Woodstove with chimney in home with 35' ceiling?

[heyisforhumans]

I've been reading and it says generally the longer the better, but I'm considering putting a woodstove in the main room of a converted barn home with a 30 foot ceiling. Got any ideas on making it happen and/ or safety?

Now lets say I want to use a stove to heat water in another room with a system like the one second down on this page - http://www.woodheat.org/dhw/dhw.htm - the water cooling combined with a 35' steel insulated chimney....is that really too much temperature reduction? Is that length of steel chimney even practical at all in the first place? I want your input, thanks.

It would go straight up, but I was thinking that a Masonry heater design continued with a steel chimney from above that, could work

 

[Renovation]

Hey Hey ( ), and welcome.

Interesting questions.

The chimney and water heating, and masonry heater are three independent questions, and you'd get better response if you break off the latter two into separate threads--for example, a thread with "water heating" in the subject line will attract folks who wouldn't otherwise tune in. It's also worth searching the threads if you haven't already, for there are good discussions in the archives.

Anyway, here are my suggestions.

I don't think the chimney is all that unusual or challenging, as long as you realize you absolutely must use double wall, rather than single wall stove pipe between your Class A pipe and your stove. I'm wondering if it might be worthwhile to run Class A pipe almost to the stove (top-suspended?), but I don't know, so I hope one of the experts will chime in on whether that's a good idea or not.

The masonry heater is not mandated by your barn. So that's a whole different decision, and depends on what you think of the pro's and cons. Personally, I think they are very cool, though quite different than stoves. Personally, I'd rather have the continual flame display and faster response of a stove. That's not to say you couldn't build a magnificent hearth for a conventional stove.

The "woodstove heating water" application is rarely discussed here, and seems to be a geeky-tweaky experimental type thing. I'm thinking dedicated basement wood furnace-boilers may be the conventional solution. If you're gung-ho about doing something unusual go for it, but you might end up doing a lot of tweaking, changing, de-bugging, head-scratching, exploding, etc. Personally, I think a stove has enough challenges, what with being asked to burn fast, slow, cleanly, efficiently, have a nice flame display, and heat the whole place, so I think asking it to be a water heater is a bit much. Certainly challenging though!

Anyway, welcome again, and HTH. Burn well, and prosper.

 

[heyisforhumans]

Thanks a lot CJ for the welcome and comments.

See the house now is still in design - kind of embarrassed to admit that since I left it out in the first post - so that's why this is unclear. This type of heating is new for me and I'm very DIY oriented so want to learn as much as possible about it, especially if I'm designing and building this house with no or little subcontracting.

I'm trying to combine in the best way
Hydronic floors
DHW
"Fire element" in the living space
Comfort
All of this will be off grid.


This is actually a group home for a farmer/ artist/ developer community.

 

[Renovation]

Thanks a lot CJ for the welcome and comments.

See the house now is still in design - kind of embarrassed to admit that since I left it out in the first post - so that's why this is unclear. This type of heating is new for me and I'm very DIY oriented so want to learn as much as possible about it, especially if I'm designing and building this house with no or little subcontracting.

I'm trying to combine in the best way
Hydronic floors
DHW
"Fire element" in the living space
Comfort
All of this will be off grid.


This is actually a group home for a farmer/ artist/ developer community.

Aw, fantastic--I like everything about it!

The world's your oyster, and I'm glad to contribute whatever ideas I can.

It's out of my expertise, but I'm thinking you'll want a dedicated solution for the hydronics--either one of the new efficient/clean outdoor boilers, or perhaps a basement wood furnace/boiler--but I'm no more expert on those than I was an hour ago.

My first thought is to separate out the fire element in the living space, and get a beautiful stove on your main level that complements your water-heating solution. For example, if your hydronics take care of much of the heating, maybe you don't need a giant stove. But maybe you'll want one.

By separating out the hydronics , you could then optimize your fire element for flame display and aesthetics--for example, by choosing a non-cat or cat hybrid that looks great. Hearthstone comes to mind, as does the upcoming Woodstock hybrid. That would rock (pun intended) in a big living space.

So there are just some thoughts to keep the ball rolling. Once we get into normal-person hours, I bet you'll get a big response, and I'm certainly glad to participate. You have a great opportunity here, and I hope I get to see how it turns out.

EDIT: Since you're starting with a clean slate, consider including a big stone hearth in the center of your living space, with stone chimney (with steel flue) right up to the ceiling. That's the best place for a stove, and that big internal stone chimney would perform great and radiate heat beautifully.

 

[heyisforhumans]

DHW and floors should be entirely different systems as far as I can see because when the warm comes around there will be efficiency issues. Also, if I'm heating my DHW with a wood stove/ solar panels, in the winter I'll be able to fry an egg as well.

K i'm gonna draw up some schematics

 

[WES999]

Some thoughts on water heating. I have a Fisher stove in the basement set up to heat DHW.
It works quite well. Right now I have 100gl of H2o at 160* in the tank I heated last night.

First, I would not use a modern EPA approved for heating DHW, my Fisher is an older stove that came with the house.( it is modified with a baffle and secondary air)

Also I don't think stove heating DHW should be in a living area, I would not want to have that in my living room.

My stove has 2 external heat exchangers on the side and top and an internal U tube heat exchanger inside the firebox. I have estimated that I can extract 16,000 btu/hr.

My system is an open/ non pressurized system, the water is circulated by a pump from 2 55 gal drums connected together. Also I have 2 pressure/ temperature relief valves, I think this is a good way to go for safety.

Each drum has 200' of pex tubing acting as a heat exchanger, Cold potable water travels through the pex and then into the electric hot water heater.

I burn mostly pallet wood in the Fisher, it burns nice and hot. I have no problem maintaining a good flue temp. I cleaned the chimney around Christmas and there was hardly any creosote.

 

[kksalm]

Hi.
I highly recommend you read the book "The Book of Masonry Stoves: Rediscovering an Old Way of Warming". With the amount of overhead you have you could utilize the heat from your exhaust as well. Your flue could heat mass along an elevated floor and along the walls within seating benches for example.
Best regards from Kenai, Alaska