SOAK: Gettin' the heat out of my insert when the power is out?

[Cearbhaill]

Source Of All Knowledge guys- what's the deal on getting the best use of an insert if/when my power goes out tonight with the ice storm?

With no blower am I better served heatwise by opening the door all the way, opening it a bit, or not opening it at all?
With the door open it feels like I'm getting more heat out, but then of course it is drafting wide open, too, and I'm heating the great outdoors.

And should I be reloading full loads or just enough to keep it perking along?

School me

 

[Stevebass4]

i would not open the door as that would just suck the heat out of your home

i have a genset that will run the blower - maybe you could get an inverter to run off the car - but if that's not an option just close off the rooms not in use and keep the stove running at around 600

 

[bsruther]

If your shroud is easy to remove, I would take that off if the power goes down.
I heard Maysville was supposed to get the worst of it. I have about a half inch of sleet on the ground right now.
Turning to freezing rain.

 

[Cearbhaill]

We do have a generator we could use if it is a long period- I'm speaking more about the 2-3-4-5 hour overnight sort of outages.
I wouldn't crank that thing up in middle of the night anyway- it's too noisy.

Never took my shroud off- wouldn't know how.

OK - door closed, smallish load towards the front.

Anything else?

 

[Dix]

Get dry wood in the house.

OK, I'm sorry, but it had to be said

Gas cook stove, or electric? Well or city water?

 

[fossil]

As the SSRBSQOUK (Source of Some Random Bits of Sometimes Questionable but Occasionally Useful Knowledge), I would suggest, as others nearly universally have here, to burn it with the doors shut. Rick

 

[Cearbhaill]

Get dry wood in the house.

OK, I'm sorry, but it had to be said

Gas cook stove, or electric? Well or city water?

Plenty of wood inside, more in the garage, and even more under cover outside.

And I'm from hurricane country- well able to know how to survive without electricity, just new to the whole cold weather/ wood burnin' thing.

 

[southland]

I recommend a power inverter and 12V battery. For the battery, a deep cycle is best, but an auto or even a lawn mower battery will work. I would not leave the stove unattended while doing this. My parents ran their insert this way for a couple of days.

 

[pulldownclaw]

One thing I've heard (which makes complete sense but I didn't think of) is to take the blower off to let the natural flow of air get around the insert. I don't know how easy that is for you, but on the Hampton I just pull it right off the bottom, no biggie, and that will let the air get around easier. If you have a blockoff plate and your surround comes off easily, do that as well if needed. Close the doors to that room and enjoy the campout!

 

[Corey]

I've made it through a couple of 3 day power outages with batteries and an inverter. The power went out, late one night, so I switched over to an inverter and (I think it was a Group 24) truck battery and ran the blower through the night. Got up the next day, went to work, took the battery with me and put it on a charger. Then fired up the stove/fan with the fresh charged battery when I got home - and just repeated that cycle for 3 days. I was getting by with a ~150 watt inverter which was more than enough to power the blower. Although since most (especially cheap) inverters only approximate a true sine wave, the blower was making more noise than usual. As mentioned, a generator is always nice...even a pretty small one will keep necessities like the blower and refrigerator running. Another way to go is to keep a couple of small 12 volt fans handy. You can set them to blow air around the insert to get heat out. You can run them straight off a battery, so you don't have the expense of the inverter and you don't loose 1/2 your power in the 12>120V conversion.

 

[velvetfoot]

I looked at a picture of your insert and I think you should be okay.
It has a pretty good bump out onto the hearth, much more than mine, and mine kept the downstairs tolerably warm for three days at 10F during our last ice storm.
We tried not to run it too hot.
We ran the generator about an hour each day, mostly to take showers, which really were a treat, and flush the toilets (we're on a well).

 

[Cearbhaill]

Well, so far so good this morning- no loss.
Fire crews did come and wake me up at 2am to tell me they had to cut my cable TV line as it was blocking the road, but as I don't have cable TV it's no big deal. It's not a phone line either, and everything else here is working fine, so I'll check with my neighbors later in the day to see what it is.

 

[velvetfoot]

Don't touch any wires.
Assume everything is energized.

 

[DAKSY]

Source Of All Knowledge guys- what's the deal on getting the best use of an insert if/when my power goes out tonight with the ice storm?

With no blower am I better served heatwise by opening the door all the way, opening it a bit, or not opening it at all?
With the door open it feels like I'm getting more heat out, but then of course it is drafting wide open, too, and I'm heating the great outdoors.

And should I be reloading full loads or just enough to keep it perking along?

School me

I googled Pacific Energy D-! & found this:

(broken link removed to http://chimneysweeponline.com/hosummitblower.htm)

I'd say you have nothing to worry about with no power, & you don't hafta pull the blower to clear the way for convection...

 

[CarbonNeutral]

The Quadrafire insert in our rental did not come with the optional fans. We were out for four days with the ice storm in December. We had no problem heating our house with just the insert and no blowers. Now finding enough water to flush a 7 gallon toilet, that was more tricky (ended up draining the hot water tank).

Good luck.

 

[Cearbhaill]

I googled Pacific Energy D-! & found this:

(broken link removed to http://chimneysweeponline.com/hosummitblower.htm)

I'd say you have nothing to worry about with no power, & you don't hafta pull the blower to clear the way for convection...

Oooh!
Bingo, and thank you SO much for doing what I should have done myself.
Very helpful.

 

[jhoff75]

I've run my insert fan off of one of those jumpstart/air compressor/battery things and it seemed to work fine for a few hours. Cheap & easy.

http://www.sears.com/shc/s/p_10153_12605_02871488000P?mv=rr

 

[oconnor]

I run my insert with no fan almost all the time and get good heat out of it. I use a thermometer to avoid overfiring it, and I burn it quite hot (700*F) with no trouble.

The fan may be quiet, but it is still annoying when watching my TV shows.