Bruce's Journal

[thistlebloom]

I think the cost of the chimney could be a deterrent. Even a triple wall metal chimney isn't cheap.

True, but you only need the insulated pipe through the attic area. We have single wall, then triple through the roof, which because our ceiling is vaulted it doesn't have a lot of attic to go through.

 

[Bruce]

Did you get any snow? My brother sent a picture from my parents in NH that they got 5 inches. I guess a day or 2 ago?
Boy, I sure don't want to see any of that stuff with my peach trees in full bloom....

Yep, about 3". It all melted yesterday and today though. No problem with fruit trees flowering here yet.

 

[Bruce]

True, but you only need the insulated pipe through the attic area. We have single wall, then triple through the roof, which because our ceiling is vaulted it doesn't have a lot of attic to go through.

Yes but what does STA have? If not vaulted one story he'll need a lot of triple wall either straight up or out the wall.

 

[Senile_Texas_Aggie]

I have vaulted ceilings. I will talk to the boss and see what she would like to do. I also watched the HomeSteadHow video where they reviewed their outdoor wood stove. They reside in Wisconsin, so they burn a lot more wood during the winter. Here's the video if you want to see for yourself:

 

[Bruce]

OK, then we have to determine the layout of your house and do you already have hot water heat you could tap an outdoor furnace to?
If the house is a fairly open floor plan you could heat it with a single wood stove in the house. Probably need a few registers, some possibly with fans.

Seems like he's heating a lot with that boiler but I sure wouldn't want to / be capable of cutting 10 cords of wood a year.

 

[thistlebloom]

Besides the quality of wood heat, I'm pretty addicted to watching the fire through the glass. It's so cheering when it's ugly and cold outside.

We used to have a propane fireplace that was intended for heating the house (our house is little, 1200sf). It was loud and horribly inefficient. When the power went out one winter for 12 hours we decided we needed to have something that was not dependent on electricity. The electric stove that also came with the house went out about the same time, so we installed a gas one, and tore out the old propane fireplace and put in the woodstove. Now when the power goes out we know we can keep the house warm and cook.

 

[Bruce]

Yep, nothing so inefficient as a fireplace of any nature. Most of the heat goes straight up the chimney. They were necessary a hundred plus years ago, before wood and coal stoves. And those were necessary before oil/gas central heat, no muss, no fuss ... and ... no electricity, no heat. More recently - pellet stoves, less fuss and muss than wood though I think most still require electricity to run the auger but they can be run with battery backup.

 

[thistlebloom]

Yep, nothing so inefficient as a fireplace of any nature. Most of the heat goes straight up the chimney. They were necessary a hundred plus years ago, before wood and coal stoves. And those were necessary before oil/gas central heat, no muss, no fuss ... and ... no electricity, no heat. More recently - pellet stoves, less fuss and muss than wood though I think most still require electricity to run the auger but they can be run with battery backup.

My mom and dad went from woodstove heating to a pellet stove. The pellets were easier for my dad to store and mom liked that they were neater. But she missed the more radient heat of a woodstove, and that even when the fire died you still got heat from it. The pellet stove cooled down immediately when the fire was out. But that was nearly 30 years ago and maybe they have better features now.

 

[High Desert Cowboy]

Wood burner is the way to go. I’ve installed two in my house, one was a lesson learned. We put one in the unfinished basement because everyone said it would be great and would heat our home wonderfully. We couldn’t ever get the upstairs past 67 degrees on a warmer day. So I told my wife we had two options, be cold every winter or she could start going downstairs to do the laundry. Tore out the upstairs utility closet where the junky furnace was, tore out the “mud room” where the washer and dryer were and installed a free standing wood stove. That put it more or less smack in the middle of the house and it melts us on the coldest days. Just gotta pay a little for the wood cutting permit and spend some healthy hours outside cutting and splitting wood and telling your kids/spouse for the hundredth time that no they can’t go inside yet because there’s still wood to stack.

this is when I first moved it upstairs. Since then I’ve replaced the flooring and added some dark stained 3x3s with hardware on the outside of the heat shield to give it a better look. Heats like a champ.

Then you get to make some trips like this.
A word in pellet stoves, they have their uses but everyone I’ve talked to who used one said they didn’t like them and after a year or two replaced them with wood stoves. I’ve helped replace a couple of those. The plus is you can get them that self regulate and maintain a constant temperature but they didn’t do as well in the radiant heat department and buying pellets didn’t really save them any money. But it was convenient not having to cut the wood.

 

[Bruce]

It is great that you can have your stove in the middle of the house. As built, at least 160 years ago, this house had a central chimney, there is a notch in the 5 sided hand hewn ridge pole. The fireplace below on the first floor would have been very central to the house and used for heat and cooking. No way to have the woodstove there now because at some point someone moved the stairs. The woodstove is in the SW corner of the living room, not the best place to get even heat through the house.

At some point an idiot put two chimneys upstairs at either end of the house. I say idiot because they didn't offset them a bit, they cut the ends off the ridge pole The brick part of those chimneys in the attic was removed, again "at some point", but the "chimney cabinets" in the rooms below are still in place. Whoever did that "cleverly" slapped a couple of boards up to connect the cut off rafters to the end of the cut off ridge pole. My GUESS is that there was a room at either end of the house upstairs with a woodstove in each one and the original staircase was an L shaped affair that came up to the center of the house between the two rooms upstairs. The original staircase would have been in what is now the open first floor, combo living and dining. No idea what the first floor layout was.