Old PE "standard", some issues, keep it or upgrade, your opinions?

[YkDave]

Hey Guys! New to the forum, not so new to burning wood, though my previous experience while growing up was burning retarded amounts of wood in a ~6cu/ft home made cast iron stove. Far from anything efficient, but wow that sucker could throw out heat and wood supply was no concern!

Anyways, ive been up in the great white north for ~10 years and its always been oil/propane heat for me up here. i purchased this 'house' (mobile home, but we refer to them like typical houses up here as stick built houses are an extremely expensive rarity!) 2 years ago. Its got a PE "1990 design D standard" wood stove that was installed by the original owners.

Ive got a few concerns/issues now that this is the first year i am actually using it as my primary heat source.

1) This sucker tends to blow alot of smoke (and ash if you just whip open the door right away haha) back into the room while refueling, regardless of opening up the air or cracking the door open for ~30sec before opening it up (though it helps somewhat)

2) likely relating to #1, the stovepipe though somehow passes inspection, their is an obvious gap where it enters the stovetop (it isnt seated all the way down) and an awkward "jog" in the stovepipe as it goes up. i'd suspect neither one of these helps the smoke backdrafting

3) fixing #2 issues is likely to make this issue worse. Though i can get a respectable ~8hr burn with enough coals to relight the fire, i am looking for more. Jammed right to the hilt, and air shut down as far as the EPA allows (LOL), with the wood ive got, i get a clean low burn (absolutely no buildup on the glass/firebox/stovepipe), it just doesnt burn long enough for me. I regularly work out of town for 12hrs+ a day, and if the wife cant come home on her lunch break to throw in a log or two, its going to be stone cold when i get home, obviously not ideal in my eyes.


So as usual, im up in arms as to what i should do...

Either way, the stovepipe is getting fixed/replaced. it looks like its taken a chimney fire at least once as its discolored at the connection to the stove (where the gap is, which likely fed air to a chimney fire) and at the "Jog" in the stovepipe.

Ive been debating the switch to a catalytic stove, but their is literally nobody up here running one that i can see for myself and get first hand reviews in running them in our conditions. id hate to blow a ton of cash on a catalytic stove with hopes of their claimed 20+hr burn times on low, only to end up with something that still isnt going to keep the house warm when im away for ~12hrs

I think the biggest issue for me achieving long burn times is the wood. Up here wood is scarce, buying wood thats trucked in is so expensive its hardly worth the effort/hassle of running wood ($325/cord!). but when ive got time to burn, myself like many others make the 4hr round trip south to go cut our own wood (i usually just take my truck, so my cost is about $60 in fuel to get a cord of wood). Still the selection is zero, its jackpine or nothing, but luckily their are thousands of acres of jackpine that was slightly crisped from a forest fire. This stuff is extremely dry, which isnt helping extend the burn times, but it is great in the fact that it burns so clean with the air closed off!

Last winter, running propane forced air heat as my primary heat, i averaged 17,200BTU/Hr being dumped into the household to give you an idea of the heat requirements. during the colder winter days, the actual heat requirements are upwards of 30,000btu/hr. so ideally i want to be able to sustain 30k/btu/hr for the 12hrs i am away from the stove.

So, getting super long winded now... whats everyones thoughts...?

 

[YkDave]

This is the awkward and poorly installed stovepipe. bad pic but as you may be able to see, about half the crimp is exposed where it connects to the stove, then proceeds up to some kind of dr seuss looking bend


Like i say, for what it is, its got a respectable burn with this wood. this was after 3hrs on low with half a 9" log tossed in there and the stove on low for the whole burn. still has some secondary flames goin on

 

[begreen]

Welcome. To help improve draft get some furnace cement and pack it in the gap around the flue collar. How tall is the chimney outside? Adding 2-3 ft there might really help with the smoke spillage too. This stove will want to have about 15 ft total flue on it.

We have members from further north than you that swear by their BK stoves. Blaze King is conservative in rating their stoves. The Princess will put out 40,863 BTU's/h constant output for 10 hours. At 30K btus/hr you should see much better. If you want to upgrade to a larger stove like the Princess or Sirocco30 I think you will be satisfied. They are built to burn pine.

(broken link removed to http://www.blazeking.com/EN/wood-stoves.html)

 

[YkDave]

Thanks, the chimney is only about 2ft above the roofline. Total chimney length is maybe 10-12ft, along with the leaks and dr Seuss setup, that's probably not helping the draft.

The blaze kings were what I was looking into, they've always had a good name with everyone I knew than ran one, though I don't know anyone running a catalytic model. the princess was looking like a good candidate, should be more than sufficient.

 

[begreen]

Sounds like you will need to add 3+ ft to the chimney and brace it. That will make a nice improvement. If you go Blaze King they recommend double-wall for the interior pipe due to the low flue temps these stoves run.

 

[Grisu]

In your case a pellet stove may be best; especially since you don't even have a good wood supply. 12+ hours of usable heat is asking a lot from a woodstove.

 

[YkDave]

The only issue with pellets are that their is very little cost savings to buying pellets up here vs buying wood or even running propane/oil

Buying wood means you pay out the arse because it's been hauled at least 200km, but pellets are trucked over 1000km from the nearest plant. In many places pellets are the way to go as far as efficiency/cost savings, but logistics put a damper on the cost savings up here!

Just a rough calculation, wood right now costs me about $1 to produce 200,000btu, switching to pellets would be $1 per 60,000btu. I know the numbers are a bit out, I'm 300km north of town right now and just working with my phone, but it would cost roughly 4x as much to heat with pellets vs gathering wood myself. Still cheaper than oil and propane, but would definitely take longer for a stove investment to pay off

The old propane furnace in the house is due for an upgrade soon too. I've also mulled over the idea briefly of replacing it and adding an air handler to run an outdoor wood boiler but I don't see that happening anytime soon

 

[begreen]

How often do you lose power? That was one of the reasons why I sold our pellet stove.

 

[YkDave]

Bahahaha lets not even go down that road!

Some years are worse than others, but it's not uncommon to have weekly power failures that last upwards of 4 hours. Typically when we lose the hydro power we will go onto diesel backup, which puts the city in appx 4 hour rolling blackouts... Why did I chose to move here? Lol

Wouldn't be too bad to run a pellet stove on a ups for blackouts, lots of people do it up here but still the price of running pellets doesn't make it very appealing

 

[Grisu]

The only issue with pellets are that their is very little cost savings to buying pellets up here vs buying wood or even running propane/oil

Buying wood means you pay out the arse because it's been hauled at least 200km, but pellets are trucked over 1000km from the nearest plant. In many places pellets are the way to go as far as efficiency/cost savings, but logistics put a damper on the cost savings up here!

Just a rough calculation, wood right now costs me about $1 to produce 200,000btu, switching to pellets would be $1 per 60,000btu. I know the numbers are a bit out, I'm 300km north of town right now and just working with my phone, but it would cost roughly 4x as much to heat with pellets vs gathering wood myself. Still cheaper than oil and propane, but would definitely take longer for a stove investment to pay off

The old propane furnace in the house is due for an upgrade soon too. I've also mulled over the idea briefly of replacing it and adding an air handler to run an outdoor wood boiler but I don't see that happening anytime soon

Tough spot you are in. I would not have survived there for 10 years and counting. A large cat stove that can be dialed down will probably be the best option for you then. Besides the Blazekings, there are also the Kuma stoves like the Sequoia. Those are cats with the option of adjusting the heat output. I have seen quite a few happy owners here. The Sequoia would probably need a pipe switch to 8-inch though but the Ashwood will probably be too small. I would definitively check them out.

Btw. I would strongly suggest to keep your propane furnace. You will need a reliable heat source when you are out of town or not able to tend the stove for any kind of reason.

 

[YkDave]

Yes I should have worded it a little better. If I did the boiler route, the boiler would be propane backup, or the air handler in the house would be stacked with a propane furnace.

Either way I'm not getting away from propane completely as I have propane hot water on demand and cooking stove, and since propane is about as trouble free as it gets I'd keep it for backup heat!

Not too worried if I have to redo the entire pipe. The lower half should be done regardless since it looks half burnt out lol, and the rest of it is ~25 years old.

Thanks for the pointer on the kuma stoves. So far I've only looked toward the blaze kings as I've never seen or known anyone in this end of the world that uses anything but pe or blaze king haha

 

[Grisu]

I have not seen one myself in action yet but by all accounts the Sequoia seems to be a beast of a heater. Here is some info and a vid from their website:
http://kumastoves.com/index.php?dispatch=news.view&news_id=10

 

[begreen]

Can this stove put out 30-40KBTUs for 10-12 hrs.?

 

[Grisu]

3.6 cu ft firebox and here is a quote from the website I linked to:"So I dug into it a little more and found that the Sequoia (Formerly known as the K-300/K-400) ranks 9th in BTU output out of over 900 wood burning products on the market today." (2011 EPA list) Should at least come close, I think.

 

[begreen]

But is that a heat spike or a fairly constant heat source over half of the day? This is a harsh environment that needs real world results.

 

[Grisu]

That would be something the OP should inquire with Kuma or actual Sequoia owners here in the forum. I have nothing against Blazeking but why not let the OP choose which stove fits best his needs?

 

[YkDave]

Still on my phone so I haven't had a chance to check it out myself yet.

The thing I liked about the big blaze kings was the fact that they could throw out a very constant heat rather than peaking and dropping off sharply

In all reality it's not life or death if it can't put out 30k/btu for 12hrs, that's basically worst case scenario. Generally my heat requirements are under 20k/btu/hr, even if the fire is down to embers and the stove is cooling off, the house would be fine if their was no heat for an hour (say if the power was out, so no backup)

This is something that the current stove just cannot do. If i was out of town and the power goes out, all hell would break lose. The house holds heat alright at -50c, but after about an hour it starts dropping hard, not to mention what the water lines think of the whole situation haha

 

[begreen]

That would be something the OP should inquire with Kuma or actual Sequoia owners here in the forum. I have nothing against Blazeking but why not let the OP choose which stove fits best his needs?

No one is telling the OP what to do. But it helps to remain objective.

 

[Grisu]

Hmm, we must have different definitions of objective then. I like to leave the choice to the OP by providing all available options even the ones that seem to be a bit off but may have qualities we have not talked about yet. Mentioning only one or two options just because I think they will fit does not sound really objective to me.

 

[YkDave]

Well, looking at the kuma, it's not approved for mobile homes. Not that I really care, but if the ol lady burns down the house, the insurance company isn't going to like it!

The princess is still approved for mh with the necessary options

The princess is probably the route I will take. 40kbtu/hr for 10hrs running wide open means that even if it's a pretty freakin chilly day and I needed 30kbtu/hr to hold heat in the house it should technically still be burning when I get home, or at least not completely cooled off. On milder winter days I "should" be able to get 24hrs out of it

 

[Grisu]

Well, looking at the kuma, it's not approved for mobile homes. Not that I really care, but if the ol lady burns down the house, the insurance company isn't going to like it!

Sorry, forgot that you live in a mobile home. Enjoy the BK Princess and stay warm up there!

 

[YkDave]

Welcome to the worlds largest trailer park bahahaha

Figure I should still extend the chimney a bit? I'm sure the original install was kept short like it is so that it retained a bit of heat