Fireplace, wood stove or pellet burner

Unless your running stove pipe and a damper , your loosing a lot of heat.

 

I was lazy last night, didn't make a fire and just ran my 9,000btu propane radiant heater on top of a 40 pounder.
So about 1/2 lb of propane per hour kept it warm enough while the temperature was sitting at freezing.
As opposed to burning 3 to 5 lb of wood per hour (24,000 to 50,000 but per hour of wood).
I'm considering using the propane heater and electric heater just to save wood on the milder days.

 

WOW
Time to build a house with 10 to 12" thick walls of insulation (I have been in such houses) .
Real Airtight & the cost on the build is saved years later.
Sloth

 

Well looks like I got a little Sheppards wood stove.
I will get a damper kit, probably cut the legs shorter.
The assembled hight is about as tall as my fire place, cut about 6 inches off the legs and it should work pretty good.

 

The long term forecasting for NM is for where I am to below average till the end of this year.

 

This one?

 

I've been watching Ernie and Erica Wisner's videos for many years and have built many experimental sand and fire brick J-tube burners out the front of my outdoor fireplace when it's too cold to surf here at the beach. If I needed more than solar winter heat in the house, this is sure how I'd do it. The concept of a vertical firebox seems odd at first, but the efficiency of the combustion and the extended heat transfer of the design just makes me smile.

 

Here is the kind I got.
The picture is of the one they sell at lowes. Which is the same style, a little bit bigger and double the price of what I got.


The long term forecasting thing, I just happened to see it on the weather channel the other day. They may have a clip of it on the weather channel Web site.

Those tiny $100 wood stoves are hippie stoves. They are really cheap, really light, have 0 safety stuff, I don't think they are intended to be used inside a permanent structure because hippies or dumb ass millennials who don't understand how big a wood stove needs to be like to buy them and put them in permanent structures.
I buy UL listed wood stoves.

If I decide the wood stove I got is too small I will get the slightly larger one from lowes next year.

 

Adding some mass to the Lowe's stove will help retain heat and could have a fan blown over it to move heat around the room.

Discarded brake rotors can often be had for the asking at auto shops. Proper selection could provide an attractive and functional nested stack with many surfaces.

 

A buddy of mine is a big truck diesel mechanic. He's got those big truck drums laying around all the time. I've been wanting to get some of them ,, but with my list of projects laying around the house. They'd be just another toe stumper.

 

This thing is a work of art. Mine isn't as pretty, but it's nice to sit around in the winter. At over 300 pounds, the mass holds heat well.
A site called The Garage Journal had a detailed build article on this one. It was called 1/2 Cups Brake drum pot belly heater build.

 

I have actually been considering heat storage but it takes a lot of mass.
Water is going to hold just about the most heat for its mass.
It's looking like even if I took a 50 gallon hot water heater, filled it with a watered down antifreeze mix heated it up to 200 degrees F will only hold about 1 to 2 hours worth of heat depending on how cold it is out side.

 

My Dad had a 500 gallon water stove. He would put a full burn chamber of wood in the box about every 3 days during the winter. And his house would stay comfortable. But he was set up for a power down situation , which was a downfall for him.

 

Well I figure a 50 gallon hot water heater is only going to hold at most 50,000 BTU worth of heat.
At night that won't last much more than an hour. During the day when it's warmer, could last several hours or not use it all day until it cools off that evening.

 

I had some old solar books that include a 2 story home built with south facing windows and a glassed room probably 12x12 tall as the house, in this room were 55 gallon drums filled with water stacked like wine bottles . this dual glazed room absorbed the sunlight through out the day particularly during the winter months and released the heat day and night ,even for several days if it were overcast .
I had a good friend in the mountains that had a home he took for granted, and they had a mud porch that was all glassed and faced south and it would actually over heat the home if they didn't keep the front door closed ..

If you build for solar in your construction It beats retrofitting in the future .

I have another friend that on reconstruction after the 6.2 earth quake, put in a new garage floor and as a bonus put water heating panels on his shop roof and water pipe in his garage floor .
When it was well below freezing out side his floor was warming the shop, the electricity spent moving the antifreeze in the solar heating paid off. and he did not have to use space heaters to keep the shop comfortable especially doing boat work ,

 

I got the little wood stove in today, put it together and did a test burn out side to burn off all the oils and gunk.

Problems:
The flue damper came rivited shut, maybe it had 10 degrees of movement, but the choices were closed all the way and almost closed all the way.
I had to cut out the damper rod, cut out the rivets and weld the damper rod back together and it didn't have a handle on it. This was pretty stupid.

I am going to plasma cut a hole in the top inner plate just beneath the stove pipe to allow smoke out on start up.
It smoked like a bastard upon starting.
My friend has a stove kind of like this one with the same setup inside. He had the same problem, we fixed it by cutting a hole in the inner top plate.
I figured I would at least try it before I butcher it's innards.

The counter sunk bolts for the legs suck.
It's almost like they use undersized bolts or over size nuts, when I started to tighten them down they stripped.

Edit, I bet the counter sunk bolts were cut using 6mm bolt blanks with 1/4-20 threads cut on them and actual 1/4-20 nuts.
Piss poor loose fit.

 

Wtf.
Note the rivits sticking into the flue by the word "damper".

 

I'm guessing that was either the shipped placement of the flue damper or it was sloppy China work. Pull the rod out, re-install with the left hand side of the damper above the rivet, and the right hand side below the rivet, and it should work fine.

Rancher