Hello all from Central MN !!
I grew up heating with wood in a few different stoves over the years in the basement of my parents house and 18yrs after moving out I finally am burning wood again. We're heating a 54x72 farm shop, 8x16 well house and our newly finished 2500sq/ft house and garage.
I purchased a Crown Royal 7400MP for a few reasons but the main one is an overabundance of crappy quality wood to burn. We clean fence lines and field boundary's every spring after the snow is gone and before it's warm enough to begin planting. Lots of poplar, boxelder, ash and other junk wood to cut down and dispose of. Dad couldn't come close to burning it all though his basement stove so a lot of it got piled up to rot which seemed like a shame. I looked at gasser stoves but went this direction after some reading on here and talking to a few owners of gasser stoves. Everyone liked them a lot but they all feed them nice dry seasoned hardwood wood, which I do not have. The 7400MP is great for this as it'll eat anything that goes in !!
I've had a few learning curves so far this heating season and have come on here for advice a few times and appreciate it !!
I fired the stove up late September as I wanted to make sure it all worked before it got cold. Boiled it over when I left the ash cleanout door open .... struggled with not knowing the supply/return temps and having to hope it'd make it through the night on this crappy wood once it got cold. This stove is really simple with just an Aquastat that runs it all and that is one of the reasons I went this way instead of with a Central Boiler. Both have great dealer support around here but I liked the multipass and simple controls of the Crown Royal. It'll also burn coal as it comes from the factory so that'll possibly be nice if I ever go that route to supplement this crappy wood on the real cold nights.
I like pictures and hope y'all do too
EDIT - this took a while to put together and I hope I'm not overstepping the boundaries of what a new member can do on here ....
Brought it home last February to get it before a price increase knowing it'd get installed over summer.
Miss Lily and her 9yr old self looks pretty small inside the firebox lol
It was decided to put the stove right here so it's in the middle of the house and shop. Only issue is there is a ditch that runs through here that drains a couple acres .....
Move some dirt ... extend a drain line .... install a new 18" Dual Wall pipe to drain surface water ....
Everyone I talked to that had a stove grumbled about dealing with dirt and mud so we decided to spend the $$$$ and pour a 24x24 pad. Hopefully one day we can build a building over it to keep the snow and rain off the pile ....
When we built the house I buried an 8" piece of drain tile from this point up into the mechanical room so we could bring the line up into the house without going surface mount through the garage at all. This worked very well but was a bugger to get the boiler pipe through it. I ended up using a 5gal pail of wire lube to get it to slide nicely. One I dumped that into the 8" line it almost pulled itself in lol. The blue water line now houses a fiber optic line that goes from the house to the dmark in the well house to bring internet into the house.
Three yrs ago when we built the farm shop I did the same thing and buried an 8" sleeve up into the mechanical room. I figured it was cheap insurance and a few others on here have posted saying they wish they would/could have done it so I figured why not. Sure glad I did !!
I purchased a GIANT Chinese finger trap deal meant for wire pulling and it made the install soooooo nice If anyone wants it let me know. I doubt I'll ever use it again.
I used the MiniHoe as a guide of sorts to keep the pipe moving smoothly. Worked well but needed another guy constantly shoving the pipe through the strap.
Pipe to the shop is closest, the far pipe goes to the well house and then on to the house.
Time to set it in place !! This was a looooong time in coming and I was stoked when it was finally sitting in it's home.
ECM Pumps and piping installed in the back of the boiler. It's all been wrapped with pipe insulation now. That alone added about 1F to the return temps. Crazy.
Tied it into the LP setup that was installed in the shop when it was built.
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The other loop comes into the well house and goes to the house first. The return line runs though the heater in here. This has all been pipe insulated as well ....
Up into the house
Over to the water heater side arm. I debated on doing a small plate exchanger here but we have pretty crappy well water so I wanted something that was easy to clean on the fly. I added a hose nipple on the blow off valve and there is a faucet down below that I can blow it all mostly backwards. Hindsight said I should have put a few more valves in here so I can isolate the side arm from the rest of the water heater to get it really clean. Maybe over summer when I shut it all down I can monkey with it. So far I haven't had to flush it out yet so we shall see how clean it stays.
On over to the tie into the LP system a few pictures up. I put an Aquastat on the line going to the forced air furnace so I can set it to use LP if the temp drops below a certain point just by intercepting the signal from the thermostat. Simple and it works great !! That is an idea I got from someone on here so thank you if it was you !!
Now we gather wood like beavers .... I decided to use my old farm shop as a wood shed.
Not sure how much wood is in here but it'll be nice and dry once it starts snowing ....
The first firing of the beast and it's living up to its nickname ... The Smoke Dragon. We built our house where there were a ton of old farm buildings that were well past their useful life so we cut the lumber up to run through a campfire, Dad's stove or this one. So I have somewhere near 25 IBC totes full of lumber scraps to go through. I've been tossing in a few handfuls with each loading so far and making it go away.
I grew up heating with wood in a few different stoves over the years in the basement of my parents house and 18yrs after moving out I finally am burning wood again. We're heating a 54x72 farm shop, 8x16 well house and our newly finished 2500sq/ft house and garage.
I purchased a Crown Royal 7400MP for a few reasons but the main one is an overabundance of crappy quality wood to burn. We clean fence lines and field boundary's every spring after the snow is gone and before it's warm enough to begin planting. Lots of poplar, boxelder, ash and other junk wood to cut down and dispose of. Dad couldn't come close to burning it all though his basement stove so a lot of it got piled up to rot which seemed like a shame. I looked at gasser stoves but went this direction after some reading on here and talking to a few owners of gasser stoves. Everyone liked them a lot but they all feed them nice dry seasoned hardwood wood, which I do not have. The 7400MP is great for this as it'll eat anything that goes in !!
I've had a few learning curves so far this heating season and have come on here for advice a few times and appreciate it !!
I fired the stove up late September as I wanted to make sure it all worked before it got cold. Boiled it over when I left the ash cleanout door open .... struggled with not knowing the supply/return temps and having to hope it'd make it through the night on this crappy wood once it got cold. This stove is really simple with just an Aquastat that runs it all and that is one of the reasons I went this way instead of with a Central Boiler. Both have great dealer support around here but I liked the multipass and simple controls of the Crown Royal. It'll also burn coal as it comes from the factory so that'll possibly be nice if I ever go that route to supplement this crappy wood on the real cold nights.
I like pictures and hope y'all do too
EDIT - this took a while to put together and I hope I'm not overstepping the boundaries of what a new member can do on here .... Brought it home last February to get it before a price increase knowing it'd get installed over summer.
Miss Lily and her 9yr old self looks pretty small inside the firebox lol
It was decided to put the stove right here so it's in the middle of the house and shop. Only issue is there is a ditch that runs through here that drains a couple acres .....
Move some dirt ... extend a drain line .... install a new 18" Dual Wall pipe to drain surface water ....
Everyone I talked to that had a stove grumbled about dealing with dirt and mud so we decided to spend the $$$$ and pour a 24x24 pad. Hopefully one day we can build a building over it to keep the snow and rain off the pile ....
When we built the house I buried an 8" piece of drain tile from this point up into the mechanical room so we could bring the line up into the house without going surface mount through the garage at all. This worked very well but was a bugger to get the boiler pipe through it. I ended up using a 5gal pail of wire lube to get it to slide nicely. One I dumped that into the 8" line it almost pulled itself in lol. The blue water line now houses a fiber optic line that goes from the house to the dmark in the well house to bring internet into the house.
Three yrs ago when we built the farm shop I did the same thing and buried an 8" sleeve up into the mechanical room. I figured it was cheap insurance and a few others on here have posted saying they wish they would/could have done it so I figured why not. Sure glad I did !!
I purchased a GIANT Chinese finger trap deal meant for wire pulling and it made the install soooooo nice
If anyone wants it let me know. I doubt I'll ever use it again.
I used the MiniHoe as a guide of sorts to keep the pipe moving smoothly. Worked well but needed another guy constantly shoving the pipe through the strap.
Pipe to the shop is closest, the far pipe goes to the well house and then on to the house.
Time to set it in place !! This was a looooong time in coming and I was stoked when it was finally sitting in it's home.
ECM Pumps and piping installed in the back of the boiler. It's all been wrapped with pipe insulation now. That alone added about 1F to the return temps. Crazy.
Tied it into the LP setup that was installed in the shop when it was built.
The other loop comes into the well house and goes to the house first. The return line runs though the heater in here. This has all been pipe insulated as well ....
Up into the house
Over to the water heater side arm. I debated on doing a small plate exchanger here but we have pretty crappy well water so I wanted something that was easy to clean on the fly. I added a hose nipple on the blow off valve and there is a faucet down below that I can blow it all mostly backwards. Hindsight said I should have put a few more valves in here so I can isolate the side arm from the rest of the water heater to get it really clean. Maybe over summer when I shut it all down I can monkey with it. So far I haven't had to flush it out yet so we shall see how clean it stays.
On over to the tie into the LP system a few pictures up. I put an Aquastat on the line going to the forced air furnace so I can set it to use LP if the temp drops below a certain point just by intercepting the signal from the thermostat. Simple and it works great !! That is an idea I got from someone on here so thank you if it was you !!
Now we gather wood like beavers .... I decided to use my old farm shop as a wood shed.
Not sure how much wood is in here but it'll be nice and dry once it starts snowing ....
The first firing of the beast and it's living up to its nickname ... The Smoke Dragon. We built our house where there were a ton of old farm buildings that were well past their useful life so we cut the lumber up to run through a campfire, Dad's stove or this one. So I have somewhere near 25 IBC totes full of lumber scraps to go through. I've been tossing in a few handfuls with each loading so far and making it go away.
