Wood Stoves

mom25kiddles · #1 06/19/11, 10:31 AM

We are looking to install a wood stove downstairs this summer to heat our home. This past winter, we used the small wood stove upstairs and the radiant floor heating for the downstairs. Not too efficient and terribly expensive. Would love to hear your suggestions, warnings, advice and personal experiences with wood stoves. We are heating a 2300 square foot steel building (1150 on each floor) with *meh* insulation, depending on which wall you are standing near

We are in North Idaho so it is fairly chilly a good portion of the year and just keeping the radiant floor heat set for an air temp of 58 saw an average electric bill of $450 monthly this past winter.

Thanks so much in advance!!

mom25kiddles

Cascade Failure · #2 06/19/11, 11:46 AM

Some questions...

By downstairs do you mean an unfinished basement? That is where my stove is located and you can see a melt ring outside 10-15' from it. Not very efficient. Some finishing is high on my list of summer plans.

Next, can you upgrade "meh" insulation to good or "awesome" for less than the price of a new stove?

Finally, did you use good, DRY wood in your stove last year? By dry I mean split and stacked at least 12 months before use; not standing dead wood cut a month prior to use or it was in stacked rounds for a few months before use. Even a crappy stove becomes a much better stove with DRY wood.

seventytwoacres · #3 06/19/11, 12:42 PM

I would like to follow this thread. I'm in North Texas in a much smaller two story house and we're hoping to install a wood stove on the main floor - our house is 1200 and heat the whole place - we have R-13 insulation and I think we stay comfortable most of the time, unless it gets below freezing, which can happen. We're still building our house, though.

Harry Chickpea · #4 06/19/11, 12:59 PM

Insulation is almost always the most effective method of reducing heating and cooling costs and making a place more comfortable. It continues to work when you forget to cut wood or are away from home, it has no ongoing operating costs, and quiets noisy homes.

A wood stove, properly installed, requires a proper chimney or insulated pipe costing in excess of $5 per inch. (Yes, I know there are cheaper ways, but if your insurance company finds you didn't install to code, good luck on getting it to pay off for a fire.) A new stove that is EPA compliant will run about a couple grand. If you have free wood, you still have to deal with chainsaw costs, splitting costs, proper storage, and so on.

I mention all this because your concern appears to be heating costs. Jumping from frying pan into the fire might not be a good choice.

mothernature · #5 06/19/11, 01:24 PM

I'm in north Texas, Dh and I have a nice wood stove, properly installed, good house insulation and all the free firewood we can cut. We spend a lot of time year round cutting ,splitting, and stacking wood. Our heating costs are not bad without the wood stove, yet we enjoy it! This past winter we had 6 days straight where it did not get above 20 degrees (yes in n. TX) and had major long power outages! Everyone remember the super nightmare in Dallas?! We were able to heat our 2000 sq ft house (enough) and cook, heat up coffee, soup etc. with our wood stove! I am VERY thankful to have it!!

seventytwoacres · #6 06/19/11, 01:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mothernature

I'm in north Texas, Dh and I have a nice wood stove, properly installed, good house insulation and all the free firewood we can cut. We spend a lot of time year round cutting ,splitting, and stacking wood. Our heating costs are not bad without the wood stove, yet we enjoy it! This past winter we had 6 days straight where it did not get above 20 degrees (yes in n. TX) and had major long power outages! Everyone remember the super nightmare in Dallas?! We were able to heat our 2000 sq ft house (enough) and cook, heat up coffee, soup etc. with our wood stove! I am VERY thankful to have it!!

Hi, which part of N TX? I'm also in the area - although very new to this forum/site.

#7 06/19/11, 02:26 PM

It is probably colder here than there , but not by much. What my neighbors have done is use a barrell stove, surrounded by a large thermal mass, in the basement. The thermal mass can be bricks or native rock mortared together. What they do is build a hot fire in the morning and again in the evening. The fire burns hot so there is less problem with creosote. It heats up the thermal mass which then gives off heat for hours.

You will face many problems with wood heat. Their solution seems to solve most of them. It's hard to find a stove that will keep a house warm for 8 hours without being stoked. I have to fire the stove every 4 hours when it's really cold. What kind of wood will you be burning? Here they burn what's available, pine and popple. This produces a hot fast fire, perfect for their set up. If you want a longer fire you have to burn hardwood. Putting the stove down the basement keeps the mess down there as well. The farther away from the fire you go the colder it gets. I have seen houses with metal grates in the ceiling/floor that lets hot air rise from one level to another. This helps spread out the heat.

When you build a large thermal mass you need to put it on a good footing for support. The basement is a good place for this. If you use native rock you have to be careful. If there is water in the rock, they may expolde when heated.

hikeswithdogs · #8 06/19/11, 03:58 PM

I'm very new to this forum and to homesteading.

I was thinking about using a woodstove as my primary means of heating my house (a 12x70 singlewide) but I don't know if that's safe when no one is home. I'm thinking I'd have to fire it up, get the house warm, and then put it out when I leave and hope it stays warm enough for the puppers until I get back. Any suggestions?

gila_dog · #9 06/19/11, 07:47 PM

We use a wood stove to provide 2/3 of our heat in the winter. The other 1/3 is passive solar. Nights get pretty cold (below 0 to low 20's) but days are usually sunny and warm up to 40's and 50's. We have abundant firewood nearby.

Without the wood stove we would have to heat with propane or electricity. Propane is expensive, and electricity isn't all that reliable here. So the wood stove makes a lot of sense for us. In other places where wood has to be imported from a long way off it may not be any cheaper than just heating with natural gas, or some other fuel.

There are expenses and hassles associated with wood heat. If you just buy it and have it delivered, then you don't have to spend the money, time, and take the risks associated with driving your vehicle out into the backcountry and chainsawing and handling all that firewood. Then there are the ashes, and litter that are inevitable with a wood stove.

Having said all that, we love our wood stove. Having a nice warm fire in the evenings before we go to bed is wonderful. Firing it up in the mornings, before the sun heats up the house, is also great. We can cook on it if necessary. It probably cost $2500 for the stove and it's chimney, and some more to install it properly and up to code. One thing I recommend highly is to buy a stove that can have it's combustion air piped in from outside the house. This keeps the stove from sucking cold air from the far reaches of the house (like a fireplace does), and making those farther rooms cold. I think this is required for any installation in a mobile home.

Having thermal mass in the house (brick, rocks, concrete, adobe, etc) that can soak up heat is a great advantage too. Without it, the house can get too hot unless you choke the fire way down. And when you do that it doesn't burn efficiently and makes a lot of smoke and soot and that fouls up your chimney. We let our stove burn pretty hot. It burns much cleaner that way, and the chimney stays a lot cleaner. But the adobe walls inside the house soak up the heat and keep it from getting too hot. Then those same walls slowly let the heat off later, which makes the house stay warm longer.

Jolly · #10 06/19/11, 11:08 PM

I've used wood as my primary heat source for many years, in more than one home.

A few things I recommend:

1. Consult with your insurance company before you do anything. Some won't insure a wood heater at all, some want it installed strictly to code, some may want it installed to their specs.

2. You can buy an airtight stove for as little as $400 off-season or you can spend thousands. As with most things, you get what you pay for...but that's not all bad...

3. Buy a reputable brand from a company that has been in business for at least ten years...that tells me they've knocked most of the bugs out and that they are popular enough to keep afloat. It also assures me that parts may be available in the future.

I have an older model of this stove:

http://www.hearthstonestoves.com/woo...s?product_id=3

ET1 SS · #11 06/20/11, 09:08 AM

It sounds like you need to focus on insulation.

We have radiant heated floors. Our heat comes from our woodstove though. It sounds like your heating with electricity [no wonder it is expensive]. Consider heating the water in your radiant system with wood.

roachhill · #12 06/20/11, 05:04 PM

I would agree with the idea of getting away from electric heat but generally electric radiant heat just has heating wires in the floor, no water lines. If I'm wrong then it's simple to plumb in a different hot water source. I grew up in old ineffiecient, drafty, underinsulated houses and only a good woodstove makes them comfortably warm in winter.

ET1 SS · #13 06/20/11, 05:10 PM

When you say radiant floor, I am only familiar with plumbing flowing liquid under the floors to heat them. I had no idea that anyone has electric wires in the floor to heat their floors.

mom25kiddles · #14 06/21/11, 01:52 PM

Thanks for all the replies thus far. My apologies for not providing more input sooner... we are having some sunny days here and it is FANTASTIC

We don't have a basement. Our home is a steel *shop* building that is split into two levels and drywalled inside. No basement. We do plan to insulate better in the future, as we will need to install new siding, tyvek and make repairs to the window installations (we are a mildewed, leaking mess in these walls) but the time and money for that at this moment just aren't there. This is one of the reasons for our need to get a more efficient, larger? wood stove for the downstairs. We are north facing and located at the bottom of a hillside on 9 HEAVILY timbered acres... moist is an understatement and I need to get some wood burning in here to dry us out.

We have always used wood stove heating in our other homes but they have been smaller homes and warmer climates. This is completely new territory for us!!

I have heard Blaze King and Schaefer? referred to in conversation as being reliable. Any comments on those two brands in particular? We will likely look at excellent condition, used stoves and new chimney pipe for our purchase. Hubby installs completely to code (and then some) and is a safety nut... he has always installed our wood stoves in previous homes.

Thank you all so much for giving me so much input on this. We need to start *providing* more here rather than always *receiving*

A promise to share some of our areas of expertise more regularly in the future

oregon woodsmok · #15 06/21/11, 02:06 PM

I use wood heat. One wood stove heats a 2500 sq ft house. Insulation and proper fans to move the air are required. It's darn cold here and the electric heat never comes on, even though it is set full time at 60 degrees.

My recommendations: buy the stove with the largest fire box that you can afford. Do not buy a catalytic stove, go with one that has the re-combustion chamber. The catalytic filters wear out or get damaged and they are very expensive to replace.

A ceiling fan with summer/winter settings makes a world of difference. Set low, on "winter", the fan gently circulates the air and evens out the heat in the house without making chilling drafts.

Your heat is all going to end up upstairs unless you have some way to either block it or set up convection currents.

Around here, if you have to purchase firewood, it isn't any savings on the heat bill.

oregon woodsmok · #16 06/21/11, 02:08 PM

Also, if you watch Craigslist during the summer, you can sometimes get good bargains on used wood stoves. Just do your research so you don't get stuck with a lemon that the sellers simply can't tolerate any longer.

whodunit · #17 06/21/11, 02:20 PM

Well..... if you are in Idaho have you looked at the Stove That Jack Built? The shop is outside of Orofino.
The #4 model heats up to I think 3,000 ft. Cant find my brochure.

Anyway very nice stove and it puts out some serious heat.

One can have Byron install a water coil in it so that you could rig that up with your radiant floor heat.