I was thinking of using the fresh air intake in my new NC30 wood stove. Is there much involved in installing it? Can I just use a 3" dryer vent kit or something similar? The one Englander has is around $70. What is the longest length run I can have for it?
NC30 fresh air intake
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The manual says 3" is fine. Use metal ducting, either straight or flexible, never plastic. You are supposed to keep the fresh air inlet lower than the stove but many are not able to do that and it works fine. You don't want any backdraft going into the fresh air vent and reversing the air flow. The common consensus is that if you have an air tight house, fresh air intake is good, if the house is old and leaky, it's not worth it.
I got my 3" dryer duct off Amazon, since the local HD didn't have anything but 4" stuff. Did get the 3" hose at HD though. Total cost was ~$25ish.
I was able to make a clean enough hole that I didn't need any trim around it to make it look nice.
I was able to make a clean enough hole that I didn't need any trim around it to make it look nice.
DPurvis
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3" metal ducting will work just fine. No need to drop the $$$ on the Englander website. For my stove I bought a 4" dryer vent hood, removed the one-way flap and ran 4" rigid ducting as far as I could before converting to 3" flexible semi rigid duct into the back of the stove.
I never knew that about an OAK inlet. (lower than stove). That would quickly rule out all basement installs.
Why do you think it matters? I would think air is air. Maybe as you said ,,,strictly for backdraft issues, but wouldn't that only be caused by a heavy "Downdraft"? Just curious as I have a basement install.
Thanks for all of your input everyone. I will be hooking the wood stove up within the next week. Will decide after the first few burns whether to use an OAK. Can't wait. Always wanted a wood stove, now I have one.
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