostat, as they kick on at the worst possible time during a growing fire... sort of turning your house into a giant forge.

I guess those would be cooling thermostats. That wasn't the point of my post.

 

[Ashful]

I guess those would be cooling thermostats.

True'dat. Hadn't thought of that. [emoji12]

 

[sequoia]

Try a vornado.
http://www.menards.com/main/heating...ial-fans/vornado-air-circulator/p-2731837.htm

It's a highly directional fan that creates a fine tunnel of air that forces the room air to circulate.

 

[woodsmaster]

another advantage of boiler with storage is not having to load the stove in the middle of the night to wake up to a warm house, or having to load the stove before breakfast. With boiler and storage I'm not on a strict schedule. I do it on my time. I also keep a whole years wood nice and close to the boiler and that wasn't an option with a stove in the house. I have the boiler in a shed which is nice for loading and also can work as a kiln if your wood is a little green. I keep a full cord in the shed. I also heat two buildings with one appliance.

 

[Ashful]

another advantage of boiler with storage is not having to load the stove in the middle of the night to wake up to a warm house, or having to load the stove before breakfast. With boiler and storage I'm not on a strict schedule. I do it on my time. I also keep a whole years wood nice and close to the boiler and that wasn't an option with a stove in the house. I have the boiler in a shed which is nice for loading and also can work as a kiln if your wood is a little green. I keep a full cord in the shed. I also heat two buildings with one appliance.

All true, however... one of the things I actually enjoy about the stove is the strict schedule, as funny as that sounds. Modern life is just too cushy, on so many levels, and I get an odd enjoyment about waking up to load the stoves before breakfast. Call me crazy, but I suspect most stovers here share the same affliction.

 

[maple1]

The thing I have missed the least since going to storage has been the before-breakfast run to the old boiler to get it fired up again. That & the last minute run to it for the last load of the day on the way to bed too late at night.

So Ok, I'll call you crazy.

 

[heaterman]

My father owned an engineering firm, one of their frequent jobs being fire investigation for insurance claims. The worst cases were always those with fans or blowers on thermostats, usually large whole-house exhaust fans on an attic thermostat, as they kick on at the worst possible time during a growing fire... sort of turning your house into a giant forge.

Have been on our fire dpt for more than 30 years and have seen that several times. Nice positive ventilation and tons of fresh air to feed the fire! Talk about in inferno....... at least until the power lines burn off.

 

[Highbeam]

another advantage of boiler with storage is not having to load the stove in the middle of the night to wake up to a warm house, or having to load the stove before breakfast. With boiler and storage I'm not on a strict schedule. I do it on my time. I also keep a whole years wood nice and close to the boiler and that wasn't an option with a stove in the house. I have the boiler in a shed which is nice for loading and also can work as a kiln if your wood is a little green. I keep a full cord in the shed. I also heat two buildings with one appliance.

You just need a better stove. My little 2.8 CF stove will run 24-30 hours on one fill. I only refill at night.

I do envy your ability to heat two buildings with one stove. Three if you count the boiler shed.

 

[Ashful]

You just need a better stove. My little 2.8 CF stove will run 24-30 hours on one fill. I only refill at night.

House is a factor, too. Same stove technology here, and I have no illusion of running it at burn rates permitting 24-30 hour reload cycles in winter.

 

[jebatty]

Highbeam: My little 2.8 CF stove will run 24-30 hours on one fill. I only refill at night.

You are fortunate to live in a warm climate and/or have low heat loss in your home. I could never make it that long in my home during winter, and I need to leave a fair amount of open air space in my stove when I load it to get a high burn to provide the heat in winter that we need.

Red oak is about 45 pounds per cubic foot when well seasoned. If every available cubic inch in your stove was jammed with red oak, you would have 126 lbs of wood, and at about 6,050 btu/lb of available heat in a pound of wood, that amounts to 762,300 btu total, or about 25-32,000 btu/hr.

How many cubic feet of wood can you actually fit in your stove for a single 24-30 hour burn? You could do a water displacement experiment to determine that accurately.

 

[Ashful]

Red oak is about 45 pounds per cubic foot when well seasoned. If every available cubic inch in your stove was jammed with red oak, you would have 126 lbs of wood, and at about 6,050 btu/lb of available heat in a pound of wood, that amounts to 762,300 btu total, or about 25-32,000 btu/hr.

Cord wood stacks at a density of 85/128 = 66%, by most legitimate estimates, so you'll want to scale your math, accordingly.

 

[Highbeam]

You are fortunate to live in a warm climate and/or have low heat loss in your home. I could never make it that long in my home during winter, and I need to leave a fair amount of open air space in my stove when I load it to get a high burn to provide the heat in winter that we need.

Well I don't live in MN, that's for sure. If you need more heat then you buy the larger 4.3 CF king and run it much harder to get "only" 24 hour burns. If your house is small enough to heat with a stove (not ashful) then these cat stoves are not much different than a boiler with storage from what I can tell.

I will not be doing a water displacement test on my stove. It measures really close to 2.8 CF of usable, loadable firebox volume and I use softwood so I am in the 40-50 lb range for loads. Yes, output is constant and low but it is plenty to maintain my house temp during our long 8-9 month burn season. The boiler with storage is a wonderful way to take the peaky output from a non-cat and stretch it out between fires. What if you could control the burn rate so that you didn't need that storage?

 

[maple1]

What if you could control the burn rate so that you didn't need that storage?

I've wondered at times in the past why there isn't more catalyst technolgy used in wood burning - say in furnaces & boilers.

 

[shawntitan]

I run a traditional New Yorker boiler, in a shed 75' from the house, tied in to a coil in my existing hot air oil furnace. Put it out there because there wasn't enough headroom in my basement/to keep the mess outside... Debated back and forth on buying a gasification boiler... Probably made the wrong choice, but in 2007 when I was shopping, gasification was totally unheard of here in NJ, and I was afraid to take that kind of shot on technology I knew nothing about... Also, that was during a big rush on wood burning devices related to the price of oil, so my options for traditional wood boilers were seriously limited. It seems like gasification boiler/storage set ups really works best for radiant heat, which I don't have, however...Struggled the first years with too much creosote/short burn times... Switched to coal and haven't really looked back ( I was buying my firewood anyhow) I debate still if the investment (10k?) was worth it, based on how much oil I was burning, but it's money already spent, so I just go with it... It DOES feel good knowing my money is going to the good folks at Direnzo Coal, instead of some oil company...

 

[jasonh]

Im with ya shawn. I'm pretty certain, in my case, financially it would take quite awhile to recoup the 9-10k investment since we have NG. However, I feel better knowing I would not be using fossil fuels or paying a gas company anymore than I have to. And I would be teaching my 2 young sons self reliance. That's just how I feel about it. Money isn't the only thing in this world.

 

[Ashful]

Im with ya shawn. I'm pretty certain, in my case, financially it would take quite awhile to recoup the 9-10k investment since we have NG. However, I feel better knowing I would not be using fossil fuels or paying a gas company anymore than I have to. And I would be teaching my 2 young sons self reliance. That's just how I feel about it. Money isn't the only thing in this world.

Except, Shawn is using a fossil fuel.

 

[jasonh]

Yes but not in a gaseous state that a company sells exponentially higher than it should be. Even with the "natural gas boom" here in NE ohio.

I'm trying to get to a Diet of 95% seasoned wood and 5% NG.

 

[shawntitan]

Yes but not in a gaseous state that a company sells exponentially higher than it should be. Even with the "natural gas boom" here in NE ohio.

I'm trying to get to a Diet of 95% seasoned wood and 5% NG.

It's funny, Direnzo actually kept their prices on stove coal the same for about the last 10 years, and when we called to order this years delivery, they've LOWERED it, from $180 to $160 a ton... The only expense in my life that's gone DOWN, LOL...

 

[woodsmaster]

You just need a better stove. My little 2.8 CF stove will run 24-30 hours on one fill. I only refill at night.

I do envy your ability to heat two buildings with one stove. Three if you count the boiler shed.

I can leave home for two or three days and still come home to a warm house

 

[Ashful]

Yes but not in a gaseous state that a company sells exponentially higher than it should be.

If you think that's really the case, there's an easy solution to that problem: become a shareholder.

 

[jasonh]

Maybe I am?......