Looking for Plan B - Need suggestions for backup heat

[deaconjim]

When we bought our new (vintage 1908) home last year, it came with a propane furnace and a pellet stove. We installed a whole house generator, so power outages (such as the one we had last week) are not an issue for either one, as long as they are not seriously long term.

We bought a small wood stove for an additional backup, but it seems we can't install it to code because it would have to share a chimney with the pellet stove. Now we are headed back to the drawing board.

We are considering one of the vent free propane stoves, but I'm wondering if there are any other options we may not have considered. Obviously, the best place to go for answers is HT. Anyone have any suggestions?

[tinknal]

Don't know how much time/money you want expend, but adding another chimney isn't that bad of a project if you can do it on an exterior wall.

[deaconjim]

Originally Posted by tinknal

Don't know how much time/money you want expend, but adding another chimney isn't that bad of a project if you can do it on an exterior wall.

The thought has crossed my mind, but both time and money are limited commodities, and the construction of the house doesn't lend itself to adding a chimney.

[clovis]

Outdoor wood furnace? Outdoor wood stove?

[jmtinmi]

We piped our wood stove using triple walled stove pipe. We took the window out and filled it with plywood and placed the pipe through that. If a window area isn't convenient, you can install through the wall to the outside.

[Freeholder]

Have you ever looked into rocket stoves? I don't know if you could find any place in the house to put one (is there a basement? That might work.), but the cost is minimal and they make a very safe and comfortable heat. If you have a long enough mass bench (or run the flue in the floor) you can safely have the flue vent out a wall rather than having to go up as a regular stove flue does.

Kathleen

[travlnusa]

We heat our house with a pellet stove (1st and 2nd stories), and have a ventless LP heater in the basement. Works fine, but far from Energy Star worthy. We are looking at adding a small wood stove or second pellet stove down here to cut back on LP.

[PhilJohnson]

I have a ventless propane heater. I think it is a 32,000 btu unit. It does alright but if it gets below 10 degrees it struggles to heat my house. Should be fine for you in West Virginia. One thing I don't like about it is that it puts out a bit of humidity in the air and the windows start icing up after a while.

[Rocky Fields]

Hey.

Put metal round chimney pipe up thru the existing chimney with a hole above existing chimney damper where you tie stove in.

RF

[Ross]

The only pellet stoves I'm familiar with use a special B vent that isn't rated for anything else. Yours goes up a chimney? I personally wouldn't use a ventless propane heater, would that really be cheaper than the chimney? I'm not sure how to fit it in, perhaps you can relocate the pellet stove and use the existing chimney and get the pellet stove B vent? Tough call without all the details. What do you use for hot water? If its a gas water heater you could run a baseboard or two off it or even a unit heater.

[Common Tator]

You may want to consider getting a small wood stove and storing it. If things get too bad and you can't get fuel for your pellet stove anymore, replace it with the wood stove using the same venting.

[tamsam]

A lot of people around here have used the triple wall insulated pipe for chimneys. they seem to work well. Check in the bullenton board {sp}. There is sometime whole systems in it for sale. Good luck.Sam

[Nevada]

Originally Posted by deaconjim

When we bought our new (vintage 1908) home last year, it came with a propane furnace and a pellet stove. We installed a whole house generator, so power outages (such as the one we had last week) are not an issue for either one, as long as they are not seriously long term.

We bought a small wood stove for an additional backup, but it seems we can't install it to code because it would have to share a chimney with the pellet stove. Now we are headed back to the drawing board.

We are considering one of the vent free propane stoves, but I'm wondering if there are any other options we may not have considered. Obviously, the best place to go for answers is HT. Anyone have any suggestions?

The wood stove isn't going to be cheap to install. Class A chimney pipe will probably run somewhere between $1500 and $2000. Check at Lowes, since they have the lowest priced chimney pipe kits I've seen. There's really no getting around the class A chimney pipe thing, since wood stoves have creosote build-up problems that pellet stoves don't have. Wood stove chimney fires are nasty. Once you go to the wall it's got to be class A chimney pipe the rest of the way, because if you get a cold spot in the chimney then creosote will collect and become a fire hazard.

I don't know the layout of your house, but it may be possible to vent the wood stove out your current chimney and then vent the pellet stove outside with its own dedicated 3" pellet stove vent. The reason I suggest that is that pellet stove vent pipe is a lot less expensive than class A wood stove chimney pipe. It would probably save you $1,000 or more to vent a pellet stove instead of a wood stove.

There's no reason to shy away from a ventless propane heater. The problem that PhilJohnson mentioned is due to not sizing the furnace for your home properly. Get more than one heater if necessary, mounting them at opposite ends of the house. Here's a really crude furnace capacity calculator. Just enter your square feet & zip code and it will give you a rough estimate.

http://www.alpinehomeair.com/Furnace-choosingsize.cfm

Ventless propane heaters aren't expensive. You can find them at eBay for around $150 new, and are completely satisfactory for emergency use. But you'll need to follow a few rules.

1. Provide no less than 50 cubic feet of volume for each 1,000 btu/hour of maximum heating capacity. Do not count room volumes that can be isolated by a door. Obviously, don't put one in a bathroom or bedroom.
2. Get a heater with an Oxygen Depletion Sensor (ODS), which will automatically shut-off the heater if the oxygen concentration in the house falls below 18%. Most ventless propane furnaces have them today.
3. Use a carbon monoxide alarm. You can find one at Walmart for around $20. Mount it right next to your smoke alarm.

Obviously you'll want a furnace with a thermostat. The 10,000 btu/hour heaters usually don't have one, but anything bigger should. Ask to make sure. At eBay the auction page should say if it has a thermostat.

There are two basic designs of ventless propane furnaces; blue flame and radiant. The difference is that the radiant style has a ceramic plate that gets red hot and projects some of the heat horizontally. The blue flame style has no ceramic plate, so the heat rises out of the heater more vertically. The radiant style is said to be more comfortable while sitting near the furnace, since it projects heat towards those sitting near the heater. They are both satisfactory for emergency heating purposes. The efficiency of both models is the same (99%+).

I happen to use a blue flame model, and I use it for my primary heat (at least for a few more weeks until I move to Las Vegas). Mine is a 20,000 btu/hour model that I paid $125 delivered from an eBay seller about 2 years ago. It's thermostatically controlled, so I just set it and forget it, and it's equipped with ODS.

[willow_girl]

I was really happy with the ventless propane heater I had in my last house!

[deaconjim]

Thanks for all the information. We've used the ventless gas heaters in the past and they've worked well. Our hesitation there was that we wanted something that would burn wood in the event propane was not available (we have plenty of wood all around us).

I think, for now anyway, we've decided to just keep what we have and wait for inspiration. As I said earlier, we do have propane and a generator, so "normal" emergency situations are taken care of.

[fordson major]

the idea of getting something that would burn something other than truck delivered propane is a good idea! i like being warm and well fed with hot food! ice storm ,98 we were with out power for 14 days, some folks up too a month! during that time road travel was treacherous,trees and power lines down across the road (some energized by back feeding gens!). those of us with wood stoves were warm and well fed, others bugged till the power came back on! even with us installing outdoor wood boilers, we keep our old (20 year + good condition) wood stoves hooked up just in case......!being that old of a house was it never heated with wood? old chimneys can be relined with stainless steel liners if stable. insulated pipe can some times be bought on craigs list or other venue from those who no longer want a wood stove!

[farmerscotty]

maybe something like an outside wood furnace that could possibly heat the whole house? use the pellet stove for the autumn days?

[Cabin Fever]

Originally Posted by deaconjim

We bought a small wood stove for an additional backup, but it seems we can't install it to code because it would have to share a chimney with the pellet stove. Now we are headed back to the drawing board....

Based on the comment above, I am assuming your pellet stove vents into a Class A woodburning chimney....correct? If so, you might want to consider taking out the pellet stove and connecting just the woodburner to his chimney. Then relocate...if possible...the pellet stove to a location against an outside wall where you can direct vent the pellet stove thru the wall to the outside.

[Cabin Fever]

A "1000sf woodstove" may be sufficient for a 2000sf home, especially in tropical Virginia. Besides, if you get a "2000sf woodstove" and burn it to capacity in order to heat the entire home to 70ºF, the room that the woodstove is in may actually end up having a temp of 95ºF

[QuiltingLady2]

solar - lots of government and state insentives availible right now.