Wood Stove for East Central Iowa Home w/pics

[coryolson]

I am purchasing a home in DeWitt Iowa (15 miles north of the Quad Cities) in July that has a wood stove in it. The owners are taking it with them and giving me some money towards the purchase of a new one. They have a 20 year old stove that I am sure will not be as efficient a new one I will purchase and was wondering about a proper sized stove. The house is 1250 sqft on the main level and 1000 square feet finished in the basement. The stove is in the basement in about a family room about 30x15 which has an open office next to it at 15x12 and a bedroom with a door adjacent to it at 16x12 (where the picture is taken from). They put a cold air return right above the stove and use the fan on the Heating system to heat the whole house. My wife and I really like the HearthStone Heritage and Bennington, but are unsure of the size that would be right. We want to heat the whole house but still want to be able to be in the basement at a comfortabe temp (not too hot!). I have attached pictures of the outside of the house and the basement to give a better idea of what I am talking about.

thanks in advance.
Cory

 

[coryolson]

I meant to include the Mansfield and Phoenix as we really like the soapstone.

thanks again
Cory

 

[titan]

Cory, sounds like you're on track with a soapstone stove....it should meet your criteria in the sense that it won't burn you out of the basement like cast-iron or steel might.As for sizing a unit for your space, I believe the Mansfield is overkill but the Heritage oughta be a good match for your sq. footage.The soapstone folks will likely chime in soon as well;you'll have a sea of suggestions and info to swim in.Bon chance!

 

[begreen]

A sopastone stove will look very nice in there.ow do you intend to use it? Round the clock or evenings and weekends?

Ask the current owners what stove they have and how it worked out. That's probably a good guide as to size.

 

[coryolson]

I have never had a wood stove, so I guess I am not sure how we will end up using it, would like to use it to heat the house. I dont want to pay the gas man anymore. I did ask the owners about the size of stove they had and they were unsure. They did say that it gets hot enough downstairs to make it uncomfortable.

thanks
Cory

 

[Gooserider]

I am purchasing a home in DeWitt Iowa (15 miles north of the Quad Cities) in July that has a wood stove in it. The owners are taking it with them and giving me some money towards the purchase of a new one. They have a 20 year old stove that I am sure will not be as efficient a new one I will purchase and was wondering about a proper sized stove. The house is 1250 sqft on the main level and 1000 square feet finished in the basement. The stove is in the basement in about a family room about 30x15 which has an open office next to it at 15x12 and a bedroom with a door adjacent to it at 16x12 (where the picture is taken from). They put a cold air return right above the stove and use the fan on the Heating system to heat the whole house. My wife and I really like the HearthStone Heritage and Bennington, but are unsure of the size that would be right. We want to heat the whole house but still want to be able to be in the basement at a comfortabe temp (not too hot!). I have attached pictures of the outside of the house and the basement to give a better idea of what I am talking about.

thanks in advance.
Cory

You are probably on the right track in terms of thinking about soapstone, but I'm concerned about the cold air return over the stove you mentioned in the quote that I bolded - There are two issues, one performance, the other safety...

1. Performance - unless the entire HVAC system is in the heated space, including all the duct work, you may not get as good performance as you might think. A typical forced air system has fairly high heat losses going through the ducts, and by the time the heat gets sucked in, and blown throughout the system it may not be that much help... A furnace works in an HVAC system because the heat exchanger is MUCH hotter than what you are going to get off the stove.

2. Safety - Code generally prohibits a cold air return w/in 10 feet of a wood burning appliance, it is considered very dangerous to put one closer, especially over a stove. The reason is that if the stove malfunctions in any way, either by leaking fumes, or having a fire start, the return can rapidly spread smoke or toxic fumes throughout the house, including into the sleeping areas, possibly before a warning alarm was triggered. I would want to have the installation looked at very closely by a competent inspector (note that not all gov't inspectors are...) before purchasing the home, or possibly before running a stove in that location.

One of our members, Elk, (who seems to be taking the summer off,) is a very competent building inspector, if he sees this I am sure he could tell you better than I about the problems with the setup as you are describing it.

Gooserider

 

[karl]

I don't mean to steal your thread but this brings up a question I have. I know about not being able to have a cold air return within 10 feet of a stove, but what about a simplewall pass through to an adjoining room? Would that be up to code with or without a little fan in it?

 

[Gooserider]

I don't mean to steal your thread but this brings up a question I have. I know about not being able to have a cold air return within 10 feet of a stove, but what about a simplewall pass through to an adjoining room? Would that be up to code with or without a little fan in it?

Paging Elk, Paging Elk, Code questions in the Main Hearth Room.... :cheese:

I'm not sure about wall pass throughs. I know previous discussions have frowned on floor / ceiling pass throughs, both on the grounds of controlling any hypothetical toxic fumes, and also because a floor pass through will compromise your fire barrier integrity and allow more rapid spread of any fire that gets started (regardless of cause) This is relieved somewhat by making the ceiling pass through with a thermal cutoff shutter that will close a built in door in the vent in case temperatures go above a set limit.

I know Elk advocates tieing the HVAC system into the smoke detectors so that the system shuts down if the alarms go off, which seems like a reasonable idea to me.

Whether the same logic applies to wall pass throughs I don't know. It would seem to me like a wall pass isn't that much different from a door, and you can pretty much put a door where ever you want, but I'm not an expert on that, so it is speculation on my part.

Hopefully Elk will see this and answer it...

Gooserider

 

[karl]

I don't have any problems with the smoke detector thing. Infact, I'm looking into how to install a good system now. I'm a pilot and I can't believe there isn't more fire protection stuff offered for stoves. I was thinking I could easily buy a fire supression system for stoves and I haven't found one yet. All it would take is bottle of halon, a squib, and few temperature probes and you would be immune to chimney fires. That's what we have on jet engines.

As far was the wall pass through. If I could install it. It would go a long way towards me being able to heat my whole house instead of half of it.

 

[begreen]

Halon has been banned for most usages for several years, the aircraft industry excepted.

Explain what you mean by a wall pass through. Do you mean an over the door opening like a transom vent. They are fine. Free air circulation is not an issue. Introducing it into the central heating system is a whole 'nuther can of worms.

https://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/forums/viewthread/3851/P15/

 

[BrotherBart]

Yep. Blowing Halon into an engine outside of the airframe is a whole nother thing from blowing it in your house and it displacing the oxygen in the living space. You can fight a fire or leave the house when you are still breathing. And in the cockpit you get the option to pop it. Now an EGT alarm, yep I think every stove should have one and can't believe they aren't available.

BroBart (who dropped his A&P license years ago but has EGT probes on every stove pipe)

 

[karl]

I'm not talking about blowing it in your house. And actually, alot of airplanes still use freon instead of halon, but you could the same thing with CO2. What i'm talking about is blowing it into the chimney. You could put temperature sensors in the chimney to detect an abnormality. Feed the halon, freon, CO2 or whatever into the stack via a feed line or two. Then when the temperature rises to high or at to rapid of a rate and alarm goes off. If after, so many minutes, a person doesn't reset the alarm. Then the device blows the squib and shoots all of the retardent into the chimney and you should probably blow some of into the stove itself. You could also have it rigged to closed a damper as well. It's really a similar situation to a jet engine. We have no way of containing the fire suppressant in an engine. They are an open design and we are going 500 MPH. Therefore, our goal to put out a fire is to remove the fuel and then remove the oxygen, and at the same time to chill everything so that is doesn't relight. That's why freon is/was such a good product. Our combustion cans run at 10,000 degrees celsius. The only way we can contain that type of heat in normal operation is with air holding the flame in the center away from the metal because no metal can withstand that temperature. Anyway it would be a great way to stop a chimney fire, especially if you put a damper on the top of the stack that closed when the system went off.

 

[littlesmokey]

I don't mean to steal your thread but this brings up a question I have. I know about not being able to have a cold air return within 10 feet of a stove, but what about a simplewall pass through to an adjoining room? Would that be up to code with or without a little fan in it?

Seems everyone want to answer their question, but not yours. The passive vent to another room is nothing more than a door or window. The issue with the vent is if you add a blower and you pipe it through your house you are potentially spreading the fire and the toxic gases without regard. Putting the sensors in the ducting is a great idea and should be part of all new installs. To say you can't cut a hole in your wall and frame it and add a drape is silly. No power vent or fan to a closed distribution system is the issue, and that is just sensible.

 

[babalu87]

A Morso 3610 may be a stove worth looking at too.
You will need to account for heating a tough area to heat (basement) and may need to adjust your firebox size to suit your needs.

 

[webbie]

You'll find a lot of information in the QA and here about basement heating as well as the idea of the cold air return thingy.

I always cautioned against such things because of the possibility of negative pressure. I visited one home with a coal stove in it that had a return located in the same room, and there was black soot and dust all around the return, meaning that it had been sucking up CO as well as soot, etc.

So keep both the combustion air and the negative pressure thing in mind. It is possible that a basement will be low on combustion air anyway.

A better way may be either a separate duct or room to room (or floor grate).......or, an open door at the top of a stairway. As will be repeated in some of the earlier threads and QA, the best way to attain central heating is with a central heater (wood)....

As far as size, one simple rule is to size the stove by the amount of wood you have available and intend to put into it. No need buying something massive if you are not going to feed it. As a for instance, a stove with a 4+ cubic foot firebox that needed filling every 8 hours would burn a cord of wood in less than two weeks. No problem if you have it - but if you are working (as many do) with a finite amount of wood - 3 cords is average for a lot of wood burners - then a stove with a firebox of 2 to 3 cubic feet might be best.

As far as chimney fire alarms, etc......many years ago (anyone remember), a group of engineers from VT. marketed an electronic chimney fire detector alarm....it was a tough sell because of the price, but I'm sure electronics have some down in cost. This one did not put out the fire.....

Since that time, chimney fires have become less frequent due to newer stoves and better burning habits.

 

[webbie]

I don't mean to steal your thread but this brings up a question I have. I know about not being able to have a cold air return within 10 feet of a stove, but what about a simplewall pass through to an adjoining room? Would that be up to code with or without a little fan in it?

I have in the past used small ceiling exhaust fans to pull heat from one room in a ranch house, through the attic (insulated duct) and then dump it into another room. I don't know the code issues surrounding this, but it seems no different than using the same fan to duct kitchen or bath air to the outside.

 

[Highbeam]

I don't mean to steal your thread but this brings up a question I have. I know about not being able to have a cold air return within 10 feet of a stove, but what about a simplewall pass through to an adjoining room? Would that be up to code with or without a little fan in it?

I have in the past used small ceiling exhaust fans to pull heat from one room in a ranch house, through the attic (insulated duct) and then dump it into another room. I don't know the code issues surrounding this, but it seems no different than using the same fan to duct kitchen or bath air to the outside.

The difference would be that pumping deadly gas outside is much better than pumping it into an adjacent living space. Now a ceiling fan or floor box fan would also act to distribute the poison more quickly and those seem to be frequently recommended here.

 

[begreen]

Good point. With a fan, that's a possibility with anything that's moving air in the house. The difference being that duct through the attic is: a) likely to have a lot of heat loss and b) unless it's fire dampered, it can also spread the fire much more quickly, as well as the smoke. We'd always turn off the circulating fan at night. However, the ecofan runs on it's own. Having several good smoke detectors and a well installed stove is our first line of defense.

 

[WarmGuy]

use the fan on the Heating system to heat the whole house.

One other comment on this concept. My Kill-a-watt meter showed me that our furnace's fan takes 500 watts. So, if you run it 10 hours a day, you're talking $15 to $30 per month.