More about Homewood?

[Sadiehorse]

Howdy - Been reading your older thread here about the Homewood furnace. We are just trying to get going with one that was in the basement of the house we recently bought in Maine. Didn't know what kind of thermostat this was till I read Bill 54s post. Ours must have quit, as last owner rigged squirrel cage fan to a switch on the wall. Does it make sense to try to fix the old setup? I was going to put a spring wound timer in place of the switch, but if furnace could turn on fan according to temp I think that would be better.

Ours is ducted into the whole house system and we're preferring it to the wood stove in the living room as that will overheat just that one space, plus it takes smaller wood, so more cutting & splitting.
The expansion spring intake still works well. Our only problem is we want to shut the furnace down more, as packed chock full it only goes for 3 hrs max. I can see it needs a new seal on the door, which I've done before, but can't believe that will slow it down much. We're burning a mix of fir & locust, occasional pieces of birch, apple etc. Any suggestions? Does running the fan accelerate the burn rate? This may be related to something I see in the back of the firebox which looks like baffles or another chamber that has lost its integrity & looks partly broken away. I'll try to get a pic of this next time its cool. We're going thru a lot of wood and it's not even winter yet!

 

[STIHLY DAN]

With that type of wood furnace you are going to go through a lot of wood. Although 3hrs is a bit much.

 

[Dmriggs]

With that type of wood furnace you are going to go through a lot of wood. Although 3hrs is a bit much.

Howdy - Been reading your older thread here about the Homewood furnace. We are just trying to get going with one that was in the basement of the house we recently bought in Maine. Didn't know what kind of thermostat this was till I read Bill 54s post. Ours must have quit, as last owner rigged squirrel cage fan to a switch on the wall. Does it make sense to try to fix the old setup? I was going to put a spring wound timer in place of the switch, but if furnace could turn on fan according to temp I think that would be better.

Ours is ducted into the whole house system and we're preferring it to the wood stove in the living room as that will overheat just that one space, plus it takes smaller wood, so more cutting & splitting.
The expansion spring intake still works well. Our only problem is we want to shut the furnace down more, as packed chock full it only goes for 3 hrs max. I can see it needs a new seal on the door, which I've done before, but can't believe that will slow it down much. We're burning a mix of fir & locust, occasional pieces of birch, apple etc. Any suggestions? Does running the fan accelerate the burn rate? This may be related to something I see in the back of the firebox which looks like baffles or another chamber that has lost its integrity & looks partly broken away. I'll try to get a pic of this next time its cool. We're going thru a lot of wood and it's not even winter yet!

I bought a used indoor wood furnace a few years back .It had the above mentioned baffles on the back wall of the firebox and also had to holes ( which were sealed off), to add a hot water circulation tube if wanted. I noticed a pretty strong smell of smoke even on a cold day with good draft.
I decided to take the housing off of the furnace and see if I could spot anything. Apparently the previous owner was trying to see how hard he could throw wood in and the firebox rear sheet, was buckled out! This is what had broken the baffles loose and also bowed the plate that sealed the two holes! This had a gasket between the sealing plate and holes ( which was broken as well). I was able to patch things up and reseal the holes with high temp sheet gasket and surrounded it all with furnace cement. Check that rear sheet if you can!