Wood Burning Stove Question
 

My partner and I are considering a wood burning stove as our main heat, cooking and baking source. I have never used one and he says they can be tricky to use. If any of you have one, what are the pros and cons about using one.

Thanks in advance.

Cookstove? or Woodstove?

I have done a lot of heating with wood. Lets assume you are going to use a free standing stove for heat. The stove needs to be 2 or 3 feet(I'm sure someone will chime in more exact recommended distances) away from the wall to reduce fire danger. Also, with the stove in the open away from a wall heat distribution is more efficient with the heat able to radiate in all directions. The old procedure is to have a stove pipe leading to the chimney with a damper in it to reduce the flow of smoke an heat up the chimney.
This keeps the pipe from getting too hot, wasting heat, and causing fire danger. Modern stoves may have some other means of controlling the heat going up the chimney. The reason for all this is that when the fire is first started the fire needs more air to get it started which means the draft control at the bottom front of the stove is open. After the fire is going good, the draft icontrol is closed to reduce air flow down to a level that allows good burning but not an excessive amount which wastes heat and may get things too hot.

City neighborhoods have complained about smoke from wood burning stoves and naturally, the EPA, which looks for ways to justify their existence, has created various rules and regulations regarding content of smoke. Therefore, they have AFIK now rules requiring catalytic converts on wood stoves. A new stove dealer can inform you about this.

One of the most efficient , and expensive, sources of wood heat is an outdoor wood burning furnace. They have an electric automatic damper which shuts off the air flow when a certain temperature is reached. This leaves a smouldering fire on the verge of going out . Whet more heat is needed, the draft is opened and a fan blows into the fire, restarting the fire. This process creates a lot of smoke and is one cause of compliants in urban neighborhoods. Years ago a coworker bitterly complained about a neighbor who had a outdoor furnace DOWNHILL from her.

The most efficient use of wood heat occurs when dry wood is used which has been stored under shelter. Drying time varies according to your climate. In my area wood will burn pretty good after 3 months drying, a year is better. Different types of wood produce more heat, varying by area. In the East generally hickory produces the most heat. However, any wood will burn and produce heat in a stove. Evergreen trees like pines are frowned on it because they are oily and produce more creosote, which can cause chimney fires. You can Google creosote for more information. Chimneys need to be cleaned out occasionally. How often depends on the amount of wood burned.

Hope this will be a good starting point for you.

COWS

A wood cook stove is usually not a good heating stove, although a few of the newer ones are not bad for a smaller space. The older cook stoves use a lot of wood, split fairly small, to regulate the heat in the oven for baking. A good woodstove needs to have the ability to be closed up so the wood burns more slowly, putting off good heat so you don't have to refill often, especially at night. Best to have one of each, unless you have a small well insulated space. Our wood stove is a cook stove, an older model that does not close up good. It takes a lot of practice to keep an even heat to can and/or bake on, but we do it. We cut the wood short and split it small. When it gets warmer in the spring, it gets the house hot in a hurry so we move it out into a summer kitchen, shaded and mostly open to let the heat out....James

A good "do all" woodstove does not exist. If you really want to rely on wood, you need two stoves, one designed for heating, and one designed for cooking. That's what I've set up in our cabin. One in the kitchen designed for cooking, and a heating stove in the living room. That setup works well. The wood cookstove gets used the least. I have a backup propane tabletop stove fed by a 5 gallon barbeque tank that I use for cooking 9 months out of the year.

Keep in mind that stoves can be had cheap, but what is really expensive is the stove's chimney. CLASS A chimney pipe is expensive, at ~30$ per foot. You first need to understand the difference between stove pipe and chimney pipe. Stove pipe is either single-wall or double-wall pipe that comes directly out of the stove. Clearances to flamables is different. Single is 18", while double is 6". Likewise, as Cows mentions, the stove needs to be 36" away from flamables, though that can be reduced to 18" with heat-shielding.

Triple-wall chimney pipe is what is REQUIRED once the exhaust penetrates either a ceiling or a roof. Triple-wall chimney pipe has a 2" clearance to flamables, so it can pass through regular 16" wood framing. Once you start using triple-wall, you are REQUIRED to continue it, even outside, above the roof, to the end of the chimney cap. The cap needs to extend at least 2' higher than any physical point on the roof within 10' of the cap. In my case, my cap is 6' above the roof to clear the ridge. The chimney for the stove I payed 125$ for cost 850$! This is with self-installation.

Keep in mind, the very first thing you should do before starting is to contact your home insurance company and find out what you need to comply with to satisfy THEM. You're not going to save a single penny if there's ever a problem and the insurance company voids your policy because of an incorrect installation. Most likely this means a professional installation by a certified contractor, inspections, and sign offs. That will get expensive. You can save a LOT of money installing the chimney yourself, as I did, but it needs inspections every step of the way. Lastly, most likely with a fully inspected installation, you'll be required to install a NEW EPA certified stove. All these hoops to jump through just to get the rubber stamps.

Once you've actually gotten your stove hooked up and running, you'll find out how wonderful woodburning is, especially when you come in on a cold wet day and you feel that soaking warmth from the stove. You won't be so thrilled when you need to get up at 2am to stoke the stove so the fire won't go out overnight. Don't believe what they say about fires going all night! I've never seen it.

You want to cut wood in the springtime, so it has the whole summer to dry out. Burning green wood is a disaster. It's doesn't want to light, smolders, and fills the chimney with creosote. Burn only high quality dry oak, and you'll be amazed how long you can go between chimney cleanings. I feed my stoves with 100% trimming from winter blow-downs on my property. Totally free fuel that only needs me to chop it up into convienent stove lengths.

Good luck!

MichaelK says, "Don't believe what they say about fires going all night! I've never seen it."

I put the biggest wood stove I could find in a 500 square foot mobile home with 2 inch thick walls. The stove has about a 3.5 cubic foot firebox. I fill the stove with oak before bed and shut the damper down so it stays about 70 degrees by the stove. The damper setting varies by how cold it is outside.

The fire keeps the house at temperature for at least 10 hours so I can get a good nights sleep. The end bedroom does get down to about 55 when it is really cold out. It was -60 outside here a few times last winter. Twenty below is common. The pipes don't freeze and I don't either. In the morning I just throw 2 or 3 logs in the stove and they catch from the fire that is there.

The only problem is that the floor can be cold. I do have a heating pad to keep my feet warm while I am at the computer.

can wood stoves be tricky sure they can , my parents have an old Fisher , and one had to watch air intake hww you built the fire and flew temp it wasn't a very good stove to leave untended , but it wasn't that bad once you got a bed of coals and used big logs and turned down the damper

my quadrafire is much easier to use being an air tight with re-burn also I get more heat form my wood , your still watching the type and size of wood you add for what you want out of it , but the air tight fire box with air intake controls make it easy for me to operate

so there is some learning curve ,just my observation people who buy those never need to sharpen them kitchen knives are not the people willing to put in a little time and effort to learn
but if your a person who enjoys a good carbon steel knife , knows you can't put them in the dishwasher and sharpens them when they need it , you will fair just fine

http://www.quadrafire.com/Products/3...ood-Stove.aspx

this is the stove I have , i have had it 9 years the levers changed a bit but not much else I bought it as a floor model from the fireplace store

chimney is very very very important go with a good metal insulated multi wall chimney pipe and you will get a good draft , as well as being safe and easy to clean

stoves are time and work , if you would rather spend more time at your job and less working for your stove and heat then get a gas heater

I also find it very funny how they stage the stoves in those pictures , make your hearth bigger than needed you will end up with a metal ash can , a bin for wood and a shovel or some other tool to use on your stove , wood debris can make a mess your hauling and handling wood around your stove , it is what it is I just sweep it up at the end of the week and don't let it bother me

that said the wood stove makes some great heat and while ti takes some of my time there are many days I would rather be working for my wood than at my job or working for someone else

MichaelK says, "Don't believe what they say about fires going all night! I've never seen it."

I don't believe this. I can load my stove at 8 p.m. and it will still have a lot of hot coals at 8 a.m. In fact, I can keep a continuous fire going all winter.

Wood Burning Stove Question
 

We have a newer Napoleon with cool touch sides...

Triple wall zero clearance pipe and it's awesome for heat. We use it as a primary source of heat in fact we didn't turn our heat on until after December 1st this year.

New stoves don't have additional dampers anymore just a single air inlet in the bottom, they burn best when you get it hot then shut it down and get secondary combustion in the stove( it has a glass door)

It will and does burn all night, at least to the point I can just add wood in the am and it's fired right back up. It also burns seasoned wood extremely efficient. One cleaning every few weeks kind of clean.

You could boil water on the top or cook in a cast iron pan but that's about it. You would need a cooking stove to bake and such.

check out the Englander 30-NC at home depot. great reviews. also go to hearth.com and go to the forums, tons of information.

What all do you folks do for cleaning these things?

We did a lot of research before we decided on the Kitchen Queen 480 for our 2100 sq ft single story home. It is our ONLY heat!! This was our first year in our new home so we had some playing with the stove to do but it has worked great. No cool spots, Have had a fire hold as long as 12 hours without touching it. Granted our house is new and well insulated. The stove is in the center of the home because we planned for this stove since we started to build. Being in the center helps a lot with heat travel I think. My wife has cooked 80% of our meals on it this winter and she had never cooked on woodstove before. We did spend a lot of money on chimney and got the best on the market that we could find. I did all the install myself and had never worked with stove pipe of chimney. It was one of the best decisions we have ever made in our new homestead!! LOVE OUR STOVE!!!

OK, well lucky you. Guess my mistake was not getting a monster stove way bigger than what is needed.

I've had three stoves now, a DutchWest, Monarch, and a Vermont Castings, and even burning premium oak a year old, I've NEVER had a fire last till morning. Maybe it's because I'm just plain incompetent.

Sorry if I offended you. You related your experiences and I related mine. That's what this forum is all about. The OP is free to use or discard any advice they get. I do need this big a stove when it gets really cold so it's not too big for my situstion.

We heat only with wood and I love it!
Home isn't home without smoke out of the chimney.
And it is pretty easy, once you get the hang of it.

You have to do things a bit differently depending on the weather.
For instance, if there is a low pressure system, it won't draw well at the beginning, so you build you fire at the back of the stove under the pipe.
It heats the pipe and starts the draw and gets your fire going.

Just little things like that, but not a big deal really.

And we get a good, deep bed of coals, throw a few logs on and close off most of the air intake.
We still have a decent bed of coals in the AM>
We let the fire die out in the early afternoon, shovel it out and rebuild before nightfall.
Repeat and heat!

We have a Vogelzang two-barrel that we use to heat our home. It sits in the center of our house under a ceiling fan. In the upper barrel is 50' of copper-tubing that heats water. The heated water circulates through a Thermal-Bank, that then circulates through our radiant flooring.

We try to extract as much of the energy from the wood as possible, store that heat, and relocate that heat to where we want it.

I load it up and shut the damper when I go to bed every night. Every morning my Dw opens the damper, tosses a new log in it, and in a few minutes it flames up. We do not have any problems in keeping it going over-night. We have to let it burn-out and cool-down every second or third day, so we can clean out the ash.

The pros include cheap heat, a nice radiating heat, a beautiful fireplace (if you go that route).

The cons are work in preparing wood, mess, some smoke, initial expense, cleaning of chimney 1 or more times per year. Also, fire danger.

We would hate it to death if we could not have our free standing fireplace.

Cutting wood, splitting, drying and stacking it is too much work for me.
I heat my house very well with a wood stove.
I burn old used shipping pallets.
I just brought eight into the basement yesterday and I will cut them up tomorrow. They are completely dry right now but we don't need them yet.

You need to realize that the new EPA law will take affect in the very near future and companies can sell existing inventory till Dec. 31 2015 of current non certified models........as I read the law it is also unlawful to sell a non certified wood heater as a used unit also...........Many companies will run out of the lower cost current models and rest assured that the "newer" models will cost more.........get yourself something now before the law goes into affect and everyone runs out of the lower cost units........the law is waiting to be published in the Federal Registry.......so hang on .............

Not really the size of the stove, it's the size of the wood. And how it's placed in the stove. Stuff a stove full of small splits and it's going to burn relatively fast no matter how much you have the stove shut down. Use large rounds with some separation between them when you set the stove up at night and it should be able to get through the night to have a lot of coals for you in the morning. Your house will cool down some because the stove isn't working that hard, but when you get that hot fire going quickly in the morning, the house will heat right up again.

If you want a nice warm house all night, you do have to throw on a few chunks of wood at 2 AM, but that's not the efficient way of using the stove. They aren't an oil furnace, and you can't expect them to heat your house the same way. You have to make some changes to how you expect your house to be in the winter when you use wood.

There is some truth in this. I had a Ben Franklin stove at first. It was not airtight. If you loaded it with smaller pieces of wood it would all go up at once. I tested my installation several times up to about 800 degrees flue temperature. Yes, you really can smell the air burning. Several time I had to grab burning pieces of wood and throw them out the door into the snow. If you loaded it with big chunks, they would burn more slowly so you got a smaller fire that lasted longer. I still couldn't get it to hold a fire through the night.

Now I have an airtight stove. You can shut the damper down so you get a nice slow burn that lasts all night, even in the coldest temps. It doesn't seem to matter as much what size the wood is.