Wood stove

[cathouse willy]

What size is the room? No matter what wood burner you buy you'll have to find a way to move the heat to the rest of the house. If you have crawl space access under floor ducts would work. You'll also want to spend time in the room with the stove. Where's the fun in a fire you can't see and enjoy.

[heimlaga]

In your case the ideal solution would probably be what we in Swedish call a "kökspanna". A stove with a water jacket which is hooked up to the central heating system. If you put a pair of valves on the pipes connecting it to the heating system you can just shut it off when not in use or open he valves and use it in parallel with the oil fired boiler thereby saving oil or if the oil burner breaks down you could keep the house livable by maintaining a fire in the stove heating through the central heating system. Most of them also have a top intended for cooking. Some models even have an oven.

Wamsler is at present one of the most reputable makers of such stoves.

Here in Finland we now pay around 1,20 euro per litre for heating oil. That equals 4.17 US dollars per US gallon.
My friends who live just across the border in Sweden pay 4kr (0.38 US dollar) per kilowatt hour of electricity. We are fortunate enough to only pay half of that this side of the border.
Nobody knows when your country ends up in a similar energy crisis.

Together with my parents I own 4.5 hectares (11 acres) of woodland and we supplement it by salvaging windfallen trees an other leftovers on land owned by others. Both my parents and we have boilers that can be changed between wood and oil so the energy crisis barely touches us. My 1971 model Massey-Ferguson 165 with 6 ton log trailer and winch is pretty much ideal for this sort of household scale logging and the whole rig costed half as much as an ATV. As long as there is spare parts available and electricity for the cirkulation pump and the cooking stove and fuel for the tractor and the chainsaw the household will not suffer from an energy crisis.
Others particularly city people on their residential plots with electric heating and no firewood of their own suffer badly.
The conclusion being that everybody outside the cities should own a woodland parcel and have some means of heating their homes with wood.
With your 100 acres you really should make them contribute to your heating all the time!

[Ron Williamson]

A couple of guys that I know like their Blaze King airtights.
I have an old VC Resolute that is underworked since I did a reno with new windows and insulation.
It's a great stove but needs lots of gaskets and since it's cast it's a bit delicate.

A welded steel plate stove is much tougher.I just installed my old one(replaced by the VC) in my daughter's new basement
knowing that she will be running it hard and probably won't be too careful about it.

Redneck heat distribution can be done with a small fan (Caframo 707) hanging in the top corner of the door opening until you figure out what you prefer.
A couple of cords of almost any dry wood will keep you going for quite a while("Money at home.", as my old neighbour used to say).
In an emergency,ash and cedar will burn fresh off the stump.
R

[Todd D]

We have an enameled Jotul Castine in the living room. The picture is that stove about 2 minutes ago. It is doing a good job heating the house on this 10F morning here on the Maine coast.GOPR3284.jpg. The house is a 1500 sq ft open plan with 2x6 construction and decent insulation.

[Garret]

Good thing one never finds an opinion on the WBF!

First & foremost - spend the cash (~$200) to have a good chimney sweep clean & check your entire chimney before running a stove! Doing so could save your house & lives.

Good (efficient) wood stoves are not cheap - but modern stoves get a whole lot more heat out of a log than those of 30 years ago. For best heating of a house - the stove needs to be a central & low in the house as possible. If off to the side, you may need fans of the like.

IMO, if you're not running the stove full time (mine hasn't gone out since October), a water jacket & the piping to it is more trouble than it's worth. If you run the stove for 5 days in a row, what do you do with the hot water? How do you control the max temp of it? Dealing with this will add cost & complexity.

My stove has an ash drawer & I never use it. Way easier to scoop out the ashes in the morning from the end door - scrape of the charcoal/embers on the top before dumping the ashes into a metal container.

No way we can tell you how much wood you'll burn. Some rough guidelines, but nothing more. It depends on house insulation, tightness, size (cu. ft.), wind, # of windows and more. Then there's the wood. Never burn softwood - except dried for kindling only - if you cut down a pine tree, take it to the landfill - don't put it in the stove - even dried it'll cause creosote in the chimney which will cause a chimney fire (as will green hardwood). For burning wood should be dry, but not too dry. The standard adage is at least 2 years split & stacked. However that too varies. When were the trees cut? Those logged in January have a lot less sap in 'em than a tree cut in May. What species? In northern New England you'll mostly find maple, beech, birch (yellow & white), ash, and oak. Each varies a lot in heat output - even maple varies between soft & hard. Where is the wood stacked? I have a south facing woodshed, so wood dries a lot faster there than in a shaded one. Stored wood needs to be covered & get plenty of ventilation. It's generally sold as green, seasoned, or dry. Dry means ready to burn, seasoned means maybe it'll be ready in 4-6 months if carefully stacked & lots of breeze. Green means at least a year, maybe more.

Then there are folks who sell short cords. I had one guy tell me "You stacked the wood too tight, so of course it'll look like less than a cord". Yeah right. A cord is 4x4x8 ft. - IOW 128 cubic feet. I had one guy tell me that my taller single row didn't count, as the only way to tell is an actual 4x4x8 stack. Wood will be delivered in a dump truck/trailer and you have to have a lot of experience to be able to tell a cord from a pile. Speaking of piles - wood doesn't dry worth a damn when just piled instead of stacked.

[birlinn]

I have a stove very similar in looks to Todd D's, that is the only heating in my house which is about 1,000 sq. ft. No heating upstairs.
It does have a back boiler heating a large hw cylinder; I added the odd radiator after the system boiled at times. Gravity convection circulation- no pumps. I like to have heating in power cuts!
Max output is 12 KW; I get through about 3/4 a cubic metre of logs a week maximum.
Chimney is twin wall insulated stainless; I burn softwood, which often is not as dry as I like. The chimney has not been swept for 15 years, and no chimney fires, yet..
I think if you have a good blast with an insulated chimney, you do not get an appreciable build up of tar.
House walls are, from outside, in old money: 1/2" render, 4" lightweight blockwork, 2" cavity, tyvek, 1/2" ply, 6" studs and fibreglass insulation, 1" Exp Poly insulation, 1/2" plasterboard.
Triple glazed windows, 12" fibreglass in roof space.

P1011100.jpg

[heimlaga]

We have burned a mix of softwood and hardwood for as long as I can remember (I am 41) with no tar buildup to speak of. It is common practise to sweep the chimney once or twice a year just to be sure. Legal minimum in Finland is sweeping once a year.
If there is a buidup is usually comes from firewood that hasn't been dried properly or from a firebox which is continuously run with an oxygen deficit.

[Ron Williamson]

This^^^^
If you run a big stove,choked down, you will be cleaning your chimney more often.
R

[Garret]

We have burned a mix of softwood and hardwood for as long as I can remember (I am 41) with no tar buildup to speak of. It is common practise to sweep the chimney once or twice a year just to be sure. Legal minimum in Finland is sweeping once a year.
If there is a buidup is usually comes from firewood that hasn't been dried properly or from a firebox which is continuously run with an oxygen deficit.

No argument on shutting down the stove too soon & green wood. In our area, the softwoods (pines & spruces) are very resinous. Hemlock less so, but it doesn't burn all that well.

[Canoez]

Smoke detectors, stove surface temperature thermometers, CO detectors, and a couple of fire snuffer sticks are also handy things to have around. Good fireplace gloves and a few tools don't hurt either.

[SaltyD from BC]

There are a lot of good wood stoves out there and there's a lot of effort put in to two main components; efficiency of burning, and how long they will burn once loaded up. Good if not all stoves these days will give data on those two most important concerns.
Of those mentioned here i can attest that Pacific Energy and Blaze King both make good stoves that are efficient and have a good long burn time. See the specifications.

[woodpile]

Have been burning wood for many years and will keep cutting and burning as long as i can run a chain saw. A large soapstone stove for heating a 7-room colonial and a Glenwood cook stove to cook on and heat the garage, use about 6+ cords a year, that would be around $1200+ a year if you purchased good quality wood. Just put a Harmon pellet stove in the basement rec room for heat as needed. Knowing several people who run pellet stoves all winter for heat the cost for pellets is around $1000 for the winter season, around 2 1/2 tons of pellets. The pellet stove is very clean burning, qualifies for a tax credit, heats the area very quickly and has a remote thermostat to control heat, does not require a chimney and has digital controls that require 110V. That said, I still prefer the wood stoves, no cost for fuel and no electricity required, however, from a cost basis if you have to buy wood, the pellet stove seems to be the most cost-effective option.

[rbgarr]

Well, heat rises. The Jotul was in my basement woodshop and there was a register vent that was above it in the floor of the living room just in front of the fireplace. With the stove going, the basement was like the Bahamas, the first floor a pleasant 70-75°F and the second floor bedrooms were a nice sleeping temperature . The mass of the concrete in the basement kept the place warm when the stove would go out for a bit, so there was that. Had an enameled kettle we had on the stove to humidify a bit and one of those heat-powered fans that sits on the stove to circulate air in the basement towards the stairs up to the kitchen.

^^^

[willin woodworks]

No argument on shutting down the stove too soon & green wood. In our area, the softwoods (pines & spruces) are very resinous. Hemlock less so, but it doesn't burn all that well.

Nothing wrong with burning green wood once the stove and the flue are good and hot. We always loaded up the stove with the green stuff at night. Close it up tight and close the damper in the flue. Fire lasts all night and when you open up in the morning theres a good bed of hot coals. Throw in a couple seasoned pieces and get everything going again.
Sweeping the chimney regularly was part of the program and all the stove pipe between the stove and the chimney get replaced every year. We heated with nothing but wood when I lived in NH back in the early 80's.

[Garret]

Nothing wrong with burning green wood once the stove and the flue are good and hot. We always loaded up the stove with the green stuff at night. Close it up tight and close the damper in the flue. Fire lasts all night and when you open up in the morning theres a good bed of hot coals. Throw in a couple seasoned pieces and get everything going again.
Sweeping the chimney regularly was part of the program and all the stove pipe between the stove and the chimney get replaced every year. We heated with nothing but wood when I lived in NH back in the early 80's.

Glad that worked out for you. Not something I'd prefer to do. For sure, put on some less dry logs for the night if you have an old not very tight stove, but with modern stoves, properly dried wood will go all night & leave good coals.

My wood this year is too dry - but it was cheap... It still leaves good coals for the morning.

@ Woodpile's post #47 - $1200/year for 6 purchased cords - IOW $200 a cord, is out of date. Around here even green (as in cut this week) is $250, seasoned is $300+ & I've seen dry for as high as $450 - not that I'd pay that.

[Todd D]

The last wood we bought was green for $250. The wood was a mix of hard maple and oak with a couple percent birch. However, we haven't bought any wood for a few years since we have had regular winter storms that blow down quite a few trees every year on the property. I cut and split the windfall and it is in the stack. It is mostly, and poplar and a little tamarack. I cut up the spruce that blows down, but we don't burn it.

[McMike]

First & foremost ...

Thanks, very helpful.

[David W Pratt]

We have a well insulated great room of 480 sq' with a cathedral ceiling. Our soapstone lined stove with catalytic converter keeps it at 70°F+ while the rest of the house has the thermostat set at 58°F. I fill it twice a day and it runs continuously for the winter. It reduces propane consumption by about 50% during heating season. We use about a cord every 6 weeks during heating season.
Not great on aesthetics, can't open the front, glass window doesn't stay clean, but it heats well.

[lupussonic]

The Monterey Pine Fiasco.

[Ted Hoppe]

How efficient is your stoves? You may be contributing to increased green house effects if you are not prudent about use and burn more than what is efficient to warm up your domicile.

Wood stoves can be carbon neutral, meaning the carbon dioxide released from burning wood, is the same the tree had absorbed when growing. It is literally giving back the carbon dioxide it used up and no additional carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere. Also, a wood-burning stove is designed to burn at much higher temperatures, meaning the gases present in the smoke are fully burned and not released back into the atmosphere, resulting in a thermal efficacy of around 80%.
On the flip side, the appliance still emits carbon dioxide into the air. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and is majorly responsible for contributing to global warming and climate change. Wood burning stoves also produce extra doses of particles into the air. In fact, a wood-burning stove emits more particles per hour than a modern diesel truck or lorry.

A6D01BAE-577E-4063-BEC7-24D913BB4514.jpg

[Ron Williamson]

When a tree rots,it's CO2 gets released into the atmosphere anyway.
R

[Ted Hoppe]

When a tree rots,it's CO2 gets released into the atmosphere anyway.
R

Many trees that fall in a forest - the co2 goes into the soil along with the nutrients. Breaking the cycle of actually depletes the quality of soil and the forest. Responsible logging for heat can be considered misnomer.

In some more occupied areas, the tree bark and logs has captured toxins. Burning them in ones home - one should be concerned about airborning those toxins and entering their food and water supplies inside their homes. One is truly fortunate not to have to deal with that when burning clean wood.

[Paul Pless]

Many trees that fall in a forest - the co2 goes into the soil along with the nutrients.

i dump my ashes in the woods

[Ted Hoppe]

i dump my ashes in the woods

I have no doubt but...
Does everyone?

[Ron Williamson]

Many trees that fall in a forest - the co2 goes into the soil along with the nutrients. Breaking the cycle of actually depletes the quality of soil and the forest. Responsible logging for heat can be considered misnomer.

In some more occupied areas, the tree bark and logs has captured toxins. Burning them in ones home - one should be concerned about airborning those toxins and entering their food and water supplies inside their homes. One is truly fortunate not to have to deal with that when burning clean wood.

Wouldn't you say that smoke inside your house,enough to contaminate your food and water,would indicate that you have a faulty system and you should get out before the fire department gets there?
R

[Breakaway]

When a tree rots,it's CO2 gets released into the atmosphere anyway.
R

Yes.
Without the particulate pollution.
And, without burning fuel in a chainsaw

Kevin


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

[bluedog225]

My little electric chainsaw is a beast. And charged with solar power.

Though there is quite a bit of solar infrastructure behind it.

[UCanoe_2]

People have mentioned this in passing, but if you heat with wood you really need a woodshed. It doesn't have to be fancy; I never got around to installing siding. Mine is 8 x 12 x 8 with generous roof overhangs. Note the Greek Revival architecture with gables front and rear.....

Theoretically it will hold 6 cords chock full, but 3 is a practical maximum. The old farm gate on the rear of the shed allows heaping wood in with a front end loader. Then we need to stack the wood to avoid hazards.

We burn 1-2 cords per year here in a mild climate. Our stove is a supplemental heat source for really cold weather, or for the 47 days last winter when the furnace was out of commission.

woodshed rear resized.jpg

[robm]

Responsible logging for heat can be considered misnomer.

I am not sure any logging can be describe as "responsible". If you take ANYTHING out of the woods, you have taken away part of the woods. Can't be replaced.

[bluedog225]

I’ve left plenty in the woods. Doing my part.

[StevenBauer]

I am not sure any logging can be describe as "responsible". If you take ANYTHING out of the woods, you have taken away part of the woods. Can't be replaced.

This is just silly. They grow right back. At least where I live. It takes a lot of work to keep them from growing right back if you want to do something else with the land.

[robm]

Ask a forester. The old trees are supposed to drop, and rot slowly, providing nutrients (and a bunch of other stuff, like habitat for critters) for the new trees coming up. Slowly as in decades and decades. The trees that come back after a forest is cut and removed will not be like the one that was there.

I am not a forester, but I have spent a lot of time talking to them, people studying things like "coarse woody debris" - don't burn the slash, spread it and let it rot. Doing this helps a lot, but doesn't make up for the timber removed. This idea some traction for awhile around here, but since pellet plants came in, it is all about using every scrap of a tree for profit, leaving nothing on the land at all.

[heimlaga]

When digging one's way all the way back to the source of the anti wood burning propaganda there seems to often be either a fossil fuel lobby or a nuclear power lobby or a pulp mill lobby hiding somewhere. They want to strenghten their business monopolies by ridding the world of all competition.
When we run our woodland parcel in a way intended to maximise the output of high quality sawlogs (for houses, furniture and boats) and firewood hardly any pulpwood is produced and what little there would be becomes firewood. If we did run it through clear cutting followed by replanting and pulp wood production the pulp companies would get a significant harvest of pulpwood from our land at a price that would hardly cover our production costs. Instead they get nothing. Not a stick of any sort. No wonder they don't like us.
For every load of firewood brought home oil companies get to sell less heating oil. 100 litres of oil products used to produce firewood makes fiewood equalling around 1000 litres of oil so they are loosing the sales of 900 litres. No wonder they don't like us.

Around here the woodlands have been used for firewood and building timber and ship building timber and in earlier times for slash and burn farming for over 1000 years. I do not subscribe to the idea that the soil is depleted if anything is brought away because in that case there should be a noticeable difference between some hard to reach places which have never been logged since the land rose out of the sea 2000 or more years ago and the land around it. No such difference can be found.
In Finland we have a public right to roam on anyone's land (except private yards and farmland during seasons with growing crops) and plenty of small landowners means that one can see the difference between various types of forestry when walking in the woods.

There is a noticeable difference between land that has been clear cut in the last 80 years and land that hasn't. Small clear cuttings (less than let's say 50 metres (or yards) across don't seem to change much in the long term. On larger clear cuttings especially those where the soil is turned with one or another sort of machine before replanting it hakes many decades for nature to rebuild the topsoil. My best guess based on what I have seen (unsceintific) is that it takes around 80 years give or take to rebuild some sort of reasonably sound topsoil in such places.
The forest ecosystem produces more carbon than it can contain. As fallen trees rot much of the carbon is released as carbon dioxide. A smaller part of the carbon goes into the soil from which most of it is slowly released over centuries as long as the topsoil equilibrium is maintained. The topsoil cannot take up as much carbon as there is fallen trees in a unlogged forest. Scientists have dug deep into this and figured out the proportions but I don't remember the figures which hold true only locally anyway.

Therefore my oppinion about sustainable forestry is that one can take out a proportion of the "new" biomass if leaving enough of it behind to maintain a sound topsoil. If this is done through small clear cuttings or through continous logging while maintaining a tree cover doesn't really matter. As long as there is no large scale clearcuttings and as long as enough of the wastewood is left in the woods to compose.
The firewood brought home would have released most of it's carbon contents anyway so as we burn it we just let out what would mostly have been released anyway. Plust the 10% fossile carbon dioxide released by tractor and chainsaw. Still mush better than burning 100% fossil oil or fossil gas or fossil coal or whatever alternative. Not good by any means but better than the alternatives.
The timber is used to build things which otherwise would have been made from concrete or metal or plastic all of which emit more pollution and use more fossil energy in their production than locally grown home sawn timber does.

Just some thought from a small scale landowner interested in maintaining a sound ecosystem.

[lupussonic]

Also, emmisions released by small wood stoves stay low in the atmosphere where they can be reabsorbed by trees. The emmisions from power stations are such that they can reach very high in the atmosphere where they do the most damage.

[David W Pratt]

I am not sure any logging can be describe as "responsible". If you take ANYTHING out of the woods, you have taken away part of the woods. Can't be replaced.

We have our woods surveyed by a forester who marks the trees that should be harvested. Removing mature trees unlocks saplings, encouraging their growth. It also improves habitat for wildlife. I collect the ashes and in the spring haul them out to a high spot in the woods and dump them. Even without that, the nutrients in the woods obviously get replaced; perhaps by wind borne dust, or bird feces We maintain enough woods to more than offset our carbon footprint and that of our children and grand children.
I would call our logging responsible.