woodstoves with long burn time

I heat a 2750 sq ft house with a Pacific Energy stove.

Not including fall and spring burns, I light it in late November and let it burn out in early April. I think that's a long burn.

Pete

Check out these guys. I had one years ago and it was "da bomb" . has a thermostat and blower. Its made by an Amish company.

http://www.hitzer.com/furnaceunit.html

I had one of these in the old house. They literally scream... I loved it. But we moved farther north and higher up so I went with the bigger one.

One word of caution tho, By putting on a damper you void the UL rating. That will be an issue if you have a fire. But you do say you clean it every month.

i run a quadrafire 3100 step top my house is about 1300 sq feet 2 story and is not baddly insulated as far as 100 year old houses go ,

maybe first we should say what do you consider and all night burn is it you wake up after 7 hours of sleep to find a nice bed of coals that after raking around a bit you toss in 2 split peices and a few peices of kindling and you are back in buissnes for the day or does it mean for you that you wake up it is still burning well and you just toss more cord wood in

the 3100 for my house will warm it well down to 0 degrees F then it needs to be kept going all the time

but at 20 i can fill it up leave the air controll wode open to get a good burn and go to sleep wake up 7 hours later rake he coals and toss in a little kindling and 2 peices of cord wood andi am back in bussniss and in an hour have it back up to 70+ in the house

at 0 i do all the same things but i have the furnace set to 65 so that it takes over in the middle of the night actualy it is always set there but only needs to run much when 0 or below

the stove obviosly isn't at peak heating for the last few hours of the early morning but about 5 hours is where i could just get up and add more cord wood 4 hours is about were i would have to add wood to keep it heating well some times if i am up i do that but other times i just enjoy my 7 hours of sleep

the more you insulate the more you can heat up quick and let cool down slow at 40 i can have a fire about every 8 hours to keep the house warm or basicaly one in the morning and one in early evening

i am looking at adding a blower to my stove to get more heat off it when down at zero and below i also plan to add more insulation

wood , cuts and sizes make a big difference also i will cut the knots in elm into chuncks so they fit in the stove i i put one of them in before i go to bed i will wake up with a basball sized emerb in the morning

the way that you split and or cut will aid in getting fires going and will help in how hot your fire gets or how long your fire lasts

I have lived with a wood stove as my primary source of heat for about 25 years now. It is a smaller Vermont Castings--a high quality stove.

During the first few years, I experimented with various methods of increasing burn time, and ultimately came around to the conclusion that it simply cannot be done without sacrificing safety. The No. 1 rule in my book is to keep the fire burning good and hot so that there is little, if any, smoke, and so that there is a minimum of cresote build-up in the chimney. You need to control heat output by the amount and type of fuel in the firebox, not the amount of air getting to it.

The trade-off is that the wood in the firebox burns fast. A small stove, like mine, can't make it through the night (I have to set the alarm clock for at least one refill), whereas a larger one might hold enough wood to make it through. But any attempt to increase burn time by regulating the flow of air is going to give you a smoulder--something that is virtually guaranteed to deposit lots of gunk in the stove and chimney. I don't know any way around that.

I was surprised to learn that it doesn't take much build-up to start a chimney fire. I experienced a very small one a couple of years ago, and it happened despite regular chimney cleanings and proper burning technique. It's a pretty scary experience when it happens.

Hope that helps!

Arbutus and amelia have posted very good information, IMHO. Thanks!

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I'm not sure of the model but it is the large Hearthstone, it takes a 24" log. We had it now for 20 odd years and love it. The wood stove is are only heat source, we do have a small home only 1000 sq feet but it heats the whole house. The most we ever have to fill and load is twice a day and that is when its below zero! It is mostyly soapstone & cast iron

We love our Blaze King.

The long burn time claim of 40 hrs is ONLY usually possible during, shoulder-times, or times when the outside air temperature is higher than the lowest winter temperature. And most of the year our stoves burn when the outdoor temperature is higher than the lowest of the year, so long-burn-time is nice.

The burn time depends also on size of wood box, efficiency of burning chamber, and the building heat loss, as well as the outdoor temperature.

Still the reason Blaze King can burn both efficiently (82%) and without much creosote is because it is a catalytic type (much maligned here, often -- all of which in my opinion is NOT true -- ours works great -- no problems -- though we follow the instructions.)

Good luck,
We all love what we bought, don't we?

Alex

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You can increase burn time with the stove you have by not splitting the wood. Splitting just increases the surface area and the rate wood burns. It does little (10%) to help dry the wood.

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If its the longest HEATING time and not the longest burning time you are after a "Russian" stove would be the way to go.
Its a stove of heavy masonry designed to suck up the heat from a free burning fire and then slowly release it.
Because the fire burns freely you get the most heat and the least creasote out of your wood. The bricks hold the heat for hours evenly heating the house.
I have thought about taking this to a extreame by building a woodstove in the ground under the house thus making the basement area a HUGE thermal flywheel.

A friend of mine built a system that sounds something like what you describe. He owns his own construction business and used his own equipment and men so his cost to build was pretty low.

He dug a huge hole near the back of his house. They lined the hole with rock, then put a huge firebox in the center and finished filling with rock around the firebox. He put in double walled pipes to move heated air into the house with exhaust ducts in each room for central heat. I'm explaining it rather simple, but the system is kind of complicated with double walled burn box, double walled pipe, thermostat, blower, etc. I'm not sure how it all goes together.

He fills the firebox every few days. It keeps hot coals for days after the last fill. Even if they are gone out of town for a few days, there is still coals in the firebox when they get home.

I wish I had a pic of his firewood. He doesn't split any wood, just cuts the trees into logs about 4' long and uses a little loader to fill the burn box. It takes him a day or two to get a fire started in the fall, but it burns solid until spring.

One of the best things about the system is that it keeps the mess outside. No ashes or wood chips in the house is a big plus, and only having to go out and fill it once or twice a week is a major plus.

His next project will be to put in a central A/C system using the pipes in the ground and a set of solar fans. I hope to be there to see how that system goes in.

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Sure most oil furnaces are rated at 100 thousand or better, But they don't run all the time they cycle on and off. No such luck with a wood stove.

Spinner - the stove that fantasymaker is describing is a masonry stove. As far as longest heat output is concerned, cannot be beat. The stove consists of a small firebox surrounded by a large thermal mass (usually ceramic). The exhaust gases are reburned (same as a normal EPA stove utilizing secondary burn) and then routed such that they heat up the ceramic mass. Once heated up, the ceramic mass radiates the heat slowly throughout the day. The idea is to burn a couple of small, but very hot, fires per day.

Check out this website - there are some awesome pictures of stove setups:

http://mha-net.org/

The downsides to this type of stove are (1) initial cost is quite high - easily 2x to 3x over normal stove and (2) hard to retrofit into a normal house - you have a few thousand pounds and a big stove footprint to deal with rather than a few hundred pounds and relatively small hearth footprint as is the case for a normal wood stove.

Still, if you have an unlimited budget and are building new, having one smack in the middle of a home with an open floor plan ... you'd be set.

YES!! I was beginning to wonder if anyone else even knew about masonry stoves! They are very expensive if you pay someone to build it. but you can build your own, using cement blocks for the outer case, for a lot less money. They not only heat your house longer and produce a lot less creosote if properly managed (hot fires once or twice a day), they also burn a LOT less wood!

There are free masonry stove plans available on-line -- I think through the University of Missouri?

I know, or knew, two families who had/have home-built cement-block masonry stoves, both in New Hampshire in older homes. Both stoves developed cracks, which had to be repaired, but otherwise the owners have been very pleased with them. There are building techniques which should prevent the cracking problem -- do a little research and see what you come up with.

Kathleen

I think that you can buy a firebox kit from Tulkivi (Scandanavian company) and then try to build whatever style ceramic mass around it that you want. You still have to do a lot of reinforcement underneath the stove, but those stoves are awesome. If you look through the webpage I referenced there are many pictures of beautiful stoves - some with built in pizza ovens.