My First ever woodstove.

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Enviro1700

Enviro1700

New Member
Dec 1, 2008
9
Little Britain Ontario,Canada
I Just Installed an Enviro 1700(plus all the fieldstone masonry and brick/flagstone hearth ) Into a zero clearence steel firebx that was roughed into my house. It will be the first wood burning unit of my adult life.(my parents had a wood stove years ago when I was younger.) I have a cord of maple/birch in my garage, 2 more at my uncles and plan to offset by burning 2x4 pieces from work. Its installed in the basement of my 1800 sq ft bungalow.(28 ft flex liner inside brick chimney) Anyone have any sugestions, hints, coments etc. for me to get the most out of it? Anybody drawn heat off their central heating system(cold air return) and have sugestions on that? I will post picture when I hear from my insurance company that the wett cert has been approved and am able to actually light it. :)
 
Sounds like a nice setup. Looking forward to pics of final setup.
The only suggestion I can offer on the cold air return is to make sure the nearest one to the stove is at least 10 ft. away. I think this is code. Also, running the furnace fan on low (if it has more than 1 speed) should be plenty to help move the air around a bit. Also make sure to have one of the hot air delivery vents in the same area as the insert, to prevent de-pressurization of the area the insert is in. Negative pressure can cause smoke spillage, especially when opening the door to add more wood, as well as when first lighting the fire.

Hope this helps.
 
PM (sonnyinbc) for any operation questions. He treats that insert like its one of his children. OH and he loves his children.
Welcome to the Hearth forums. N of 60
 
Past experience has been that trying to move stove heat around with the HVAC system often doesn't work well - there just isn't enough temperature differential, and by the time you add in duct losses it just doesn't do much for most that have tried it. Often you can do better by using either natural convection or fans in the space to push the air around. Lots of info on this if you use the search...

Gooserider
 
Also to add to what JimBob was saying.....I tried blocking off my cold air returns in the cold rooms that I'm trying to move some warm air to and that helped quite a bit. Seems like the cold air returns in those area's take that cold air down through the duckwork and by the time it all gets exchanged my heated air from the stove room cools down in the duckwork. Then it goes back up to the hot air registers and it's so cooled down that it's hardly worth it unless those cold air returns are blocked off.I leave the cold air returns open in the stove room and the hot air registers closed in there. Am I making any sense? lol
 
You will be happy with this unit. Don't be afraid to get it good and hot, but make sure you have a thermometer just in case. It is happiest with the blower at medium speed. Be carefull of the baffle panels that rest on top of the secondary tubes, they are fragile. So are the bricks, but no biggie.

When cleaning, contrary to what the manual says, you do not need to remove the secondary tube(s) to get the baffles out. Just move one baffle to the side a little and then tilt the other forward and down and it will slip out, then the other. You will see what I mean once you play with it a little. Good luck and enjoy, KD
 
Hi thanks for all the replies. My stove passed wett on Monday Dec 1 and I've ran it ever since. Gives off good heat. Aprox 8 hour burn with full load and damper down at night. Problem I have is my layout. My stove is in my basement on my far wall below my bedrooms. Its aprox 1800 sq on each floor. For my heat to rise up the stairs it needs to travel 55ft through unfinshed open space. What makes it worse is that the floor joists are deep and run horizontally to the direction that the heat needs to travel. Will a straight duct through the floor help bring up heat? Should I use one of those inline fans? Should have a picture uploaded tonight or tommorrow sometime. Appreciate the advice greatly!
 
Push the cold air down the stairs and toward the insert. This will force the warm air out and up the stairs. It really does work. It works better (at least for me) than trying to move the warm air. KD
 
Is your basement finished? How large a room is the Bear in? And how wide are your stairways? And here is the reason for me asking--

Our kodiak insert is located in the rec-room (300+) sq.ft. This along with the boiler/laundry room is located on the first level of a 4 level split. Even running this beast on low still manages to cook us out of there before the evening is over. 80F or more.

We have good luck with the heat rising, or good fortune? stairways are 4 and a half feet wide. and eventually the heat has to rise. and works even better if you can keep that sucker going 24/7?

Good on you for the 8 hour burns, best I have managed is 7 to seven and a half. (all softwood).

A drawing or pic of your layout would help other members in assessing your needs-vis-a-vis fans, etc. I too thought about the cutting holes in the above floors thing and am glad I didn`t do it. Sometimes, about every 10 days we run the old oil-fired boiler to get the heat well distributed and keep any potential mould at bay.

Feel free to pm either myself or KD460 on any questions you might have.

Be more than happy to help you out. :)
 
Enviro1700 said:
Hi thanks for all the replies. My stove passed wett on Monday Dec 1 and I've ran it ever since. Gives off good heat. Aprox 8 hour burn with full load and damper down at night. Problem I have is my layout. My stove is in my basement on my far wall below my bedrooms. Its aprox 1800 sq on each floor. For my heat to rise up the stairs it needs to travel 55ft through unfinshed open space. What makes it worse is that the floor joists are deep and run horizontally to the direction that the heat needs to travel. Will a straight duct through the floor help bring up heat? Should I use one of those inline fans? Should have a picture uploaded tonight or tommorrow sometime. Appreciate the advice greatly!
Click to expand...

There has been a fair amount of discussion about cutting holes in the floor / walls to circulate stove heat, those who have done it have reported very mixed results, some good, some not... In addition, there is considerable question about whether or not such floor vents violate modern building codes, and pose a safety hazard or not...

The argument is that floors and walls have the extra function of "fire containment" in the event of an emergency, giving more time for evacuation by slowing the spread of flames and / or toxic fumes (or even just fumes if something happens to cause the stove to smoke - like a door not getting closed properly) cutting holes in your containment barrier obviously weakens this, the question is by how much... If you DO decide to make vents, some have suggested using spring-loaded "fusible link" louvers in them that will close the opening in the event of a fire. (Won't do anything about fumes)

I would be much more inclined to do two or three other things first...

1. If your basement isn't already well insulated, insulate it! Failure to insulate the basement can cause a tremendous amount of heat to be lost to the ground surrounding the house - there are some excellent articles on this on the Woodstock stove site. There are a goodly number of articles in the DIY section on insulation, use the search...

2. As others have suggested, try to get some natural circulation going - it can be helpful to "map" the normal flows of air through your house with a candle, cigarette, or incense stick at each doorway, at both floor and ceiling levels, then help that flow along by using fans to encourage it. As others have said, it is often more effective to move cold air towards the stove rather than pushing hot air away from it.

3. If it looks like you are trapping a lot of heat in your joist spaces, it might be worth trying to either put in a ceiling or otherwise "smooth" the flow... A cheap experiment to see if it helps might be to get a roll of poly vapor barrier and staple it to the bottoms of the joists.

Good luck with the new stove,

Gooserider
 
Thanks again for the replies. The basement is unfinished except for the outer walls which are insulated. The room is basically the whole 1800 sq because nothing is finished. The back wall of the house (55ft)was as well when we bought the place 2 years ago. I removed all of the insulation, paper and vapour barrier shortly after moving in because i found quite a bit of mould on the paper. We havent really used the space so I hadn't replaced it yet. But everything that people posted made a lot of sense so I now have 80% of the wall insulated. I patched a lot of what was allready done to cause it was poorly done and I notice a huge difference. Should finish tommorrow and apply a vapour barrier which I'm sure will help to. Going to try putting plastic on the ceiling to see if that helps too. Also going to try to "map" out the draft in my house with incense or something(I'd use one of my cigarettes but my wife'd kill me!)

My stairs are three ft wide. They are on the complete oposite side of the house and they face away from the stove. To make maters worse, I have cathedral ceilings in half my house where the stairs are. There is a ceiling fan at the top of the cathedral which I've been running to try and draw heat up the stairs. Any sugestions on a program which I could map out my layout?

Appreciate Greatly all replies!
 
Enviro1700 said:
Thanks again for the replies. The basement is unfinished except for the outer walls which are insulated. The room is basically the whole 1800 sq because nothing is finished. The back wall of the house (55ft)was as well when we bought the place 2 years ago. I removed all of the insulation, paper and vapour barrier shortly after moving in because i found quite a bit of mould on the paper. We havent really used the space so I hadn't replaced it yet. But everything that people posted made a lot of sense so I now have 80% of the wall insulated. I patched a lot of what was allready done to cause it was poorly done and I notice a huge difference. Should finish tommorrow and apply a vapour barrier which I'm sure will help to. Going to try putting plastic on the ceiling to see if that helps too. Also going to try to "map" out the draft in my house with incense or something(I'd use one of my cigarettes but my wife'd kill me!)

My stairs are three ft wide. They are on the complete oposite side of the house and they face away from the stove. To make maters worse, I have cathedral ceilings in half my house where the stairs are. There is a ceiling fan at the top of the cathedral which I've been running to try and draw heat up the stairs. Any sugestions on a program which I could map out my layout?

Appreciate Greatly all replies!
Click to expand...

Sounds like good progress, mostly just try one thing at a time to see what works and what doesn't... Minor note on insulation, I've seen lots of reccommendation to pay special attention to the space at the top of the foundation where it meets the sills - seems like a big place for cold infiltration...

With the ceiling fans, try running in both directions - "Conventional Wisdom" says to blow down in the summer and up in the winter, but some folks here have found it works better to blow down in the winter as well, usually at a low speed...

For programs, if you want to get fancy, there are freeware / open-source CAD programs for pretty much any platform, on my Linux box I use QCAD. In actual practice, judging from what folks post here, many use their favorite paint / draw programs, or even revert to stone age technology and use :bug: paper and pencil... (I see a lot of scanned paper sketches) For data gathering, I'd probably use a sketch pad to lay out a floor plan, and then colored pencils to mark the airflows - one color for floor level, a different one for ceiling level and so forth...

Good luck,

Gooserider
 
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