My Magic Heat Reveiw

[Battenkiller]

They mean that literally - there will be lots of little pieces left after it falls apart, so each grandkid can have an heirloom.

Lots of little white pieces. :lol:

Craig, for the record, I heat this entire place with only a Vigilant installed in my basement, and very nicely, I might add. We ain't the highest in the lower 48 as far as degree days go, but we're up there.

 

[branchburner]

appeal to authority = lousy science, duh

Sorry, Pook hasn't appeared in person in this thread yet, but I'm sure he's wathching - I couldn't resist.

 

[Battenkiller]

appeal to authority = lousy science, duh

Well, I already presented the science, I'm starting to get desperate now. ;-P

 

[rnusly]

After reading this forum my question is already answered but I still want the experts to weigh in. I have an Ashley wood circulator that's about twelve years old and performs OK. It's connected to a 25' masonry chimney (installed in the lower level of a bi-level home built in 1978 )with great draft so much so that I have to damp it down and plug some factory ash door holes as it drew too much and wants to overfire even with controls as low as they go! It'll burn overnight packed with a lot of wood damped down on low. I added the MH 2 seasons ago and am happy with the extra heat. Cleanings have not shown additional deposits and are still powdery not sticky. Yesterday we ordered a Napleon Independance non-cat with the secondary burn feature W/O a blower. My question was to keep the MH on it or not. During a medium burn the pipe temp. is about 300-350 post MH so I don't think it was so bad with the Ashley but don't know how the Napoleon will affect it. We wanted to get the tax credit and hopefully cut down on the amount of wood per season. Money is tight so I didn't pop for the $160 additional for the blower. I'm thinking of retrofitting an automotive blower motor to fit. Anyojne have experience doing this? Thanks!

 

[Ducky]

Ok, couple of things.....
A vigilant uses an 8" pipe - not a 6". That might have an effect on a number of things.
Are you able to get the stove working well in the downdraft mode? If so, you must have quite a strong chimney.What do you mean by downdraft mode? I havent really had much problems keeping the fire going and going hot... Also I know the outlet is 8" but I am simply using what it came with since money is tight.

Any blower on a stove - or in this case a pipe - will help spread heat a little further and faster. Although VC never made a blower for the Vigilant, I can imagine a setup where I might use the rear heat shield with a blower mounted to it near the bottom - this could blow air over a couple of square feet of the bare cast iron back. Even better would be to have the shield bent at the top to deflect heat over the top of the stove and forward.I have put some serious thought into fabbing something like this up myself, and will be doing some testing this winter on this exact idea.

In a shop, it might be that a ceiling fan also helps spread the air around.I have that already, with just the stove without the MH eh, it adds a little bit of extra warmth, with the MH its wonderful

Of course, this is an ancient stove at this point...but a nice one never the less. Part of the legend of VC, though, was the lack of noise and need for electrical outlets etc.....that is, picture the family sitting around the stove in the dead of winter and hearing the ice outside crackle. Of course, in a "man room" or shop, this does not come into play.

I had a good customer once who used a Vigi in his basement to do a pretty decent job on pre-heating his house. However, he bought a Yukon Central furnace to replace it - which did the job 100%.

While I agree that modern stoves are MUCH more efficient and dont require the use of MH (I have seen a few in action at friends houses) MY situation - cant stress that enough... with such an old stove, this works out well.

I also bought a new gasket kit for the stove and put in new gaskets, and have realised one of my doors is actually slightly warped =( Maybe Santa Clause will get me a new one for xmas.

Now for the retard question...

my stove pipe, from the top of the stove to the top cap is 13ft in total length. Its on a completely flat roof. behind it, about 15ft west of the pipe, is a slight drop, of about 1.5ft and then the slightly slanted unheated shed roof which is 18ft wide... the wind, which is partial broken by the trees behind my garage, comes up that slanted roof, to that ledge and then blows over the flat main roof...

So my question.

would I benefit more from extending my pipe another 3ft? Or dont bother?

Also, I would like to point out that I do have a damper inside my stove pipe. the stove itself has a damper to cut off the exhaust at the top of the stove to force it to exhaust thruogh a small opening on the bottom of the stove (helps significantly in long term burns)

But when I first added the stove to my shop, I installed the pipe damper as well because I wanted more control over the stove itself... And I am glad I did!

 

[begreen]

Use the stove as designed by engaging the stove bypass damper once it has warmed up. Why add another 3 ft of flue if there are already three devices in the smoke path to reduce draft? (stove bypass, key damper, MH)

 

[Ducky]

the bypass as in the big damper in the stove? I rarely use that unless I am burning for long periods. My primary control is with the stove pipe damper.

I have noticed that the MH seemed to have offset my draft a bit. in the manual it says to add another section of stove pipe.

 

[pen]

Away from science, lets think business. If this style of flue heat recapture were so great, why don't the stove manufacturers build one right into the top of their stove? Or at the very least, build their own equivalent flue collar that is plumbed in as part of the stove's own blower system? All they should care about is that you buy their stove. It's not like they are also selling you wood.

So, why don't they offer them?

pen

 

[Oldmainer]

Hi Folks...do all the favorable comments...118... made about the MH at Northern Tool carry any weight? Oldmainer

 

[Todd]

My non-cat stove has a vertical flue with the minimum allowed length. Pretty typical setup in a pretty moderate climate. Flue temps, real internal ones 18" above the appliance, are in the 800 degree range when a clean fire is burning. Conventional wisdom tells us that we want 250 or so degrees at the outlet of the flue. I don't know anybody that measures outlet flue temps including myself but I have to think that there is extra waste heat leaving my flue well above 250. I don't mind wasting the energy since wood grows on trees but in certain cases I would support using a MH. I would want another flue temp probe above the MH.

I don't like pook. He can go away for all I care but the concept of reclaiming waste heat with a device like this shouldn't be completely ignored just because of his bad manners.

I think Brother Bart took his IR gun up on the roof one day? Don't remember the numbers. Maybe I'll go up and take some temps, I'd like to know anyways.

 

[Ducky]

[/quote]Is the stove hard to start or does smoke come into the room?
What does the smoke coming out of the chimney look like when the MH is working?[/quote]

I dont have a smoke in the room problem... and the smoke out of the chimney looks fine (I have seriously thought about installing a camera on my roof so I can monitor smoke output lol) (i have to walk almost 120ft away from my buiding down my driveway to see the stack)

but it seems like the fire smolders more than burns with MH... which leads me to believe there is a draft problem. If I crack the door, it seems to help the situation.

 

[Ducky]

Hi Folks...do all the favorable comments...118... made about the MH at Northern Tool carry any weight? Oldmainer

it seriously depends on the age of your stove. If your stove is ancient like mine, and inefficient, like mine, you will see a vast improvement in your heat output. However if your stove is fairly new, I doubt you will see much improvement, you may even experience a decrease in performance.

I have alot of friends who run newer stoves with no MH... but their stoves are air tight and alot newer than mine, and throw a crap load of heat... however given my stoves age, and stuff, the MH is a viable option for ME... This is something to consider.

A new stove, for the area I need heated is over $2,000 VS the MH which is $200...

 

[fire_man]

FYI, just for historys sake, the date cast into the rear fireback of a VC stove is not the age of the stove - it is the date when the first model of that stove was designed or produced. All Defiants might have 1976, for example.....

Thanks for clearing that up, Craig. I always wondered why my house built in 1986 had a VC Resolute that had 1979 cast into it and it was a "new install".

 

[begreen]

Hi Folks...do all the favorable comments...118... made about the MH at Northern Tool carry any weight? Oldmainer

it seriously depends on the age of your stove. If your stove is ancient like mine, and inefficient, like mine, you will see a vast improvement in your heat output. However if your stove is fairly new, I doubt you will see much improvement, you may even experience a decrease in performance.

I have alot of friends who run newer stoves with no MH... but their stoves are air tight and alot newer than mine, and throw a crap load of heat... however given my stoves age, and stuff, the MH is a viable option for ME... This is something to consider.

A new stove, for the area I need heated is over $2,000 VS the MH which is $200...

oldmainer, already asked and answered - marketing hype. NT is not above filtering comments. Just because it's on the internet doesn't mean it's true. There are 118 responses because.... it sells stoves. Funny how there are so few comments on Amazon which has a link to the same product. The unit can work as a bandaid in some circumstances, but there are often better, safer ways to deal with inefficiency. As a trade off for not fixing the source of the problem you get a cheap, noisy box that is made of steels and rusts out easily, can clog frequently, greatly adds to the pipe cleaning chores and will probably raise serious questions with the home insurer. If it is only to control draft, try a key damper first. If it is to extract more heat, a modern stove can do this more economically.

Ducky, I have to dispute the math here. There are many big stoves for sale for under $1000, and that is before the 30% tax credit. For example, the Englander 30NC, Drolet Myriad can be found for less than a $1000, especially off-season. They burn magnitudes cleaner than the old stove, have option for built-in blower, and have much closer installation clearances. They also burn much less wood to produce the same heat. Alternatively, you can get a Hot Blast furnace for $1200 which would have that space heated up to 70F in no time. Or a Daka for $999.

http://www.northerntool.com/shop/tools/product_200307391_200307391 ($899 and that includes the blower. $630 after tax credit.)
http://www.overstockstoves.com/50nowomo2sqf.html

 

[begreen]

If the fire is smoldering before the wood is fully charred, then there could be a creosote problem brewing. If this is after the wood is completely charred and coaled, then it might not be.

 

[BrotherBart]

If somebody wants to use a Magic Heat then they can use a Magic Heat. People here and on woodheat.org perceive that they could cause problems. Farm Bureau Insurance won't insure your house if you use one according to a posting on another website. But that doesn't mean lots of people don't use them and make them work. Just like it doesn't mean that a lot of people tried them and they are now laying out back somewhere.

 

[begreen]

What do you mean by ” the wood is fully charred”?

Battenkiller can give you a more scientific and detailed description of the process of wood burning, but I will give it a go.

As the wood is heated to ignition it gives off a lot of gases, many of which are volatile and catch fire. You see some of the unburnt gases as smoke. If these unburnt gases condense on a cooler surface, you get creosote. The wood will continue to outgas until all of these volatile compounds have outgassed. At this point the remaining product is charcoal which is pure carbon. Charcoal burns well, but much more cleanly. I think the only gas it emits is C02 and its fumes do not contribute toward creosote if they condense.

 

[Battenkiller]

Hi Folks...do all the favorable comments...118... made about the MH at Northern Tool carry any weight? Oldmainer

I'm sure we could easily find 118 favorable comments from the folks that are grabbing Vogelzang boxwood stoves off pallets by the checkout line at Harbor Freight. So what?

 

[branchburner]

There is only ONE WAY to know for sure if MH will work in a certain setup with no ill effects, and that's to try it. It's just another variable in the system (as if there weren't enough already), but one that can be observed and controlled. Like BG, I would rather pay five bucks for a damper.

Here's another way to consider it: the difference between burning with MH on a straight shot of interior pipe and burning with an uninsulated, oversized, exterior tile flue is that MH lets you keep the heat instead of donating it to the great outdoors. And the guy with the clay tile probably has more creosote, to boot.

Many people are already burning with a much more inefficient heat exchanger than MH. It's called MN (Mother Nature).

 

[Battenkiller]

As the wood is heated to ignition it gives off a lot of gases, many of which are volatile and catch fire. You see some of the unburnt gases as smoke. If these unburnt gases condense on a cooler surface, you get creosote. The wood will continue to outgas until all of these volatile compounds have outgassed. At this point the remaining product is charcoal which is pure carbon. Charcoal burns well, but much more cleanly. I think the only gas it emits is C02 and its fumes do not contribute toward creosote if they condense.

Sounds good to me, except charcoal also gives off a lot of CO as well as CO2. CO2 is basically inert, but CO is a fuel gas that contains 2/3 the heat per pound that wood has. It's invisible, can't condense on the flue walls, but still carries away large amounts of potential heat energy on the breeze once it leaves the firebox and goes out the stack. A slow draft created by a lazy flue will allow more CO to escape unburned, so there is some more inefficiency to consider.

Ducky, I use the same stove you have, and it heats my entire house from a basement install. I have electric baseboard heat, and every damn one of them are turned down to 50º. Last January's electric bill was only $68... almost all of it DHW, lights and refrigerator. House is a stable 70-72º throughout. I can tell you for a fact that you'll get a lot more heat out of that Vigi by going to the 8" pipe it's designed for, adding 5-6' of chimney, and shutting that internal damper once the stove has a nice coal bed and is burning hot (500-650ºF). You won't get any of the advantages of that great VC design by burning it the way you are, but if you want to continue nobody here really cares or holds it against you. You just won't see many MH endorsements coming from the majority of us.

 

[branchburner]

Hi Folks...do all the favorable comments...118... made about the MH at Northern Tool carry any weight? Oldmainer

I'm sure we could easily find 118 favorable comments from the folks that are grabbing Vogelzang boxwood stoves off pallets by the checkout line at Harbor Freight. So what?

You can also find 118 people who say you shouldn't burn pine, and those 118 will show up in your search long before you find threads on this site that prove otherwise. The trouble with internet searches is that you often have to wade through many wrong answers before you find the correct ones. Google is the "I-told-you-so" enabler.

It really helps in searching for answers online if you already know the correct answer. Better to search for arguments than for answers.

 

[Oldmainer]

Hi Folks...I wonder if NT paid those 118 folks to comment in favor of the MH?... I burn alot of eastern white pine too...in fact my Allnighter is hummin' away right now keepin' the chill out of the house...temp outside is 46 degrees with a slight breeze...nice. Anyway I think there is enough BS here about the MH that it would fertilize my garden...I'll just set the monitor out next to my compost pile...be better then the seaweed I gather up to enrich the pile some... Oldmainer

 

[branchburner]

I burn alot of eastern white pine too...

Never occurred to me before, but burning seasoned pine might be among those times MH makes sense. My experience with dry pine is that it often burns so hot and fast that flue temps can shoot right up too far, too fast.

I think pine got it's bad rap because some people would burn green oak and fill the flue with creosote. Then some dry pine would burn hot and fast, touch off the chimney, and get blamed for "causing" the fire. The irony is that the "terrible" pine that they think is the origin of creosote was probably the only dry, non-creosote-producing wood they ever burned!

 

[Oldmainer]

Hi branchburner...if the pine burns alittle mite fast ya need to squeeze off the air a tad. I have two air damper controls in the door of my Allnighter that do a good job of air control. Most of my wood...both hard and soft seasons for about six months...then it is burned. I cut in the late winter and early spring then stack it for the coming heating season. I have been burning wood for nearly 50 years and havn't set my chimney on fire yet. I make sure the fire gets enough air even when I set it up for an all night burn. Have plenty of coals for a restart in the early am. Burning wood is more of an art then a science...and will do as it should if you take the time to play it right. Some are too lazy or cheap to clean their chimney on a regular basis...but if done it saves on turning their home into a pile of charcoal... I burn even the tree branches...down to about 1 inch in size. The rest of the brush I chip with my chipper at some point during the year...and use the chips for mulch. I have my own 40 acre wood lot. And yes I know...a modern stove will burn cleaner and use alittle less wood...but ya know...unless I am bothering a neigbor...which I'm not cos I live in the country...I plan to do it my way till I buy the farm. Oldmainer

 

[WES999]

My Magic heat Review.

When I moved in my house there was a Fisher Grandma Bear in the basement. Sitting behind it was a stove pipe heat reclaimer ( not a MH but essentially the same thing.) One day I figured I would install it and see how it worked. Well with the MH the stove would not draft well at all. I could barely get a fire going, so off it came. It sat around for a while until I got tired of looking at it and threw it in the trash.

This stove has a somewhat marginal draft to begin with, basement location, outside chimney, rear exit, 2 90*, the MH was just not going to work.

On a another topic my oil furnace has a heat reclaimer ( it was there when I moved in) and it works quite well. It's an older, not so efficient model and the reclaimer is able to reclaim some of the heat that would otherwise go up the chimney.

As others have said, probably best to avoid using one on a EPA stove, I certainly wouldn't put one on my EPA Regency stove. May work OK an older stove that has very good draft.