New Member, 2 Questions

[otsegony]

Greetings from frigid Central New York!
I've been avidly reading this board for a couple of months now as this is my first season of running a wood stove in about 15 years. I've lived in a lot of homes with various types of heating, including a couple in New England that were heated pretty close to exclusively with just a wood stove. When we built our home a few years ago I knew that I wanted wood heating capability. I have plenty of access to forest land with wood for the taking and processing and I also didn't want to be entirely dependent upon either the electric grid or OPEC for my heat.
We ended up building a pretty conventional 2000 sq.ft. home on two floors with an oil-fired boiler driving a radiant heating system in the floor. I had looked at a duel fuel or add-on wood boiler system like a TARM, but determined it didn't make much sense given our budget. In talking to the heating guy on site he suggested putting in a class A chimney and two air returns on the first floor to enhance the heat circulation in the house. He did it in his home and he said that he was able to heat his whole ranch house just with the one stove. He thought if I put in a similar system it should knock down the heat load on the radiant system and if I later wanted to add the TARM or other boiler, I'd be all set.
Well, it took me two years, but I went out and bought a big honking 1980s Fisher-like wood stove. I had a similar one in Vermont that I really liked and I thought it worked a lot better than the early EPA certified stove I once used that I could never get to fire properly. I installed this "Surefire Mark V" in the Fall of last year and have found that it will pretty much heat the house entirely in weather above 25 degrees or so, and will take most of the load even down to the single digits. The house is fairly cool in the bedrooms upstairs (62 degrees) but everyone in my household prefers it that way.
In general I have been very pleased with the set-up. However, I have two questions:

1: The door seals are shot on this stove, it has a wide channel that had a flat woven tape as a seal. When I tried to replace it with conventional round gasket material it blocks the door and I cannot close them. I cannot find the flat material in the hardware store and it is very difficult to control the draft without a proper seal. Any idea where I could find such a material? (A picture of the doors showing the channel and a mating bead on the stove body is attached to this message)

2: Although the experiment has generally worked very well I have come to the opinion that I need a new stove. The one that I installed, although an incredible 450lb. beast is a very inneffcient burner. I would like a plain steel stove without the glass doors. For whatever reason I prefer the plain Fisher, Better N' Bens and Earth Stove styling of the 1970s and 1980s (that and I don't want to be bothered cleaning glass windows). Any recommendations for a big honking wood burning machine?

Any ideas would be appreciated.

Yours in wood burning,

Garet in Cooperstown

 

[Larry H]

Try giving Morg's Sawz and stoves a call - they might be able to help you with the gasket. They are in Pavillion NY 585-584-8760 and I know my Dad always seems to find stuff like that through them. At one point he replaced the same type of gasket you mention on one of his Fisher's. I'm sure some other's here might know of a window-less stove, but I really like having the window on both my stoves. Seasoned wood, good burning practices and keeping up with the gaskets have kept dirty window problems to a minimum for me. Good luck with the new stove search - if you get an EPA with a window, the secondary burn is fascinating to watch too!

 

[begreen]

For a stove, how about a big Englander and just let the glass soot up. Eventually it will look like a steel door .

 

[webbie]

I think you are going about this in the wrong way by adding the heat loss of the basement to the house - in the end you are probably not coming out that much ahead between the relatively inefficient stove and added area to heat.

You would be much better off with either biting the bullet and getting a hot water boiler - or else placing the stove in the upstairs of the home. A third option which would use the downstairs class A would be a central furnace - here is an efficient one:
http://www.woodstoves.net/psg/caddy.htm

And hook up a few ducts to the registers you already cut.

Certainly you can do things with brute force, but it is like driving a dump truck to the store for a quart of milk! In the end you want to get the most heat from your wood, make your living space comfortable and also keep the air cleaner.

 

[Corie]

And not to jump on you, but if you're cutting holes in the floor, at least install some fusible link dampers in them. They're like 14 bucks and the piece of mind they offer is huge, in my opinion.

 

[otsegony]

I know that my set-up is considered sub-optimal, but I gotta say that right now it works pretty good for my purposes. I have cut my heating oil consumption by at least 50% and probably more and it is an easy to run system. When I first started heating with it I thought that the stove was a waste of time because I didn't feel that "wood stove blast of heat" unless I went down into the basement. Then I noticed that through December my boiler never came on except to make hot water, and it was very comfortable throughout the house. Even now in this cold snap, so long as the stove is going in the basement the boiler is only coming on to heat the most distant part of the house.
I still am interested in a wood-fired boiler, but it is hard to justify when I average burning 650 gallons of heating oil a year for both space heating and hot water. Even at $3 a gallon oil there would be a pretty long payback on what could be a $10 - 12k investment. I'd be interested to know how others calculate their payback time when buying a wood heating appliance.

Garet

 

[sgcsalsero]

Have you checked out this thread https://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/forums/viewthread/6115/ concerning caddy price, I think laynes69 may also have add'l feedback concerning this unit on other threads

 

[BrotherBart]

For a stove, how about a big Englander and let the glass soot up. Eventually it will look like a steel door .

Get the big Englander and when it is honking it cleans the glass for ya. Twelve degrees outside and I have it in glass cleaning mode at the moment.

 

[stoveguy2esw]

we carry a gasket like that, its a 5/8"flat gasket , we also have it in 1 inch wide, used it on all of our old pre-epa units. another possibility is to check with a local shop that handles pellet stoves, some (ours included) use same type gasket for hopper lid seal. glass agskets can be gotten in the same as well. be advised however , most of these are "tape backed" gaskets , this tape back will not hold, you will want to cement the gasket in for a lasting seal. hope this helps