Northwinds' Isle Royale

[northwinds]

To get the stove in the house, the installer had to shovel through my side
yard (down a hill), and clear a path to the deck. The stove was in a crate
and taken down the hill on a dolly. Here it is on my deck before they moved
it through the sliding glass door to the walk out lower level

 

[northwinds]

Here's the first hole--lower level family room ceiling.

 

[northwinds]

Here you can see the pipe coming through the walk-in closet towards the next hole--to the attic

 

[northwinds]

Here are some photos after the job is finished.

 

[raybonz]

Beautiful stove and clean install... Very nice!

Ray

 

[sgcsalsero]

Very nice ! . .is this is the new house you are building (built) ??

 

[northwinds]

Very nice ! . .is this is the new house you are building (built) ??

Thanks guys. Unfortunately, this is not the new house. We had our house on the market for six months, but didn't
have any luck selling it. Lots of people said they liked it, but nobody who made offers. The middle and upper part
of the market is just dead here. We decided to make our present house nicer with a woodstove, new appliances,
and some other touches. We'll stay here for five years, if necessary, until the market bounces back up. I still have
my 10 acre woodlot; but 20 minutes away instead of out my back door.

Temps hit 12 below last night, and I didn't have the firebox packed very tight, so the house temp dropped from
74 (we had the windows open for awhile; people at our little dinner party got too hot). This morning, it was 62
when I fired up the stove from hot coals and a stove top temp of 200. The stove is cruising now at 550, and the
house temp is rising again. High temp today is predicted at -1 F.

 

[sgcsalsero]

Bottom of the housing market fell out around here (you may have heard about foreclosure rate in Cuyahoga Cty, not something that Cleveland folks are proud of). The fact that you can roast out your guests is a nice boast to make, I can only move the thermometer 5 degrees at 25 and above, anything colder and the furnace kicks in. Ahh the pleasures of owning a 90 year old drafty house.

 

[woodburn]

Looks awsome! Does that walk in closet get hot from the heat coming off the chimney?

 

[northwinds]

Thanks.

No, from the family room ceiling on up to the roof, it's class A chimney, so no heat at all. They finished off the
walk-in closet by building a fairly large framed box around the chimney and then applied dry wall. It's up to us
to finish it up with mud and paint. The way that they boxed it off, they had quite a bit more clearance than
they needed. My wife lost a chunk of her walk-in closet, but I've promised to sort through my 20 year old suits
and give up some of my space.

 

[Todd]

Nice looking stove. I almost bought one a few years ago. Let us know how she works out.

 

[northwinds]

Well, it gets hot; that's for sure. I've got a couple of nasty burns where I just let the skin
touch for a brief instant--man, oh man.

As you know, Todd, today is a wintry day--up to a foot of snow predicted but with warmer temps.
I've been babying the stove at just over 400 stove-top temp and a couple of splits at a time. House
is 71 upstairs and about 80 downstairs. The stove easily keeps the house warm at below zero
temps outside when I've got it cranking at 600, but these warmer temps are a whole different learning
curve. We've had alternating freezing rain and snow. It's going to be a real mess outside, and the
kids will probably be off school again tomorrow. They won't be so excited when they're going to school
into mid-June to make up the snow days.

 

[northwinds]

I forgot to add some input on the inline damper.

I thought that I would need it for sure with a walk-out basement installation and
interior chimney going all the way to the roof (just a few feet off the gable peak).
But as it turns out, I haven't needed to use the damper at all.

The stove starts like a dream with max primary and start-air. After five or ten
minutes of start-up air, I shut that off and get the stove good and hot with max primary
air. When I get up to about 500 degrees, I start shutting the primary air down, and the
controls are very responsive. The flames will go out if I shut off the primary air all the way to
the right. If the wood is well-charred, the sweet spot is about 70-80 percent to the right.
That gets me nice secondary burn fireworks and keeps things going for about 8 hours
if the stove is loaded. Last night, I loaded the stove 2/3 full with big splits at 9:30 p.m. on
a crumbling log coal bed. This morning at 7a.m, I had 300 degrees on the stove-top
and an easy start-up with more crumbled logs to renew the fire on.

 

[Jags]

Northwinds - this sounds like a happy ending for sure. By the way, I saw your above comment about how much heat it produces when it is "cranked" to 600 deg. He-hee-he, you ain't seen nothing till that baby is humming at about 700-750. It will give you a whole 'nuther opinion on how much stove you got at your finger tips.

As a suggestion, get gloves that go quite a ways up your arms (to the elbows is best), and always remember to swing the left door out of the way. If you bump those doors with bare skin, I gar-own-tee its gonna leave a mark.