intagalactic post

[muss]

Fagget about it :

 

[Philip]

IMO you don't need an outside air intake. I have one because my house is fairly tight.

I know that all the experts say you should have some vertical vent pipe. My stove manual says it is preferrable, but when I asked about just going straight out, many people on this site told me they have not had any problem with soot on the side of the house with straight horizontal venting. So I didn't add any vertical pipe to my horizontal pipe and I haven't had a problem except one time the power went out and I got some smoke in the house.

I think you will have to have a fan to move the heat out of the 12X12 room. I have a feeling you will have a very warm room where the stove is and the rest of the downstairs will be quite cold, but maybe not.

 

[Delta-T]

Adding the outside air kit is not a bad idea if its not cost prohibitive. Its certainly not going to hurt. Same goes for having a small rise on the outside. Keeps the tip of the pipe out of the snow and makes it less inviting to critters in the off season ( have pulled mice and chipmunks out of stoves). IMO you can never have too many BTU's (lol). You may not need the extreme top end of your machine, but again, it can't hurt to be able to get to a desired temp faster. A 12x12 room is not that big so i dont see how the blower on just about any unit won't move the air out of that space. If you only have a 3 foot tall door leading out of the room it may be a problem but the convective nature of the machine should get eveything moving. Worst case senario you put a small fan in that room the move the air farther or faster, but its not like the radiant heat of a woodstove.

 

[MainePellethead]

My house is not all that airtight & i believe it really isn't all that insulated in the walls cause the heat from my oil furnace doesn't make it or stay upstairs & it's cold up there <3 rooms> and an oven in the summer .Attic has plenty though . Anyhow, i'm wondering when i get my pellet stove in a few weeks, if i should also have the installer punch a hole to outside for intake vent . One dealer said i would only need it if it was a mobile home & it was airtight . i dunno bout that . Also is there such a thing as going too big on btu's ? 1st floor layout is almost u-shaped & stove is going in 12 by 12 by 7 high and would have to heat all around the u . Very concerned as this will be a lot of $$$ for me . I'm looking at a Quadra-fire Castile . Please help . Also all 4 dealers i talked with , contract their installation work . All around the $ 300 mark & bout the same for their vent kit . Told them i wanted it to go up 3 ft once outside . They said no need but i think i read somewhere on here maybe that a few feet up outside was very good to do . HELP Thanking you all in advance . R.B.

I have the Castille. Quadra~Fire Manual recommends exhaust MUST exhaust above air inlet elevation. They recommend at least 60" of vertical pipe to be installed if direct vented through a wall.
I have an 8' rise.

 

[davidage]

I have the Castille. Quadra~Fire Manual recommends exhaust MUST exhaust above air inlet elevation. They recommend at least 60" of vertical pipe to be installed if direct vented through a wall.
I have an 8' rise.[/quote]


I'm assuming this is only if you have an outside air intake?

 

[smaxell1]

well i recommend a rise in the exhaust pipe. if the power goes out, natural draft pulls the smoke out of the stove. as for the outside air kit, and airtight houses etc... if you have an airtight house, you must put in the OAK for the stove to work properly.

if your house is not airtight, the stove may maintain a proper burn without it. it will suck air in from your house, use it for combustion and blow it out the vent outside. *but* since your house isnt air tight, the house is able to replace the lost air. where is this replaced air coming from? outside. cold untreated air replacing all the nice warm air your stove is sucking out. you may not notice in the first few hours or in the room with the stove, but if the rooms arent airtight at the other side of this U shape, you will notice the cold draft.

assuming you put in the OAK heres what should happen. your stove gets hot and puts out hot air. the air fills the top of the room its in and spills out from the door into the other rooms. the cold air near the floor will gravitate towards the stove room where it will heat up and flow out through the top of the door again. if you want to aid this process, but a box fan on the floor aimed *towards* the stove room.

if my house is real cold and i light the stove, you can see it happen with a tissue. hold it at the top of the door and it blows outward. hold it towards the bottom of the door and it blown inward toward the stove. kinda nifty. after all the air is heated this effect is less dramatic and it wont be as breezy.

Definitely recommend the rise in the outside venting for power outages, etc. I also HIGHLY recommend the OAK even for a drafty house after running my stove without one. I have a drafty old house, and the lack of outside air made it SO much worse. Cold feet, air drawing up from the basement, etc. Since installing the outside air, I can maintain the house at a lower temperature than I was comfortable at with my FAO furnace by several degrees. I generally run at about 65 degrees downstairs with the pellet stove - but at that temp with the FAO I would kick it up to 70+ to feel comfortable. It isn't that large an expense - and definitely makes up for other problems. Personal experience changed my mind on that one.

---scott

 

[Jester]

I have a 1300 square foot cape, that has old single pane windows and drafty doors.
I burned for a month or so without the OAK on my stove. I noticed that when the stove was set to kill that there was a draft being sucked in through the front door, under the basement door, and in through the side door at the base of the stairs going to the bedrooms upstairs. I had always seen a 12-15 degree difference between downstairs and upstairs. I also constantly had a draft from calf level down in the room with the stove. I went to the local dealer to get the OAK last weekend, and he told me that what I was noticing was a myth, that even though I was exhausting some 240 CFM out through the chimney that there were no drafts as a result.
Since i put the OAK in Monday, the difference between upstairs and down is more like 5-7, there is no draft coming in from the outside and the floor level breeze is gone. The wife even commented on this the other day. If it isnt going to add a big expence, Id say do it. Harman even makes a thimble for the wall that includes the vent pipe and the OAK.

 

[muss]

I guess you guys didn't see that i posted this back in February ;-) Muss

 

[Lobstah]

I was chuckling about that

Jim

 

[davidage]

well i recommend a rise in the exhaust pipe. if the power goes out, natural draft pulls the smoke out of the stove. as for the outside air kit, and airtight houses etc... if you have an airtight house, you must put in the OAK for the stove to work properly.

if your house is not airtight, the stove may maintain a proper burn without it. it will suck air in from your house, use it for combustion and blow it out the vent outside. *but* since your house isnt air tight, the house is able to replace the lost air. where is this replaced air coming from? outside. cold untreated air replacing all the nice warm air your stove is sucking out. you may not notice in the first few hours or in the room with the stove, but if the rooms arent airtight at the other side of this U shape, you will notice the cold draft.

assuming you put in the OAK heres what should happen. your stove gets hot and puts out hot air. the air fills the top of the room its in and spills out from the door into the other rooms. the cold air near the floor will gravitate towards the stove room where it will heat up and flow out through the top of the door again. if you want to aid this process, but a box fan on the floor aimed *towards* the stove room.

if my house is real cold and i light the stove, you can see it happen with a tissue. hold it at the top of the door and it blows outward. hold it towards the bottom of the door and it blown inward toward the stove. kinda nifty. after all the air is heated this effect is less dramatic and it wont be as breezy.

yes i've definately noticed the drafty feeling toward the floor and was wondering about that. can anyone point me in a good direction for the outside air kit for the Quadra Fire Castille?

 

[smaxell1]

I guess you guys didn't see that i posted this back in February ;-) Muss

Still good information for people that didn't think they needed the OAK for their install.

---scott

 

[moorehaven]

You can never have toooooo big a stove IMO.
Buy as big as your pocket is deep, you won't regret it in the end I think. We're living in an old "loose as a goose" farmhouse with no basement for the cold air to drop into. When I installed the Harvester, I took my dealer at his recommendation for the size I needed for a stand-alone heat source. As I was replacing my wood heat, in retrospect I wish I had gone bigger as cord wood vs. pellet heat just isn't the same comfort level as we were used to.
The dealer also said I wouldn't need an intake kit because my old farm house was so "loose". He was wrong! The lack of one resulted in a house that never got warm and had a constent draw of cold air drawn thru every crack and crevice across the floor to the stove. We even had drafts where there had never been one before that we noticed. And of course the higher we cranked the stove to get warm, the draftier it got.
When the light bulb finally clicked on for me, I remedied the situation with 2" PVC pipe, an elbow and a ball valve, sending it down thru the floor under the house right behind the stove. Worked great. I went thru the floor as opposed to the wall because it made more sense to draw up from the drafty crawl space as opposed to making a hole in a newly constructed exterior wall.

 

[wilbilt]

I know this is an old debate, but I think I have finally decided to connect my stove to outside air. My procrastination has been due to the design of my old stove.

It has a single fan and runs on positive pressure. Both combustion air and room air are provided by the fan. If I fabricate and install an OAK, I will be pushing freezing outside air through the heat exchangers instead of warmer inside air.

However, as I sit here with the stove running on medium, I can feel the sea of cold air moving around my feet toward the stove from all of the leaks in the house. With an OAK connected, I should generate some positive pressure in the house, which may push heat toward the leaks instead of drawing cold air in through them.

I'm willing to try it, but if causes the stove to blow cool air, it's coming back off.

 

[davidage]

You can never have toooooo big a stove IMO.
Buy as big as your pocket is deep, you won't regret it in the end I think. We're living in an old "loose as a goose" farmhouse with no basement for the cold air to drop into. When I installed the Harvester, I took my dealer at his recommendation for the size I needed for a stand-alone heat source. As I was replacing my wood heat, in retrospect I wish I had gone bigger as cord wood vs. pellet heat just isn't the same comfort level as we were used to.
The dealer also said I wouldn't need an intake kit because my old farm house was so "loose". He was wrong! The lack of one resulted in a house that never got warm and had a constent draw of cold air drawn thru every crack and crevice across the floor to the stove. We even had drafts where there had never been one before that we noticed. And of course the higher we cranked the stove to get warm, the draftier it got.
When the light bulb finally clicked on for me, I remedied the situation with 2" PVC pipe, an elbow and a ball valve, sending it down thru the floor under the house right behind the stove. Worked great. I went thru the floor as opposed to the wall because it made more sense to draw up from the drafty crawl space as opposed to making a hole in a newly constructed exterior wall.

still pondering the OAK and was wondering about this as well....I have the option of sending it into the basement instead of out through the exterior wall too and was wondering if anyone had an opinion about it? my house is similar to Moore's but I have a full unfinished basement.

 

[slls]

That would still be in your house, go for outside if you do it at all. Inside it will draw in cold air, it will pump air outside that you paid to heat.

 

[dsnedegar3]

My Mount Vernon AE insert is due in January to be installed. My neighbor has a Harman Accentra insert that lives across the street from (same style house) and he has an OAK that takes air from his chimney so it run in parallel with the chimney liner. I asked about this for the Mount Vernon and my dealer said the kit wasn't made to be installed via the chimney. Anybody disagree with that? Seems strange when there is a diagram in the manual on page 16 showing outside air terminating at the chimney top rather than going horizontal through the wall.

 

[davidage]

That would still be in your house, go for outside if you do it at all. Inside it will draw in cold air, it will pump air outside that you paid to heat.

sounds good thx for the info....been trying to find a kit for my Quad Castille and so far have been unsuccesfull. is this a do it yerself or are there actual kits available?