Wood stoves - Q&A FAQ

You need three holes 1 inch apart in a straight line ,thread the center one for a bolt to come in from the inside of the stove about 2inches long .
Take a flat piece of metal make hole in the center and thread it to match the bolt . This will allowyou open and close for air !!

 

I scaveneged a venturi from another stove ( tiny) that had 2 of them and I welded the holes that were left, closed on the back of that stove. No caol up there for some strange reason, and there's plenty of it up a bit further north. John McCain took Indian land and sold it to a coal mining company, so I know it's up there! Cleaned all the pipes, and removed the spark arrestor. Stove is working full bore right now, BUT, with the spark arrestor ( aka: crap collector) removed, the solar panels are getting covered in soot now! It never ends!
I looked at another style of spark arrestor, that is made of verical angles, set about 1 inch apart....Not sure how that works!

 

OK, you probably know this but the adage for wood stoves, of any stripe, is as follows:
Dry (seasoned) wood = best wood
Wet (unseasoned or inadequately seasoned) = worst type

You have a bad case of creosote. That means you have problems in one of four (4) areas:

• [SIZE=+1]A flue too large for the wood burning appliance, (e.g.. unlined insert);[/SIZE]
• [SIZE=+1]A restricted air supply;[/SIZE]
• [SIZE=+1]Unseasoned or rain-logged wood;[/SIZE]
• [SIZE=+1]Cooler-than-normal surface flue temperatures, (e.g.. metal fireplace chimney).[/SIZE]

Perusing the following will give you some good information on creosote:
What causes creosote build up?

It has some very good information on what causes creosote build up. Addressing the four points should reduce your problems.

 

Keep your heater hotter than necessary. You will use more wood but the heat will keep the creosote buildup down. Hopefully you are using a triple lined flue. Even when the creosote catches on fire it remains cool on the outside wall. I used to keep a small paddle to lightly smack the screen when it got clogged. To keep the vertical joint clear you can put in a clean out plug so you can more easily tap the buildup out.

 

Hey mods: Somewhere there's a pretty good thread going on wood burning and this should be merged into it. We need to build a repository of solid fuel knowledge similar to the peak oil and off grid threads. This probably should be made into a sticky so we don't have to rehash this subject every fall, particularly with all the new members we're getting...

Threads merged. Thanks for the good idea. Not going to be a sticky or subforum of its own just yet; to a degree, that will be traffic dependent. - ghrit

Anyway, I've been away for a funeral and then for the holiday and just saw this. Sorry. I've commented on some of these issues already, in the other thread, but here are my thoughts:

1) I would NEVER burn an old pre-EPA stove in a mobile home. Get a new EPA approved stove that is also HUD approved for mobiles/modulars.

PERIOD.

There are several benefits. You'll use less wood. EPA stoves burn far cleaner - particularly on low burn settings where your old stove runs filthy. (I burn pine too, and I never get more than two or three cups of dry powdery soot when I sweep my chimney, which I do twice each burn season.) An approved stove can be installed with much closer clearances, too, which will free up a bunch of floor space. Another bonus is you'll cut your odds of burning your house down by about 99%.

2) I would NEVER vent a mobile home installation in any way except vertically, as in straight up through the roof, directly above the stove. In a mobile home installation, it's difficult to get enough chimney height for a good draft anyway. Higher elevations require even more chimney height, and any offsets/returns (angled pipe sections) add several more feet to the overall height requirements.

3) ALL mobile/modular installations require double wall connector pipe between the stove and the ceiling, and Class A insulated pipe from the ceiling up to to the chimney cap. Your old installation probably isn't up to spec, which (among other things) is allowing flue gases to cool faster, adding to your creosote condensation woes. (The good news is that in a clogged state it'll be tougher to generate enough heat to ignite the creosote, which means you're far safer when it's plugged )

All joking aside, DO NOT remove your spark arrester to get a better burn - it's the only thing keeping flue temps down. With all the creosote you're accumulating, that clogged cap is the probably only reason you haven't lost your home to a chimney fire.

4) ALL mobile/modular installations require a dedicated outside intake for combustion air. Being factory built, many mobiles/modulars are quite airtight. In a tight house, wood stoves will struggle to get a good draft going. Turn on a range hood fan, dryer or bathroom fan and it's all over! You'll be sucking smoke back into the house.

5) The stove MUST be bolted to the floor in ALL mobile home installations. It cannot be resting loosely on stone the way yours is.

Even if you refuse to replace the stove, you MUST bring all your venting up to current spec and get the stove fastened down before you burn any more fires. What you have is now is malfunctioning, and it's quite dangerous. I'm going to be on the road again for a few days, but I'll check back in soon to see if you have any questions. (You might post a pic of that kluge, if you don't mind. It'd be a good teaching tool.)

BTW, even though I'm no longer in the business full time, I can still get good enough deals on certain stoves and pipe that I could ship a stove or pipe, or put together a stove/pipe package. I still get pretty good freight rates, and could save you money over a local store. (The margins aren't great in this business. If I still had the overhead of a store I wouldn't even make the offer, but as long as someone could wait a week or two for my next trip into town I'd be happy to do it.)

There's nothing like a wood fire. It's one of the real luxuries of the preparedness lifestyle. I'd just like to see everyone burning wood safely.

 

DragonFly. Since you live in Showemlow, go down to the duece and ace hardware. There in the store across from the main store in their parking lot is a wood stove / heater store which is also Ace. They have some pretty good deals on stoves. You may want to take a look see.

 

Just would like to thank both Bear Stove and fireplaceguy for the great information... I learn a lot today. Thanks!

 

Any recommendations on a good (read: cheap and efficient) modern stove?

 

Falcon15 - two budget brands I like are: 1) England's Stove Works - A family owned American manufacturer, made by a crew that's really into what they do. They have a large customer support center geared toward DIY buyers. (No one else in the industry supports do it yourselfers the way they do.) They market under three brand names: Englander, Summer's Heat and Timber Ridge. The products are all identical - the different nameplates are aimed at different market niches.

ESW also makes very robust basic pellet stoves, although I'm not a fan of pellet stoves and don't recommend them to survivalists.

2) Timberwolf stoves made by Wolf Steel, who also makes Napoleon. They're a Canadian manufacturer, and I've used a number of their products for years. The Timberwolf line is new in the last 3 years and is just now getting fleshed out with a good selection of models. These are what I had in mind when I offered to get people a deal. They don't support DIY buyers, but if you get one from me that's not an issue. In fact, I'd like to walk a couple of people through installations here in this thread, so all the info would be readily available.

The main differences between expensive stoves and budget stoves are marketing costs and thickness of steel. You'd be surprised at what high-end marketing adds to costs, what with factory reps and their expense accounts, high quality color brochures, advertising co-op dollars and seasonal promotions for dealers.

The higher-end stoves are also made of thicker steel, which not only costs more as a raw material - it costs more to fabricate and to ship. A pricey stove will be made of 1/4 inch plate, with the top plate likely to be 5/16 inch thick. This is how all stoves were built 30 or 40 years ago, and they were virtually indestructible. There's no question that the thicker steel stoves are more durable, but even a budget stove has a service life measured in decades. And, you can buy two budget stoves for the same or even less than one high-end stove. That way you'll have a spare...

 

Thoughts on stove durability

It makes sense to take a look at stove durability from the perspective of a survivalist. To me, there are two major issues, the first being the choice of material your stove is made of - cast iron or plate steel.

To be fair, I really like the look of cast iron stoves. I've installed more of them than I can recount, and I've owned several. (I still own two, although one will be sold as soon as I get around to posting in on Craigslist. The other is a Godin, which is collectible. I restored it and it's currently an ornament out in my shop.) But, in the context of survival, I can't recommend a cast iron stove at all - for three reasons - material characteristics, construction and future spare parts availability.

First, the nature of the material itself - cast iron fails easier and sooner than plate steel. It's more brittle, and is much less tolerant of temperature extremes. It's far easier to crack than plate steel. In my years in the business I've repaired or replaced roughly three dozen cast iron stoves that failed for one reason or another. In that time, I've only replaced one plate steel stove that failed.

I've personally cracked a cast iron stove's top plate, by repeatedly falling asleep on the couch at the end of a long day, waiting for a fire to get going and allowing it to burn wide open until it woke me. I had that top plate glowing more than once, which is abuse. That happened back when I had my fireplace store and was working 15 hour days in the busy season - a level of stress and fatigue that is probably similar to a grid-down survival situation, or at least approaches it. (The plate steel stove at the other end of my house was overfired the same number of times and shows no signs of distress.)

The most bizarre failure of a cast iron stove I've seen was when an owner accidentally dropped a log on the top edge of an open door - the force of that blow broke the cast iron where the door was hinged and the hot door fell off. Pretty inconvenient in January when you have a big fire going, and no fun waiting for the replacement casting to be shipped and then for an opening in my schedule for the repair! Plate steel is strong enough that such a failure simply could not have happened.

Second is construction - cast iron stoves are assembled out of several relatively flat parts. The top, bottom, sides, front, back and door are all separate castings. These parts are joined to produce a finished stove, and all the joints are sealed with either cement or gaskets. Stove cement will fail over time, allowing too much air into the firebox. At that point, you'll have to beat the stove apart with a rubber mallet, clean all the joints and re-cement the stove. Gaskets appear to be more reliable, but that method hasn't been in use long enough to say for sure. At the least they'd be easier to repair.

Finally comes spare parts availability, and to understand my long-term concerns about the future of the global supply chain you'll need to read the Peak Oil thread once or twice. Bottom line is that I have no idea which foundries might still be in business, or how (or even if) spare parts will be shipped around the world in the future. At the least, such will be quite expensive compared to today.

A case in point is the trouble owners of Scan stoves had with casting failures a few years back. Although I was never a dealer for Scan Stoves, I got involved in repairing several of them - first for my own customers and then on referral from the ex-dealer who wanted nothing to do with them. In each instance, we waited three or four months for a replacement casting to arrive from Europe, at a time when manufacturing & shipping was functioning more or less as we'd expect.

At some future time when the supply chain was failing, there would be no repairing such a stove. Even repairing an American made cast iron stove like a Vermont Castings (the brand I abused in my living room) could be problematic. We're already at the point where Vermont Castings is manufacturing castings for European stoves like Jotul, not to mention making Lodge cast iron cookware. If (a big if) your welded steel stove were to fail in similar fashion, a couple of minutes of welding and few feet of welding wire would be all you'd need to fix the crack. BIG difference!

Now comes the second big issue in stove durability - use. Regardless of the brand, your wood stove has two main enemies: Heat cycles, and temperature extremes. Heat cycles fatigue metal and joints. If you can't eliminate heat cycles, you can at least minimize them. Keep a bed of coals going during the day, which keeps the stove from cooling completely. Then, when you get the fire going again in the evening, watch it to keep from overfiring. That eliminates temperature extremes, and minimizes heat cycles.

It's also important to keep good firebricks in the firebox, which help focus the heat in the areas that were designed to handle it. I keep spare firebricks around for that very reason.

The bottom line is we're planning for a future in which nothing will come as easily as it does today, and the difference between dainty European castings and good old plate steel could be the difference between heating your house and shivering through the winter.

 

Yes. Vermont Castings and Jotul are the most popular brands, although neither makes a traditional pot belly stove. I prefer VC over Jotul because VC is an American manufacturer and I really want to keep a little manufacturing going here.

In the pot belly world, I think Vogelzang offers some new ones, but after contacting them once, I stay away from them. The woman was indifferent to the point of rudeness, which gave me little hope of being able to offer decent customer service. They have everything made in China, and you buy them by the container load. Few (if any) of their models have been through any kind of testing for the US market, and the ones I've seen have "not for residential use" cast right into the side plate. I wouldn't use any of them in a residence, and if I was on a budget I'd rather heat a shop with an old used Fisher or something similar.

If you like the pot belly look, there are a number of people restoring the higher quality old ones. That's probably the route I'd go. There's one manufacturer making a new one, although their name escapes me at the moment. If you're really interested, I'll make a call and get the name.

 

Ghrit - any modern EPA approved stove would give you a huge gain in efficiency - 1/3 more heat out of your fuel is a conservative estimate.

I always install chimney caps. I use the omnidirectional high wind design, whether the customer asks for it or not. Here on the front range, at the base of the Rockies, we get plenty of wind from every direction. Those caps help a lot to maintain stack velocity (a good draft) which keeps the owners happy and the chimneys clean.

You should have a cap on there. Rain on coal fire residue produces sulphuric acid, which will make quick work of the chimney structure. When you replace the stove, the proper way to install it is with a stainless steel chimney liner. That's one of the installs I'd like to document here, so keep me posted.

 

Thought of an exception to my cast iron aversion and thought I should add a comment - in my experience, wood burning cook stoves are fine. They are built stout and have a great deal more mass than a regular wood stove.

 

Thanks so much for this excellent thread. It's what brought me to this forum, as I am researching what stoves to install in our new retreat home we are soon to build. I learned a bunch!

 

Hi all I was referred to this site by Nadja. I am on our second year heating completely with wood. Our home is 2200 square feet 1100 per floor walkout basement type built into a hillside. I had the 8 inch stainless steel double walled pipe in place when we bought it and it was in great shape so we just ran new 6 inch right inside of that for triple wall. Works great stays hot and I only clean it once every winter. Michigan heating season starts in October with occasional fires becoming more 24/7 by November and 24/7 through March. March can have those warm days so we let it go out on occasion.

I burn seasoned oak ,cherry or Maple which I have all around us in the Federal lands. Our stove of choice was an Osburn 2000 which has done a real good job last year and is kicking butt this year as well. Our stove is located in the basement and heats the entire house by warming the hard wood floors. It about 78 in the basement and 71 upstairs. W e love our Osburn stove. It welded steel construction with an ash drawer but I dont use it because its just a small round hole. I shovel the ash right off the brick. Last season we used 5 cord of oak from October to March. Im on about the same pace now. If we ever replace this one I would get one size bigger . As it is I get about 8 hour burn time throttled down at night. I like to cook it during the day. It keeps the house real warm and cozy.

This years wood only cost us a 20 dollar permit to cut 5 cord in the federal lands. Im loving that. I also have 5 cord of green that I cut this year which is seasoning under a tarp and another 8 cord of 2 yr old seasoned oak and cherry. I want to have a 3 year supply at all times.

Our next adventure with Nadjas help will be to build a new Solar system to make all of our own power. I hope I can contribute in many areas. W e have been prepping since 2006. Kingfish