wood stove problem

Sancraft,
The chicken design wall hanging can also be used as a window quilt.


Your greatest heat loss is through the roof. Get that area above the loft done first, with something temporary at least.

Rose

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Alice
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"No great thing is created suddenly." ~Epictitus

A few bits of advice. Until this year I heated with wood all my life. If you heat with wood, eventually you will catch something on fire, be prepaired. We averaged every 5-10 years between flare ups :-) Never burnt the house down, but often the area where they pipe goes thru the wall. A few times from hot coals while emptying or loading. A good masonary fireplace would probably negate this risk alot.

Next tip is alumin foil wil reflect ALOT of heat, if a wall is getting hot you could use foil to reflect the heat into the room.

Insulation is the key. My current house has 512 sqft living space currently. I have 2x4 R13 in the walls and 2x6 R19 in the ceiling. It heats comfortably with two basebord heaters, a 500 watt and a 1500 watt down to 0 F they still kick off and on (it hasnt gotten colder than that here yet.)

Another HUGE BIGGIE is drafts, if there is a draft you can feel from outside ANYWHERE in your house you wont be able to keep it warm, so make sure all your holes are plugged.

We had a box fan in a blow heat from the stove room to the rest of the house previously, without it it was colder the farther from the stove.

If your hanging blankets on the walls in a room with a cast iron wood stove .... you are going to burn your house down.

Do you have interior walls ? Or just the studds ? You can put fiberglass in the stud places, it will hold itself in place, and fiberglass wont burn. (the backing may if it has backing).

Got talk to lowes/homedepot/ etc and ask if they have mangled rolls of insulation for ~10% retail.

Dont let your stove or pipe get hot, if it come undone, melts, or gets a hole when its glowing hot, your house will be toast in seconds.

Anytime i ever saw a glowing pipe i nearly dirtied my pants.

The propane wall heaters are nice i used them too. I think when i go back to wood I will use an exterior stove. If i used interior, i would let it die down at night and whenever i couldnt watch it. You could easily half your gas bill that way.

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Happiness is directly proportional to the ratio that trees out number humans.

we use a ceiling fan to solve this problem at our place with a loft. blow the hot air down from the peak and it is wonderful!

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www.MontanaSticksAndStones.com at Goshen Farm

tsdave, the blankets are no where near the stove. I woulnd't put anything combustible near the stove. The pipe doesn't get red, I never build a fire that hot, know not to do that either. Embers are placed in a metal bucket and deposited into a dirt hole and watered well and covered with dirt. The stove is 2ft from the wall, there is a thimble going through the wall and all of the stove pipe is new. It is sitting on abestos boards.

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Sometimes the last minute is the best one.

I'm trying to think up some free insulation ideas . . .

What about hay bales?

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A liberal is a conservative who's been arrested. A conservative is a liberal who's been mugged.

There's only three ways heat can get around: conduction, radiation, convection.

Conduction is most efficient, but you can't use it (picture iron rods running from the stove to everywhere. Uhm - no!

Radiation doesn't do a terribly good job, but it's about all that you've got.

Convection (stirring hot air around) is what you need INSIDE the cabin. At the moment any heat that's not being distributed by radiation is roaring straight up the chimney in super-heated smoke. You MUST HAVE the damper working to slow down the chimney heat-loss, so you can USE the heat you're generating inside rather than throwing it away. You DO need a fan as others have suggested to move air past the stove so it can get heated, then carry the warm air around the cabin. I've seen arrangements where some sort of radiator arrangement is set up connected to the stove - heat is conducted there, then air blown past the greater surface area of the radiator so more heat can get into more air. Come to think of it, that was on this site by one of the regulars - a hermit of some description - run a search... no, wait, I'll do it...

Here you are: http://homesteadingtoday.com/showthread.php?t=102245

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ô¿ô Don Armstrong,Terra Australis

Grandad, tell us a story about the olden days, when you were young and men could walk on the moon.

Flue gas should complete combustion and leave the stove at perhaps 450F, but leave the flue at perhaps 225F. You can go as low as 180F if you have complete combustion with clean dry fuel, especially with charcoal which has no sulfur. Flyash is still corrossive however, and there is diminishing returns below 225F and you may also start to lose sufficient draft. To get from 450F to 225F you need a long flue, or perhaps a fan, or fins, or hot water heating coils. If the stove surface is very hot, after a baffle, you can set a pot of water to boil on it, and set it somewhere in the house you want heat. Several large kettles would be one way to distribute heat. If the house is really dry in winter you can pour a pot of boiling water on a masonry floor or countertops, or fill up a bathtub.

If money is tight, may I suggest packing peanuts. Many companies just throw those things away. A friend of mine insulated his whole attic this way. For the walls, you could staple or nail some plastic (or cardboard) on the studs and fill the peanuts inside the studs.

I hope you get it worked out before the weather turns worse. It sure has been kind to us this weekend.

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Brad Bachelor
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"Loving an old bachelor is always a no-win situation, and you come to terms with that early on, or you go away.”
-- Jean Harris

Having once been new to home ownership and wood burning I finally learned two important things.

(I am sure they are obvious to most, and perhaps common sense, but I'll share my foibles anyway.)

#1. When I burned with wood, I had no idea the damper was supposed to be used in any other way than completely open or completely closed. It was by accident that I realized the energy efficiency and increased BTUs of a partially closed damper.

#2. I had little cracks in the walls and floors where air would come in. They were so small I thought they really couldn't make much of a difference. Guess what? I was wrong.

Imagine a 1/16 in crack. Then imagine 16 of those cracks--that's an inch opening to the cold outdoors. Multiply that by two (at least in an old house)and add all the air coming in from the outlet and light boxes and it's pretty much like having a window open.

I went 5 years like that, wondering why my feet were cold all the time. I piled more wood on the fire but my feet got no relief and sometimes seemed to get even colder.

Why?

By burning wood with the damper and doors wide open, and with these cracks in the walls and floors, all I managed to do was send warm air up the chimney and suck cold air in from outside.

I must have invested in $500 worth of wool socks before I realized the answer was a $1.99 tube of caulk.