Thinking about a wood stove
 

We purchased this home last year. It has propane heat. Our first winter in it is almost over, and I'm fed up with the price of propane. Our original plan was to get an outdoor wood-burning boiler. Dh did some research and checking locally, and is totally against the idea now. Said he knew too many people with little houses like our (just over 1000 square feet), that even with a small model, it just made their house too hot. I freeze to death all the time, but dh sweats bullets at 70 inside!

So then, he wanted to just get a traditional woodstove. Our house has a chimney hole in the kitchen, where an old woodstove used to be. Problem is that this is where our dining room table is. If we put a stove there, we won't have a place to eat! Dh wants to put it in our small living room and just make a new "hole" for the stove pipe. Our attic upstairs is a room for our kids, so the stove has to be on the out-side edge of the room, so that the stove pipe doesn't have to go up through the room in the attic. That only puts about one spot in our living room for the wood burner. I will not be able to rearrange furniture after it is installed. It is a small stove we're looking at, but by the time we pull it out 12 inches from the wall, it's going to stick out like a sore thumb. Not only am I afraid of what it will look like, but also that I can't do anything in my living room. We were planning on getting one with our tax return money, but now I'm not so sure.

Ideas? Hints? Suggestions?

It doesn't really sound as if you want a wood stove in the house. Yes, they are messy. We have been heating and cooking (also have a propane kitchen stove) for over 30 years now. Were real city people when we begain our homesteading "experience". Using a wood stove is a must as we have no centaral heat in this house at all. But..look at different types of stoves, sizes and shapes. Think about a coal stove even though you would need to buy the coal it would be a step in the right direction. But wood would be the way to go for me. I would even stop and speak with people who have a chimney sticking out of their roof about their wood stoves but yet again..I might be a little forward sometimes..:sing:..the independence that you get from heating your own home and either buying or chopping your own wood goes a long way in the homestead life.In these troubled times becoming a little less dependent on the world for my family would be my main goal. I would advise getting a stove with an ash pan for easy cleaning. This way the fire does not have to die down to clean out the stove. Our stoves are about 12" from the wall but the walls are bricked. Think about putting it into a corner of a room too. I wish you luck in your decisions but the feeling you get from using a wood stove is wonderful not to mention..again..the independence you will achieve. Good Luck !!

The Lopi Endeavor stove has a clearance requirement of only 4.5" from combustibles. That means it can be placed very close to the wall.

I would perfer an indoor woodstove over an outdoor boiler simply because the woodstove does not require elelctricity to heat the home.

If possible, try to find a location in the home where the stove is close to being below the roof peak. That way the chimney is not going to stick up way above the roof. A short chimney is easier to clean while standing on the roof.

Can you install some 45°'s on the chimneys of woodstoves? that might get you into the preexisting chimney hole and still have the stove off to one side. I have propane so not sure.

As Cabin Fever said, the closer to the peak of the roof the chimney goes through, the "shorter" it is to reach to clean. The rule being that the top of a chimney has to be 2' above anything within 10' of it. Also, the more chimney that is outside, the "colder" it is, the more likely you will have a problem with draft (the chimney 'pull'), the more often it will need cleaning, and the more loss of heat that could have been kept in the house.

I've been heating with wood for 30+ years, in several places, and for all the annoyance of "it's right in the way" at times, I'd rather have one in the middle of a small room with a chair in each corner, than do without one.

A note on the outside boilers - I personally know folk who use them, and without exception, the are using on average twice the wood they were using with an indoor stove, heating the same space. That to me doesn't sound like a "good deal", especially because wood, while relatively plentiful and renewable, is still a limited resource. if everyone burned wood, there would be very little left at any price in a few short years.

I'd be very wary of using an existing chimney in an old house. There were a lot of unlined, common (single firing) brick chimneys built in the late1800's and early 1900's. They weren't great then, and age hasn't done them any favors. Even a tile lined brick or block chimney MUST be inspected to make sure that it is clean, hasn't got any cracks in the tile liner, that the mortar is still good, and that it has proper clearances to combustibles (2") along it's entire length. Most old chimneys I've seen, don't fit the bill. Many were built to vent gas appliances, not wood or coal, and as such when the unsuspecting wood stove owner hooks it up, they prime the fuse that burns down their house.

If I install a wood stove, it gets a brand new Selkirk Metalbestos type HT flue. Yes, it runs about $40 a foot, but properly cared for (cleaned out, not burned out), it should last a lifetime.

I really don't understand how an outdoor wood stove can make the house too hot. It works basically the same as any controlled heating system and uses a thermostat and transfers heat through your existing system.
You don't mention a basement, do you have one? That would work for an indoor wood stove.
If you think an outdoor wood stove makes your house hot you should see what happens with an indoor stove on those cold nights but warmer days. Once you get it hot it doesn't "shut off" like any conventional heat.

With a little forethought, you don't have to leave the wood stove in place all year. Mine comes in around the first of November, and it will leave this weekend. I store it in my workshop throughout the summer. In the summer I move the biscuit rock in its place and use it for a bar:

http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x...covefan006.jpg

I wouldn't/couldn't be without our woodstove.
You cannot beat the slow, deep even heat and our heating bill..? $0.
We get wood from a tree company. They can dump it here and not pay the dump.

We use an existing fireplace. We cut a hole in the wall, put a pipe up through it and out the top. Works like a charm. And we got an Fisher Baby Bear off Craigslist for $100 to replace the old hunk of junk.
Now, I have seen something very interesting.. take the old fireplace and knock out the bricks facing into the rom so that you are left with a brick lined 'channel' going up. With a small stove, you could set it and the pipe more 'into' the wall and it wouldn't stick out as far.

I just saw the above post... very much along the same lines as I was thining.. only his is much bigger and nicer..:)

ours sticks out alot
 

This past winter was our second one with our woodstove. Ours is in the living room. We used the existing fireplace chimney (Dh re-lined it, and all the important stuff), but the stove sticks out in the room, from in front of the fireplace. It does present a challenge with decorating and furniture arrangement. I'm pretty fussy when it comes to my decorating and like rooms to look like a magazine picture (that's what I like, not what I have!, lol). It is messy - ashes, wood piles in the room, bark that falls off the logs, DH muddy feet when he brings it in.

All that being said, I would never again be without the woodstove. The heat is so much more warm and comforting than the furnace blowing air around. It does get REALLY hot in the living room-sometimes we have to leave that room for awhile. BUT, we save on the gas bill, Dh enjoys cutting wood and playing with the fire.

I'm learning, albeit slowly, to sacrifice some of my decorating ideals to comfort and saving money.
Martha

I don't get it either. That's just what dh said...I also thought a woodstove would make it hotter in the house...We don't have a basement.

In learning about stoves there is a lot of half-truth. I can say that a cast iron stove was a poor value. Tha cast deforms and cracks over time and heat-cool cycles. However they are nicer looking! A smaller stove will require much less chimminy cleaning becaulse you have to run it hotter. A large stove will soot up more and aslo be more forgiving of too- long wood. A top load stove is wanderful with the ash pan for cleanup. However a sheet steel stove will hold up to the heat better. The more fire brick, the more even the heat will be.
We heat for about 120 to 150 per season. This is the figure for chain saw supplies with three chains per year. 8 cord per year for two houses. Never use the propane anymore.

A woodstove would definitely make your house hotter and colder because you have to let it cycle. We heated with only wood for 7 years (Quadra-Fire steel stove) and I really liked that I could cozy up to it but the mess and constant concern over being too hot was always there.

When we moved we bought an outdoor burner for our house because it was already set up for hot-water baseboard heat. We can adjust and leave the temperature wherever we want it. It has a huge start up cost and it does burn more wood but I still prefer it by far. We had a chimney fire a few days ago and we just stood by and enjoyed it because it was 30' from our house. We were burning lathe which gets really hot. It does use more wood but our house is poorly insulated and we also use it for our domestic hot water.

Wood burning is a lifestyle especially if it is your sole source of heat. Getting wood is an all year thing for us but we live in a heavily wooded area so dh never really has to fell trees. We get most of our wood from neighbors clearing land and from the highway dept. from road clearing and wind storms. I cannot imagine the wood getting used up here. The logging companies are the only ones making that happen not the wood burning folks. Maybe everyone should quit building with wood. (just kidding)

I would get a woodstove to just supplement another heating system. That works nicely because if the fire goes out or you need to be gone or if it is really cold you can turn on the main heat. I am still keeping an eye out for a good second hand woodstove to install in case the electric goes out.

Well, it definately sounds like I need to do A LOT OF RESEARCH! We plan to purchase it this spring/summer when prices are lower....

Here's a great place to start your research: http://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/forums/

We just got our first woodstove. Got a two burner and put it in our added room (that has a tin roof) so the pipe goes out the wall. Our's is a Vogelzang and cost only about $400. Their website is vogelzang.com It was shipped to our local indoor-outdoor store and we didn't have to pay the shipping fee. The company is a christian company.

We bought one a couple years ago. We have propane heat as well. This really works well for us as we will heat with it during the day and stoke it at night. I will then set the thermostat and we will wind up using the propane for a couple hours each night and then start all over again. It brought my propane bill way down and also my electric bill as well. I have the same problem you do, I have very little options for furniture arrangement, but I make due. The other draw back is the soot, it isn't too bad if you stay on top of it, but if ignored it can get messy. Just make sure you use the double walled pipe and properly line any portions of the attic or roof area the pipe runs through. We also have a blower on ours, that helps to get the heat throughout the house.

Hi Lyndseyrk

Ask your DH to look at a Sedore stove. Pricy but will last and will burn anything, doesn’t make creosote. Very low stack temps and doesn’t use a lot of wood.

http://www.sedoreusa.com/

It may not be what you need just making a suggestion

Best regards,

Dave

Our chimney is a 6 inch heavy wall pipe that is about 3 feet from the side of the house. The pipe that goes thru the wall to it is a triple wall insulated stainless 6 inch pipe. The 6 inch is id and the outside is almost 8 inches. This pipe is on the expensive side but well worth the price. When the stove is burning at its hottest you can almost hold your hand on the pipe, thus making it safe to go thru the wall with a few inches of clearance and fiber glass insulation. Our house is an old log so the pipe goes thru logs to get outside. I see outside chimneys made from this pipe all the time. Our heater is so old I can't find much imformation on it. The only markings on it is KING-O-HEAT. It is a wood-coal heater and has two doors on it. One to put fuel in and one to clean out ashes. We put small fans on the ceiling to blow heat where we want it. Tis winter we used 120 pounds of propane as we use a wall heater for backup when we are away. We love our setup because when the electric is off we can stay warm and cook on the heater. Good luck with your heater. Sam

What ever you do get a good air tight sheet steel one not a cast iron one. I have had both and the cast iron one will heat for a short time then not heat at all when you want a little heat. The air tight one will heat all the time even if I want a little heat. Get all the fire brick you can to go inside and it will heat uniformly. Also look at the top and see if you can put a pot on it to give you more humidity in the room and you can cook on it also.

We have (2) propane furnaces (1 for DH's shop and 1 for our home), also a heat pump, and a back-up generator (auto-relay switch on 14KW- size due to shop needs for machinery).

When we bought this place, there was also a wood stove in the shop. DH never used the furnace, but only the wood stove. There was also a small wood stove in the addition (16 X 16 room). When we saw our propane bill, DH took the time to design & build us a custom wood stove. That was installed in our living room. He then installed a radiator in our bedroom (hot water via the water heater- propane). Now, seeing how much that propane was costing to use the radiator, DH modified his custom wood stove and it now heats our water. Since he built in the heatilator feature, and also built us a steel clothing rack, the wood stove drys our clothing. He is about to build a passive solar system to heat water during the summer. Propane is about to become the backup to the systems now in place.

Between the forest we have, which provides all the wood we would need, and also access to free firewood (road maintenance crews log regularly & the Alder is free to any who come to get it), little if any would ever need to be purchased.

Mess? Nothing a broom/dustpan can't tackle. There is nothing better than heat via a wood stove, in my opinion. It is dry heat:banana02: Also, it isn't hot/cold if you know how to regulate your heat. It didn't take me long to figure it out. Once you get your home to the temp you want, you just reduce the incoming air, so it will maintain. That just takes a little practice.

Also, our wood stove is a larger one. We burn hot fires in it, then lower the incoming air using a valve lever. I can burn a fire for many hours before I have to add more wood. We load up our wood stove, then go to bed, and then add more wood in the morning (fire still going).