Indoor Air Quality

[michigan123]

Finishing my first year of wood burning with my quad insert. The only complaint that the wife has is the amount of gray dust in the room with the insert. The insert has two fans that run 24/7 that seem to be circulating the dust. I'm new to wood burning. Is this burnt dust from the air or is it soot that the fans pick up from the hearth? I was thinking about trying to attach some type of air filters to the outside of the fan grates to catch some of this dust. Does anyone have a similar problem? Possible solutions?

 

[swestall]

We have it, but we agreed not to comlain about the "mess" after I pointed out that we are saving about $600 a month in oil.

 

[colebrookman]

Welcome to one of the few drawbacks of woodburning-Dust. I would be leery of putting any filter that was not fire safe, and most aren't. Do you burn 24/7 or do they just run all the time? Now you know why most people who burned wood in the forties and fifties did so in the cellar and that just minimised the problem. Even today forced hot air creates dust but now we have better filters that actually work. Enjoy

 

[michigan123]

Yes, I burn 24/7...

I was just researching this a little further and read that if you feed the appliance with outside air it will help the air quality. Does anyone use and outside air kit on their stoves? If so does it seem to help the dust problem?

 

[drizler]

Have you considered buying one of those room air filters that people use to knock some of the pollen out of the air. We get the black soot from burning corn, not nearly as much as pellets but some nonetheless . I find the couple box fans I use to circulate from one end of the house to the other always crudded up with the stuff. You might be able to kill 2 birds with one stone by using one of those to draw your heat around. Of course like everything else the result will probably not be all that grand. My wife vacs the floor damned ner every day which kills most of it in the vicinity. One of those battery powered upright floor vacs does a real credible job for one room use just make sure you get one with a beater bar. They are only 35 bucks or so and last well over a year if you treat the battery right. Cords are a PITA. Those cordless are better than you would expect.
I almost forgot my most important lesson. Keep the door closed, keep the door closed, keep the door closed, and if you can turn off the blower fan when you can't, KEEP THE DOOR CLOSED. I modified mine with a switch so that I can shut off the darned blower when I want to aside from the thermostatic switch.

 

[colebrookman]

As Be Green just said on another thread, check your house insulation, plug all drafts, insulate windows etc. Sometimes we use cheap wood as an out; when we do the above it will reduce the needed wood and reduce the dust invovled burning.

 

[downeast]

Finishing my first year of wood burning with my quad insert. The only complaint that the wife has is the amount of gray dust in the room with the insert. The insert has two fans that run 24/7 that seem to be circulating the dust. I'm new to wood burning. Is this burnt dust from the air or is it soot that the fans pick up from the hearth? I was thinking about trying to attach some type of air filters to the outside of the fan grates to catch some of this dust. Does anyone have a similar problem? Possible solutions?

Two suggestions:
1. Lose the fans: any air circulatory system with any fuel will spread dust around. Fine ash and "iron dust" settling on hot surfaces
is normal with a point-of-heat wood stove. Not a big deal if no one is sensitive to particulate dust. Most of us heating with wood
don't need or want fans.
2. Humidify the air. Dry air spreads more fine dust around any heating system. Low humidity is bad for us, worse in winter,
get the humidity up to at least 20%--water on the stove top, or humidifiers.
3. Unfortunately wood heat brings in wood debris. It is part of the wood game and the routine cleaning each day.
Morning chores: fill the stoves, empty the ash pans outside, fill both wood racks beside the stoves, sweep around both stoves
and racks. Time ? No more than 10 minutes total BEFORE coffee at zero dark hundred, and before the boss awakes.

Best of success.

 

[RedRanger]

Two suggestions:
1. Lose the fans: any air circulatory system with any fuel will spread dust around. Fine ash and "iron dust" settling on hot surfaces
is normal with a point-of-heat wood stove. Not a big deal if no one is sensitive to particulate dust. Most of us heating with wood
don't need or want fans.
2. Humidify the air. Dry air spreads more fine dust around any heating system. Low humidity is bad for us, worse in winter,
get the humidity up to at least 20%--water on the stove top, or humidifiers.
3. Unfortunately wood heat brings in wood debris. It is part of the wood game and the routine cleaning each day.
Morning chores: fill the stoves, empty the ash pans outside, fill both wood racks beside the stoves, sweep around both stoves
and racks. Time ? No more than 10 minutes total BEFORE coffee at zero dark hundred, and before the boss awakes.

Best of success.[/quote]

Agree with number 2 and 3, however with an insert you can`t lose the fan, and many of us have inserts. And that humidity, well, I have my little humidifer going 24/7 in the room with the insert and am keeping the humidity at 40%.

Hey, I`m retired and the wife still working, and so do the vaccuming, and because that big screen is located near the insert, you wouldn`t believe how damn thorough I am about vaccuming that television. :lol: Yep, the dust and spiders are just a small part of the joy of saving tonnes of loot while heating with wood. ps-cats usually take care of the spiders.

 

[downeast]

Agree with number 2 and 3, however with an insert you can`t lose the fan, and many of us have inserts. And that humidity, well, I have my little humidifer going 24/7 in the room with the insert and am keeping the humidity at 40%.

Hey, I`m retired and the wife still working, and so do the vaccuming, and because that big screen is located near the insert, you wouldn`t believe how damn thorough I am about vaccuming that television. :lol: Yep, the dust and spiders are just a small part of the joy of saving tonnes of loot while heating with wood. ps-cats usually take care of the spiders.

Get on a plane, you're hired. ;-)

 

[Carl]

Wood heat does add some dust to the house. We used to have all kinds of bugs when we had an inside woodbox and would
keep a weeks worth of wood in the house. Now we store it on the porch outside and only bring in wood that is going directly
into the stove. This eliminated all the bug problem.

My brother purchased a pellet stove when they first came out. After one winter heating with it his whole house was covered
inside with a brown soot. The insurance company paid the cleanup but he never went back to pellets again.

 

[Hiram Maxim]

Finishing my first year of wood burning with my quad insert. The only complaint that the wife has is the amount of gray dust in the room with the insert. The insert has two fans that run 24/7 that seem to be circulating the dust. I'm new to wood burning. Is this burnt dust from the air or is it soot that the fans pick up from the hearth? I was thinking about trying to attach some type of air filters to the outside of the fan grates to catch some of this dust. Does anyone have a similar problem? Possible solutions?

I have the same thing going on,First year, fine gray dust,.................It might be the Detroit Area Wood? LOL

The blower is going 24/7 and I have a fan running every 15 minutes to bring the colder air from the bedrooms.

Really been noticing it now as I'm burning some wood that was near the bottom of the pallet near the ground and maybe more moist?

Most of the wood I have burned this year has been seasoning for the last 3 years and stored on a covered porch sense late Summer.
But the stuff I'm burning right now was cut into logs 3 years and wasn't split until last May.

Just an FYI there is a guy selling face cords on Craig's list for $25 around here......Pick up, but loaded as they cut it.

 

[woodburn]

I have a free standing stove-no blower. I really don't notice much gray dust around the stove at all. Of course I get the mess from loading wood, but no problems with ash. The ocassional coal pops out durning reload, and that's the only time I will see gray dust. I have never had one, but even with an insert, I can't imagine ash from the firebox making its way straight to the blower and being blown into the air by the fans. It must be getting out of the firebox somehow, and then just being kicked up by the blower. Is the problem from opening and closing the doors too much? Maybe ash kicks up when emptying the ash pan or shoveling ash out of the stove?

 

[Redox]

I've learned a lot in the few years that I have been burning, and I have learned a few of the tricks to minimise the dust. Opening the door slowly helps increse the draft to draw in the ash you stir up. I also turn off the fan if I am doing anything more that throwing in a few more pieces of wood. I also run the furnace fan at night to spread the heat around, add humidity and clean the air (I have a Space Gard air cleaner on the furnace). Look at everything you are doing and you will figure out where the dust is coming from and ways to minimize it.

FWIW, after I first started playing around with the old Fisher, I asked the Wife if it was worth all the trouble and mess to burn wood, and there WAS a lot of mess back then. Her response was "Oh, yeah! I've never been so warm in my life." Thus began the journey to where we are now. Worth every dust speck and stray bug.

Chris

 

[drizler]

I can't disagree more with the lose the fans comment. Granted if you have something located dead in the middle and wide open spaces sure get rid of them. Most of us don't live like that and if you dont have some way to move the air around some things aren't going to work very well for you unless you want the stove room 80 to get the rest of the place up to a decent temp. At least on my pellet burner the air wash system for the glass is chiefly responsible for the dust I get. It piles up a nice thick layer right along the front of the lower door seal and when you pull the door open it will send some out and into the airstream of the blower above. I taught myself to crack it just a tad then open it slowly after a few seconds. That helped a lot. I keep a dustbuster handy right there to soak up anything knocked down onto the stove's front. I would recommend shutting off that room blower whenever you are in there with the door open.