First time heating with wood stove, Oct 2008

[elt]

This Summer when we were fearing $5 USD a gallon oil price, we decided to burn as much wood as we could this year. The idea was that we'd set the furnace where we would normally and let it make up what the fireplace didn't make. We got the chimney cleaned as started using it at the beginning of the month. (October, 2008)

The house has a little wood burning insert in the fireplace and the previous owners were kind enough to leave the paperwork. The paperwork claims 37,500 BTU output with an estimated efficiency of 62%. (It's not a question, it's just what's written down.)

About the best way that I can quantify the results of the burning wood for the first month: There were 450 heating degree days, that is about 1/15 of our average yearly. Over the last few years, we've burned about 1500 gallons of fuel oil. 1/15 of that would 100 gallons. (It's a big house and we have two people that, medically, need to be warm.) This month we burned about 50 gallons of oil at $3.09 USD per and one face cord at $60 USD. That's a savings of about 28%,

The savings would have been more if oil prices stayed insane. I'm glad they're lower and hope they won't go back there but that's likely an empty dream. And the savings might have been higher if/when I learn to build a smaller fire. Seems to me that it's easier to build a larger fire than a small one and the house has often been warmer than we would normally keep it. It seems that I can keep a nice fire going with the flue set from a little below half open to all the way. In that range, after I get a nice bed of coals, I put a piece of wood in more or less once an hour. About the only luck I've had with the lowest setting is to put two or three pieces in before I go to bed and usually there's enough coals left to restart the fire in the morning.

It's probably a temporary issue since, once it gets colder, I'll need to be running the insert all out...

Implements:

The picture shows a little crowbar. In the past with "regular" fireplaces, it's was my favorite poker: not so long as to be unwieldy, sturdy and the curved part make a good grip when wrangling the wood. For this insert, though, the shovel is my most used tool. The cavity is small enough that it does not have a grate or wood rack. The instructions say to push the coals to the sides to create an air space in the middle and to put the wood directly on coals. That seems to work very well but those were the only real instructions I got.

It was probably three weeks before I figured out that opening the flue all the way and then cracking the door for a few seconds would get the smoke up the chimney and not in my face; too bad I didn't read more of the "heat" section here sooner as that's written in prior posts.

There's a jug of water there. Besides the obvious use, my saltwater aquarium needs make-up water to compensate for evaporation. Instead of storing the jugs by the tank I thought why don't I put it by the fireplace... in addition to the safety factor, it preheats the water so it's not so much of a temperature shock when it goes in the tank.

There's a cast iron dutch oven. In the morning, I use the shovel to sift out the rollover coals and put the ash in there. I use the little broom to sweep up spilled ash and debris and put that in the pot as well. It takes two days to fill the pot. The pot will still be warm from the previous day's ash, with the current days ash in it it's too hot dump anywhere but the burn barrel... certainly not in the trash can.

The slippers get a good amount of usage. The little wood basket holds a medium armful of wood and needs to be filled a few times a day. I put on my slippers and go out to the enclosed porch were I keep a day or two's supply of wood. I'm pretty pleased with the wood rack that I built:

Besides being extremely simple to build, (just cut four 8 foot 2x3's in half and put together,) I want something up off of the ground to save my back from one more bend and lift. It's very sturdy and holds enough wood that, so far, I haven't had to go out to the wood pile when it's raining or snowing.

One more feature I'd like though, is a way to keep incoming wood which might be wet from being piled on top of wood that's dry. I'm not sure whether I'll put a divider in the middle of this rack or build another rack to accomplish the same thing. It depends on how fast I'll be burning wood and I think I'll know better by the end of November; we typically have twice the heating degree days then.

Air and heat quality:

We are seeing some grayish ash in the room. I'm not sure where it's coming from. I'll try to remember to open the flue before the door and to make sure that I get the door cranked shut. It might just be ash that falls out gets sucked in by the ventilator fan. Even though I sweep the front of the fireplace, some stays in the rock. We have a HEPA vac but I'm scared of sucking hot embers into a vacuum cleaner.

Temperature wise, it's been great! One "trick" I learned here was to blow the cold air to toward the hot. All the rooms have ceiling fans but they don't do much to move air from one room to another. The house is long and with the fireplace at one end, it can be 10F degrees cooler at the other. With a fan at the cold end, that difference drops to 2F degrees. And since the far end is the bedrooms, we don't have to run that fan and heat the bedrooms all day and can choose to keep the heat at the occupied end. We have four heating zones in the house with the furnace, we're doing almost as good with the fireplace and fan.

Thank you very much,

- Ed.

[spinningmagnets]

Ed, I have not lived with wood heat, but I may soon when I move, so your post is very helpful to me.

The only thing I might suggest looking into (from reading here, again, I'm not experienced) If the intake air is from the room, the hot and strong chimney up-draft can drop the room air preesure enough that every tiny crack in the windows, walls and doors will leak from the inside/outside pressure difference.

If you can enshroud the heater air intake, and duct fresh air in from the outside, you will not be consuming the heated room air. I was told this noticeably reduces the wood-fuel needed to maintain comfort.

Concerning the cold end of your house, a temporary clothes-dryer flexi-duct and fan strung on the hallway ceiling would look goofy (I have a wife, otherwise...) but you could attach a 2" deep "drop ceiling" (insulated on top) with perhaps a couple old computer muffin fans running off low-watt draw wall-warts?

Best of luck, and you are already way ahead of me!

"The NAVY stands for: Never Again Volunteer Yourself!" -MMC Picardal

[TomW]

Ed;

Our house is long also but small. I find running the far end ceiling fans pushing air up and the near fan pushing air down tends to circulate the air through the rooms fairly well. If you go to something like a window fan in a doorway to move air, blow the air out of the cold area into the warm. This seems better but no data just how I do it.

Nothing quite measures up to a real fire for that comforting feeling when its double digits on the wrong side of the zero! And it works with no power , is carbon neutral. I cut my own right on the farm so the economy is hard to beat.

Burned wood my whole adult life except for a couple years getting back on my feet after a nasty divorce.

Good luck with it.

Tom

[SteveCH]

We've been heating exclusively with wood since 1974, except for some hot air blown in from a solar greenhouse that helps a lot during the day.

Wood fires, stoves or fireplaces, need and are supposed to have a source of outside replacement air. This means either leaving a leaky door frame or some windows to be just that, leaky. Or, opening a window somewhere and leaving it open a couple inches. Or, plumbing in an air duct of some sort, somewhere. I built one into the fireplace body when I was building it, but that one won't work for you. But if you can put a duct of some sort in the floor or an outside wall near the fireplace, a damper or even a hand-made "door" to close it off when not using [and a screen to keep out rodents], that would work great. This is true for any wood stove.

As to the ash, well, good luck trying to keep it under control. We have two wood stoves and a fireplace, the latter of which is normally only used for weekend evenings in the living room, but the two stoves quite a lot from Nov. to March, plus one of them is a range and I do all my baking in it, so sometimes even in the summer, if the day isn't too hot outdoors. We have some ash dust. It isn't a lot, but there is a tiny bit that we just cannot seem to stop. I guess you could say we've reached our absolute minimum. We run a couple of BlueAir air filter units 24/7, which helps a lot. I have been concerned about the health aspects of breathing that fine, fine ash for a long time. I haven't noticed any health issues, yet, but I continue to try to keep the ash down. When you unload ash from the fireplace, you are getting a bunch of it in the air. You probably won't see it unless a ray of sunlight is hitting the space right there where you are working on it, but due to our having 28 skylights, there is lots of sunlight in here and we see it every time we empty ash. I roll one of the BlueAirs over near the stove and turn it up to high while I am emptying, but we still get some. Every now and then, luckily not that often, a particular gust of wind will cause a backdraft in one of the stoves and eve though it usually only lasts a couple seconds, we get another load of ash in the air, even from our pretty tight range. Be advised, if you haven't heard this already, that vacuuming up ash usually lets micro-fine ash dust come thru the bag of the vacuum. Or, that's what I've read many times. I haven't verified it, as I don't vacuum the stuff from the stoves or fireplace myself.

I'd go ahead and build that extra rack for the porch. You can't have too much wood stored nearby and out of the elements.

[frackers]

Nearly 6 years ago I moved from the UK to New Zealand and from a gas fired central heating system (radiators with a couple of forced air blowers in the conservatory and the kitchen kick panel) to a single log burner in the lounge that heats the whole house (its rated at 23kW). I would not go back now.

I planted 300 firewood trees 2 years ago (blue gum and wattle) and they will start cropping in 2 years so I'll be heating for free then.

We get a bit of ash appearing on furniture during the winter but that balances the pollen in the spring and dust (it gets very dry here) in the summer :-)

Although all our windows are double glazed they gave a couple of condensation drain holes in the bottom of the frames and that provides enough fresh air to ensure a healthy number of air changes per hour which occurs much more efficiently with the flue gases sucking it though than with the UK 'sealed room' approach.

Both the missus and I have had much fewer colds etc since we moved here and I'm sure a major reason is the different heating system. It does actually feel healthier!!

[elt]

Hi Tom,

You suggested:

> running the far end ceiling fans pushing air up and the near fan pushing air down

Thank you. I've been able to link the room with the fireplace in it and the next room very well. Your technique works like a champ and I now have very even temps in those two rooms. I have some level changes that I think are keeping me from going farther but I'll keep playing.

Thanks again,

- Ed.

[mbeland]

Sources of outside replacement air are sometimes tricky. If you install a duct directly from the outside to the stove, the wind might force hot air from the stove into the duct and cause a fire. Especially if it is installed downwind side of the house.

My installer argued when installing our fireplace that our heat exchanger fan could suffice to provide air to the fireplace. The draft from the fireplace simply moves the balance from neutral to a bit of air coming inside. you still have to be careful when using a kitchen or bathroom exhaust fan that the fireplace door is not open because these are powerful and can imbalance the house strongly and provoke back draft.

If there is no heat exchanger fan, then as pointed out earlier, the house needs to have leaks.

Martin

[elt]

Three months usage:

We started heating with wood at the beginning of October, now we've finished three months. Our original goal was to cut down on our fuel oil bill by burning as much food as possible. Our fireplace insert isn't large enough to heat the whole house but we were estimating/hoping that we could do up to 1/3 of our heating with wood.

So far, I think that we are on track. We would have normally ordered our second tank of fuel during December but by the end of November, we'd only used a third of a tank and by the end of December we still had a third of a tank left. We'll need to get some oil in January but I think we're well on our way to our goal of reducing our fuel oil usage from three fill-ups a season to two.

We didn't reach my estimate for wood usage. I though we would have burned five face cords of wood by the end of December, instead we've burned about four. I think ("guess" really) that that's a combination of stopping down the fireplace a little bit at night to slow the burning as well as that the last batch of wood we bought wasn't quite as seasoned as the previous ones. It probably sounds like we should go through more wood with unseasoned wood but our insert is so small (35K BTU/hr) that we just can't get more than two or three sticks in there so what goes in there burns slowly... (Any hints for that?)

Living with a fireplace insert:

After three months, we still love heating with wood. The temperature in the house feels more constant and if you need a quick warm-up after coming from outside there's seat in front of the fireplace. (Last time I wrote that the little shovel was my favorite implement, now the little stool in front of the fireplace is!)

Good fortune??? I'd written last Summer that an ankle injury stopped me from digging for my tower base. I finally got my ankle operated on in the beginning of December and while I was off my feet, I finally got grandma and my wife to bring in wood and tend the fire. Now I've resumed most of the tending (and that's fine with me)but either one of the girls will feed the fire if I'm out in the shop or otherwise not around. As advised, I did increase the capacity of my inside wood racks and stacked about two weeks of wood inside before my surgery. I keep inside racks stocked so neither grandma nor my wife have to get their feet cold to bring in a few sticks of wood.

My wife remains a good sport about the ash appearing all around the house. I haven't found anyway to stop it but I pretend that turning off the blower before opening the door on the insert helps. (I always like to feel that I am addressing a problem.) For now, we dust of the TV screens frequently and laugh that we're going to have to buy an industrial-sized box of dust rags come spring.

Burning walnut:

As very good fortune would have it, a friend is fixing up a house kitty-corner across the road from us and he cut down and bucked a few walnut trees while cleaning up the yard last Spring. He has offered us the wood. After splitting and stacking for a few weeks it burns okay... maybe takes a few minutes to really catch but then burns nicely. I think there's enough wood to get us through the season and the quality of the wood will only get better.

One things that deters burning is that the thick bark gets wet and holds the water like a sponge. Even when the wood burns, the thick bark is still in the fire... I've taken to stripping the bark as I split it. A whack or two at the edge with the maul normally pops it off.

The fireplace insert is more or less airtight but the walnut smoke outside smells wonderful!

Electric log splitter:

After reading reviews, we decided to by the little Ryobi electric log splitter from Home Depot.

See:

(http://www.homedepot.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?storeId=10051&langId=-1&ca
talogId=10053&productId=100348561)

Honestly, it looked pitifully small there next to the gas powered splitters, But I've split two walnut trees with it so far and I only have one piece of wood set aside that I haven't been able to get through. I'm not saying it's magical, I understand the walnut is fairly easy to split and it is more or less seasoned.

The selling point to me was when I realized that I could split wood inside. I have heavy duty extension cords when I eventually want to split outside and a generator if I need to give the splitter longer legs. Even though our "Florida room" where we stack wood isn't heated, working out of the wind and not standing in snow is wonderful.

I did look at other Chinese-import electric splitters but when shipping was added on, buying at HD wasn't that much more expensive and I have hope of getting service is there are problems with it.

Looking forward:

We think that burning wood is a keeper and that it fits in with the idea of reducing living expenses as we look towards retirement. In a shorter time frame, I'm eying trees now for use next season. There are a few on our property but there's woods across the road and I plan to approach the owner for permission to take the leaners and crowded trees. We already take care of the owner's lawn so I'm hopeful that we'll be able to take care of their woods.

I've also looked at getting trees from state land. I've found that they do issue logging permits but don't know if they consider personal rather and industrial quantities... I figure it won't hurt to ask.

Keep warm!

- Ed.

[Airstream]

I just spent five weeks living in front (literally) of a stove insert nearly identical to yours, and will pass on the technique taught to me that successfully kept that area clean. I probably burned 1/2 of a cord of well dried Oak I had cut and split four years ago (fast burning!) and miss the fire immensely now that I am back in Minnesota. There is something about standing in front of a block of cast iron heated to 400°F that central forced air heat just doesn't emulate. I hope I don't sound too envious...

Concerning escaping airborne ash - unlatching the door and cracking it very slowly allows the hot air inside to mix with room air and be drafted up the chimney without the sudden turbulence flying ash out of the opening and escaping the firebox into the room. Also cracking the door slowly allows the draft to clean the gasket areas and face flanges so they don't shed ashes once the door is opened.

Another (bad?) habit I picked up was rapping the poker/shovel against the opening's cast iron frame to dislodge ash off it before waving it about in the room while replacing it in the holder, a small gain for sure but still a gain.

Also, only clean out ashes while there is enough heat left in the firebox for a fair draft to keep the fine stuff headed up the chimney, we used a smallish bucket that will fit while tilted into one side of the door opening while shoveling & dumping in slow-motion which eliminates the fallout from that job too. It kinda makes me feel like a kid sneaking a cigarette and hiding the smoke from grown-ups but that's part of the fun!

Also - that lovely glass insert, every time ashes are cleaned out we slip the door off its hinges and set it outdoors then use "Goof-Off" pump sprayer cleanser and a safety razor blade to remove the smoke grunge then a shot of Windex to remove the streaks. Works extremely well.

[elt]

Airstream wrote:

> ... shoveling & dumping in slow-motion

Honestly, I think I was doing it backwards. I was very careful in the firebox, not knowing if or how fragile the firebrick is but then just dumping the shovel in the ash bin. I did that once after your post and paid attention to how much ash that put in the air! I've been gently slipping the ash off teh shovel into the bin now for a few days and think that I'm cutting down on ash by the lighter accumulation on the TV screen.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH!

> There is something about [...] cast iron heated to 400°F

I practically had to put the stool in front of the fireplace as it never seems to be my turn to sit in my recliner anymore (which is the closest chair to the fireplace.)

The fireplace door will burn you instantly (no need to ask how I know) but the worst burn I got so far as come from the shovel. I put it in the rack but it must not have been leaning back... it fell forward, landing on the ash pot which flipped the shovel end up into the air and the shovel spun and hit the soft underside of my wrist... yow! That left a burn about 1" by 2 1/2"; I'd call it a first and a half degree burn as there wasn't any visible blistering but I wasn't thinking about it the next time I was carrying in an arm load of wood and when the wood shifted a bit it ripped off a good patch of flesh... I've got to pay attention 110% of the time.

Thanks again,

- Ed.

[birdhouse]

that is so cool you've learned to love wood burning!

as far as dust-  like someone posted above...  opening the door really really slowly helps a ton.  also, only emptying the stove of ash when it really needs it.  could you do it every other day and be alright?  

wet wood-  not ideal (obviously) but it has a lot higher potential to form creosote at lower temps in the flue.  when i have to, i split wet wood to a finer size to increase surface area and thus increase combustion speed.  you can get a much hotter fire that way.  i'd recommend getting a sweep too.  they're cheap and only takes a few hours to clean your flue (if you only have to remove one years worth of gunk...  do it every year).  

i'm envious of your little electric log splitter!  ryobi might make a decent litlle log splitter, but i'd stay away from their stuff for the most part.  my personal favorite (for most power tools) is bosch.  

that's nice your house came with an insert!  if your planning on being in the home a while, you might want to look at a newer model.  62% isn't horrid, but some of the newer euro models are approaching 80%.  you may be able to put a stand alone stove half within your fireplace area too.  it may also come with an ash pan!!!  only empty it once a week!  no shoveling!

a side note-  i do construction work so burn lots of wood with 16 penny nails in it.  if i've got a good fire rolling, the nails will turn bright bright orange.  i've been told this happens around 1100 degrees f.  wild uh?

stove:  morso 3440

may your fires be hot!

[zeusmorg]

 Well, I figured I would share my experience with using wood burning to supplement heat.

 I have an ancient pot bellied stove that I did some modifications to, the biggest was adding a dampened air intake which draws the air from outside via a metal dryer hose.

 The intake of the hose is just a standard laundry vent that i reversed the flaps on with a screen to keep out the peskies.

 this year, due to the bottom of the stove becoming quite thin i added a disk of metal to the bottom to keep a burnout from happening, the way the grate is designed in this the ashes fall through and accumulate in the bottom, meaning I can usually go the entire heating season without an ash cleaning.

 I did add a fiberglass rope seal to the door, and used some "fireplace glue" to seal the removable burner on the top. (don't ask me what it was, that was 10 years ago)

 Setting and maintaining a fire in this is relatively easy, it's usually just "load it, start it and walk off"

 Being located in the basement my ash problem doesn't mitigate into the rest of the house, or at least noticeably. I just use it to supplement the natural gas heater.

 As far as savings, I've never calculated them, but I did have the gas co. come last week to check to see if my meter was accurate because of the extremely low use of gas..

 Fortunately no modifications were required to set this up as there was an unused chimney duct into my brick chimney in the basement. I've used this in conjunction with my gas heater for over 12 years now, and my chimney to date has not required any cleanings, and I visually inspect it every year.

 I would definitely not use a wood burner that didn't take it's air supply from the outside, why would I want to pull heated air from my house? Oh btw I also have an outside air supply on my gas stove.

[elt]

I've sort of avoided discussions of indoor vs. outdoor air for combustion as I know that people are strongly opinioned about. The PE that inspected our house liked houses that breath fresh air and we decided to go along with him on that. (Of course, oil cost .86USD/gallon back then...) I did decide to use outside air for the propane furnace in my workshop, though, because I didn't want sawdust exploding or clogging it.

How much does it really matter? Cold air won't go up the flue so the fire has to heat it one way or another?

- Ed.

[elt]

Final thoughts:

I'm very glad the price of oil came down this winter. Whatever the price, though, I can say that we did meet our goal of cutting our heating oil usage by a third; that was a saving of about 500 gallons.

Stuffing wood into the little insert became a chore and at times I felt like I was chained to the fireplace, even waking up at night to keep it stoked. And I can certainly agree that burning anything less than fully seasoned wood is quite a PITA, unless of course it's free like what we were burning was... not green nor seasoned, it was both a gift and a curse though of course we /really/appreciated wood as a gift.

One fun thing we found though was that we could use the hot air from the blower to dry tomatos and peppers! This pictures shows some habaneros being dried:

And last, we planned to get the chimney cleaned during the off season; the local sweep charges less in late spring and early summer.

Thank again for all the advice and encouraging words.

 - Ed.