Not enough heat

[Barn Guy]

I have a 1200 square foot workshop that I am trying to heat with a Campagnar V-L0112 wood stove made by Les Poincons De Waterloo Inc. of Waterloo, Quebec, Canada. The shop is used sporadically and the fire allowed to burn out when not in use. In spite of trying various settings of the air inlets, it seems that the stove is not making as much heat as I think it should. The stove was a "rescue" and I have been unable to find a manual or any company information on it.

The shop is on a cement slab with well insulated walls and ceiling. The ceiling height is 10 feet. The usual temperature here when using the stove is 20 - 50 degrees Fahrenheit. It is only with the additional use of a gas fueled furnace that I am able to make the shop comfortable to work in.

The fire starts easily and once it gets going, I shut the doors. It seems that I am never able to get much more than about 250 degrees flue temperature measured with a gauge on the pipe and checked with an infrared heat gun. I have a kettle of water sitting on top of the stove which never boils, only lightly steams. I am burning mostly well seasoned oak and cherry.

The stove has an 8" single wall flu pipe which switches to a double wall pipe where it goes through the ceiling and roof and terminates with a cap and screen above the ridge of the building. Total length is about 30 feet. It is a straight run except for a slight offset to align the flue with the stove.

After reading many posts here I am wondering if the 8" flue pipe is too big and is allowing all the heat to escape before heating the stove itself. Would a flue pipe damper help keep the heat in and allow it to build up? Are there any other suggestions on what might make this work? I'd like to be able to start the fire and get on to other things with out a lot of tending.

Thanks for any help!

 

[Jags]

Get a stove top temp reading after an established fire. If the stove has an 8 inch outlet, then that is what it is designed to run for pipe. 30 ft of pipe is getting tall, you might be on to something with a pipe damper, but lets see what the stove itself is doing first.

Oh - please give details on this "seasoned" wood. How long cut/split - flavor, etc.

 

[begreen]

Is there a baffle in this stove or is it a straight shot from firebox to flue outlet?

 

[gmhowell]

If the stove is that old you may not get as much heat as you were hoping. If it's an old stove with 30' of pipe most of your heat is probably going right out the chimney. Like mentioned above, a damper may help some

 

[jetsam]

It appears that that stove company got litigated out of the BBQ market and was folded into another corporation (which may have existed for the sole purpose of absorbing the stove maker) in 2007. The new corporation (GESTION LUCIEN LAMOUREUX INC) was dissolved in 2015.

Your best hope for a manual/parts list may lie in finding a local dealer who used to sell them... There appears to be at least one in Granby, which is around 15km west of Waterloo.

Failing that, a chimney sweep who still cleans them regularly could probably answer specific questions like 'is it supposed to have a baffle?'.

Sounds like some detective work will be needed.either way!

 

[begreen]

One thing that made a huge difference in my shop was to insulate the floor. I wanted something cheap because I wasn't sure how much difference it would make so I got these interlocking pads.
http://www.homedepot.com/p/Norsk-Gr...nterlocking-Floor-Mat-6-Pack-241547/300369202
The result was much better than expected. I can heat the place with an electric space heater now. Not at all possible before. My other concern was how well they'd stand up but so far they are doing ok after 4 yrs..

 

[Barn Guy]

Thank you all for the replies and suggestions! I made a typo when I estimated the flue length and today I measured it at about 17 feet. Much better than what I wrote!

The stove does have what I will call a baffle in it about 4" down and extending about half way across the flue exit. The baffle is an enclosed space designed to heat air and exhaust through the openings on the upper part of the sides. It forces the heat from the fire towards the front of the stove before going up the flue. There are provisions for a fan to force air through the baffle but I do not have one installed. I have read that the forced air fans do not make much of a difference but have no experience with them.

I lit a fire today with four good sized pieces of oak and cherry. After about an hour, the flue temperature two feet up was about 280 degrees. Temperatures on the top of the stove near the flue were highest at about 385 degrees and dropped off to around 200 towards the edges. Sounds to me like the heat is going up the flue but I'll defer to those who have more experience. All of my fires have been loaded in the east-west configuration leaving room around the logs. I have read elsewhere others recommend a north-south loading configuration completely packing the fire box with wood. Thoughts?

The wood I am using was cut by me from mostly long dead, standing oak and cherry trees with some oddball stuff mixed in. It was split, stacked and stored under a plastic tarp for the past year or two. Most of it spends a few more weeks inside the shop before making it to the stove.

Thank you Jetsam for the detective work tracking down the manufacturer. I see you are also from Long Island and wonder if you might know who sold these stoves around here. I was surprised when I got it that it was from Canada. A long way to ship something like this. I was hoping to find a manual to answer my questions about flue size and dampers but the responses from members here have taken care of most of that. The stove seems pretty low-tech to me so I don't think there is much to go wrong other than the installation and my own techniques.

I agree with Begreen that an insulated floor would help. If I ever do it again I will definitely insulate the floor and maybe add radiant heat. I have found that after not using the shop for a few winter days, even after I get the air temperature up to a comfortable 60 degree working temperature, the floor is still so cold that it makes my feet ache. Insulated boots help some and I have added mats around some of my workstations.

Again, thank you all who have taken the time to respond and offer suggestions. Your help is greatly appreciated!

 

[begreen]

The stove is running somewhat cool. With good dry wood I would expect to see stove top temps around 600F.

 

[jetsam]

Thank you Jetsam for the detective work tracking down the manufacturer. I see you are also from Long Island and wonder if you might know who sold these stoves around here. I was surprised when I got it that it was from Canada. A long way to ship something like this. I was hoping to find a manual

Well, personally I would probably just try to get it working acceptably well until I found a deal on a tube/cat stove to replace it with, then scrap it. It's nice to get cheap/free stuff to fix up, but if you are in the shop a lot, you'll appreciate a stove that puts out more heat for less wood (or maybe even one that can go 12 hours untended).

I do not know a thing about local stove shops (I'm an import), but you could ask around there. If you are just curious and want the manual and some history on your old beast, you might have better luck writing to stove shops in the Waterloo/Granby area- that stove had to have sold more near its factory than way down south in NY.

It does look cool. Looks like a machine that was designed to do some work, not look good in the catalog.

 

[peakbagger]

A general observation is that you are "heating a barn" because of the high ceiling height. You have a cement slab that appears to be un-insulated with no floor covering. Its going to take quite awhile to heat up the slab and its going to suck out a lot of heat down near the floor. You are trying to heat the area with a point source stove which is a combination of radiant heat (line of sight) and convective heat and its inadequate. You then run a gas furnace which is highly likely an air based system with a blower fan and you are warm enough. My suspicion is that you probably have an issue with damp fuel which is restricting stove output, but the bigger issue is lack of air circulation with the wood stove as the garage is probably not empty. I would suspect that with this set up there will be wide variations in temperature from floor to ceiling and at different points around the floor. This setup is why most many designers specify radiant heat in an insulated floor slab for work spaces. The heat comes uniformly out of the floor so there are no cold spots and the space can be heated to lower temp overall. Odds are you aren't in the mood to redo the floor so a different type of wood heating source might be the ticket.

I am not speculating a lot as I have a very similar space in my garage. I had a Fisher look alike wood stove and it took many hours to get somewhat comfortable and the floor slab really didn't warm up for days. I used a jet heater to supplement. How I solved the issue was to install an old add on wood furnace that was designed to tie into a hot air heating system that I had sitting around. Its pretty crude just a welded steel fire box with fire bricks surrounded by a sheet metal box with a blower fan in the back and a duct connection on the top. The fan is controlled by snap disk, when the stove warms up the fan turns on. I have no duct work connected to it. It substantially increase convective air flow and reduces radiant heat from the stove. Effectively what happens is it blows air up towards the ceiling which distributes out towards the walls and then cools down and drops to the floor and then runs along the floor back to the stove. With this setup I could get the garage to working temp within an hour. I have an kerosene fired jet heater so I start the stove and run the jet heater. The stove heats up in about 15 minutes and the fan turns on. I then turn off the jet heater and re feed the wood furnace and in about 20 minutes the entire space is warm enough to work in. Within two hours the place gets too hot and I usually crack the door open even in cold weather. The wood furnace is a crude beast, cast iron bottom grate with loose fitting air flap feeding air under the grate with an ash pan under the grate. Its darn close to impossible to regulate with air and doesn't retain coals on the grate so I have to feed it small amounts of wood frequently or it goes out. I could probably optimize the system by installing a distribution ducting but find it isn't worth the hassle

One thing to note is the wood furnace is very effective at moving warm air and would also be very effective at moving fire. I don't have an over temperature snap disk on my discharge duct but it might be good idea.

 

[jetsam]

You could run radiant floor heating off a wood furnace, but you will have to take everything out and pour a mud floor on top of the slab. OR you could tile the floor with electric radiant under the tile, build a wood gasifier, and convert a generator to wood gas to run the electric...

(Well, insulation sounds easier and cheaper, but the wood gasifier is easily 10 times as cool.)

 

[Barn Guy]

I realize that I am asking a lot from this stove but if I could get the temperatures up to a reasonable range, I would accept how well (or bad) it heats.

Today I took the cheap way out and installed a damper about 18" up in the flue pipe. I also tried loading the stove in a north-south orientation and almost filling the fire box. After the fire got started I experimented with the damper and didn't see much difference. The biggest difference seemed to come with closing down the air inlets where I was able to get the flue temperature up to the mid-300's and stove top temperature up to 485 degrees.

I'll have to spend more time experimenting to find what this stove likes and a little less time on other projects.

Thanks for everyone's suggestions and happy and safe holidays to all!