Wood stove for small work shed?? Expertise please ..

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jeffee

New Member
Hearth Supporter
Nov 1, 2007
143
Western Ma
My uncle is considering a wood stove for a shed where he has a friend working on rock masonry. I have some thoughts about this, but I'm certainly no expert. Do you folks have any ideas? Location is Ohio. Here's his description:

This shed is about 12 feet by 14 feet with a ceiling about 10 feet high. There is no insulation and I don't really want to put any in there because of the cost and time and labor involved, but I might end up having to do that anyway. The other feature is that I have his huge exhaust fan that we are going to mount in the back wall of the shed which is designed to blow all the thick clouds of rock dust out the back so he won't choke to death while he is using the rock grinder. In order for that fan to be able to blow the dust out, he is going to have to crack open one of the doors in the front wall to let air in. In other words, this shed might be small, but it is going to need a great lot of heat to keep it warm enough so he won't get frostbite. There are trees growing all around, as well as over the top to some extent, of the shed so we would have to be careful about setting them on fire. With all that, what would your suggestions be about what kind and how big a stove to get?

Thanks in advance!
 
More than heatloss, it sounds like there will be extreme negative pressure in the building at times. I would consider electric or gas overhead radiant heaters first. But if determined to do it with wood, it seems like it would take a highly radiant stove installed with generous clearances and/or wall shielding, with a blower and an outside air kit.
 
I should think the fan will just blow out the heat with the dust in such a small space. Depending on the power of the fan and its placement relative to the stove, you could suck smoke out of the draft, depending on the stove.

If the idea is to keep personally warm while working out in the cold, basically, I would place electric radiant heaters closer to where I stand to work. But even that heat would get sucked out by the fan. Your body will have to absorb some heat and then you hit the fan and work to remove dust. Then stop, and repeat the process.
 
jeffee said:
My uncle is considering a wood stove for a shed where he has a friend working on rock masonry. I have some thoughts about this, but I'm certainly no expert. Do you folks have any ideas? Location is Ohio. Here's his description:

This shed is about 12 feet by 14 feet with a ceiling about 10 feet high. There is no insulation and I don't really want to put any in there because of the cost and time and labor involved, but I might end up having to do that anyway. The other feature is that I have his huge exhaust fan that we are going to mount in the back wall of the shed which is designed to blow all the thick clouds of rock dust out the back so he won't choke to death while he is using the rock grinder. In order for that fan to be able to blow the dust out, he is going to have to crack open one of the doors in the front wall to let air in. In other words, this shed might be small, but it is going to need a great lot of heat to keep it warm enough so he won't get frostbite. There are trees growing all around, as well as over the top to some extent, of the shed so we would have to be careful about setting them on fire. With all that, what would your suggestions be about what kind and how big a stove to get?

Thanks in advance!

Sounds like he needs to grind outside with the fan behind him. This is too small a room for such a task and to ask for a heated space of any type is futile. Ever thought of wet grind, which cuts the dust drastically ? or a dust collection system routing the duct directly over the workpiece ? These solutions may not help for such a small workroom and such a labor intensive effort

Maybe he should just do the grinding outside, and come in for a cup of coffee by the potbelly during breaktime.
 
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