epa wood stove

[eggman]

I have a wood stove now that is about 15 years old. It is just a big steel box, without any baffles or tubes. What I was wondering is ,would the new stoves be that much more effecent than what I have now? Would it use less wood? I have been to 3 different stores that handle wood stoves and can not get a deffinitive answere. I,m thinking that these people know even less than I do.

[ghmerrill]

From my experience, and that of two friends, the certified stoves are terrible. I ended up removing the plates mine had for slowing down the smoke. Works allot better now.

[HermitJohn]

YOur home insurance may require you to have a certified stove that has been installed by a licensed and bonded whatever. I dont have home insurance, I can pretty much do what I darn please until the yuppie crowd gets laws passed....

[whistler]

In a nutshell: YES!

I have a several decades old fisher insert. It does a good job heating what I need it to but it eats a lot of good oak to do it.

I also have a 5 year old quadrafire in a different space and it is vastly more efficient. I can use the same amount of wood of lesser quality (e.g. birch) to get the same amount of heat. Moreover, there seems to be less particulate matter exiting the chimney and less ash in the box.

That's my experience.

[TnAndy]

Originally Posted by whistler

In a nutshell: YES!

That's my experience.

I'll second that for sure.

Have a "steel box" Fisher in the basement that is 15-20 years old....decent stove for it's day, but the Regency stove we put upstairs last year beat it all to pieces as far as way more heat for WAY less wood....and I mean like 1/2 the wood !

Seems there are two methods to improve efficiency on new stoves.....using a catalytic converter or using the baffles that "reburn" with secondary combustion.

The converter has to be replaced every few years, the baffle system, never. We went with the baffle system, and are WELL pleased.

By comparison:

I can go outside and look at the chimney.....separate flue for each stove in my chimney.

The Fisher, when running, you can normally see quite a bit of smoke....LOT when you crank the air intake down. The Regency, you can't even tell it's running except for a little "heat shimmer" around it's exhaust flue. Cleaning out the Fisher flue, I get a 5 gallon bucket of creosote flakes every spring.....the Regency creosote wouldn't fill 1/2 of a #10 can. Same wood used in both, mostly oak with some maple/etc. That alone tells me the Regency is WAY more efficient than the old sheet steel box stoves.

Your mileage may vary.

[Cabin Fever]

I also agree with Whistler and TnAndy, the new woodstoves with secondary combustion tubes are more efficient than the old woodstoves. I've had both the old Fisher stove and a new Lopi stove. The Lopi uses about 25% less firewood for the same amount of heat. Also, the creosote and soot build up in the chimney is significantly less - really amost nothing - with the EPA-compliant Lopi.

I recommend a stove with secondary combustion tubes over those with a catalyst as well. The catalyst can sometimes plug up with soot and also can crack. They are quite expensive to replace.

[meanwhile]

Same here -
We have an old Mamma Bear Fisher Stove in our Basement and although it works OK for "bottom heating" the house, it uses double the wood of our newer stove. Upstairs we have a Vermont Castings stove and it heats quickly and hold the heat (plus we have stone wall around it and under it) and uses much less wood.

[SolarGary]

Hi,
Here is an article from Scott who retrofitted both a secondary combustion air source and a catalytic combustor to his 80's stove.

He also goes over a way to measure efficiency, and has before and after numbers.

http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects...atRetrofit.htm

Gary

[oregon woodsmok]

If you have one of the extra large, heavy weight, old wood stoves, you can't beat those for heat. That is, unless, you can find an extra large, heavy weight, re-burner type of stove.

I like the re-burners. The trick is to be able to afford a new stove that has a fire box large enough to take a decent size log and a thick guage of metal that will soak up the heat and radiate it out long after the fire has burned out.

A lot of the newer wood stoves (read less expensive ones) have a small fire box and thin metal. The good large heavy stoves are available, but $$$$$$.

I bought a used re-burner and was having trouble with it until I discovered that the chamber had never been vacuumed out when the stove pipe was cleaned and it was jammed full of soot. A few seconds with a shop vac took care of that and after that, the stove worked perfect.

What was said above. When the re-burner is going, there is a shimmer of heat above the stove pipe, but no visible smoke.

I learned the hard way not to burn loose paper in mine. Those large disks of paper ash will cover the holes and prevent smoke from getting through the spark arrestor. Not fun.

[Cabin Fever]

Wood smok,
What is a re-burner wood stove?

[oregon woodsmok]

Cabin fever, they have a chamber that sends the smoke around for a second time through the fire. It burns the particles in the smoke. They are very simple, just based upon the way the air flows through the stove. Actually, I think the proper name is recombustion chamber. I'm not talking about anything new technology.

Most of the EPA stoves are that type. They work better than the catalytic chambers and I don't see any catalytic stoves being sold around here.

[Cabin Fever]

Originally Posted by oregon woodsmok

Cabin fever, they have a chamber that sends the smoke around for a second time through the fire. It burns the particles in the smoke. They are very simple, just based upon the way the air flows through the stove. Actually, I think the proper name is recombustion chamber. I'm not talking about anything new technology.

Most of the EPA stoves are that type. They work better than the catalytic chambers and I don't see any catalytic stoves being sold around here.

I understand. I call that type of stove as having "secondary combustion"....we have two of them.

[Heritagefarm]

We have a very nice EPA woodstove that works very nicely. The cateletic converter is put down about 80% of the time to slow burning for longer-lasting fires. Works great.

[Ohiogal]

the new stoves are great, but be careful what you buy. Cheap means "you get what you paid for". I have a Quadrafire Millenium, that I purchased Dec 30 and installed mid-January. I have burned 1/2 the amount of wood I was using before - and there is nearly ZERO smoke coming out of the chimney, and the heat is just incredible. Not to mention the fact they are very easy to control the combustion speed for different types of wood.
I was using a 15 year old Appalacian Trailmaster before. Good stove, just isn't in the same league as the Quadrafire. That stove had a catalytic converter on it, and the draft was never quite right in my house.
I did nothing to the chimney/stack when installing the Quadrafire, and it works 100% more efficiently using the '4 cycle' method of burning off the carbons. I don't even have to clean off the glass - it turns it all to ashes.