Wood stoves - Q&A FAQ

Perhap's build your own??

 

For an outdoor kitchen I would build one out of brick similar to an outdoor bbq, with a side box oven with door. You can divert the heat with tubing and use dampers to regulate the heat in the oven and use removable flat steel to make a flat cooking surface if you dont want fire contacting the pots on the stove portion.

 

If one attempts to build outdoor cooking the easiest would just a 55 gallon drum turn it into a grill and you can get cast iron griddle to cook Eggs,Bacon pancakes and anything else that would call for a flat top. The bad thing is if you want to cook anything like Fried chicken, or say deep fry fish, nearly impossible, not saying it cant be done but if you get a flame-up.............your talking new kitchen. If your not fried in the process. So In my honest opinion a nice summer kitchen with a wood burning stove so you can Bake, Deep fry, fry what ever you need to do. The cook stove has a dedicated firebox that will distribute heat evenly to cook your food, without flare-ups or flameouts. I have had allot of food cooked on a wood cookstove and it is absolutly fabulous. Everything just seems to taste better, From Biscuits or Cornbread in the oven, to fried chicken or Deep fried Catfish is just better on the cast Iron Stove. You can still find Cast Iron Stoves new through Lehmans.com, or you can still find them used but unless they have been fully Restored, It is Buyer Beware
but they can be had cheap normally, To restore a cast iron cook stove, usually runs between 800.00 to 5,000.00 just depends on how much restoration you have done.
a new one can run between 3500.00 and 8000.00 for a high quality stove. But unlike
more Modern stoves a cast iron stove that has been taken care of and shown TLC will last hundreds of years My great aunt reba's stove was built around 1875 or so and she had it up untill she died, now as far as I know My cousin Sammy Has that stove and is using it currently only painting the stove with high temp paint. so that stove is 136 yrs old anyhow. How many Gas or Electric stoves do you find lasting even 15 years. I know I want one very bad, cause they just take me back to a good place, yes they are a pain in the Butt, You wake up at 3 to warm it up to cook breakfast by 6 but its worth it. The Food you get off it truly is comfort food.

 

One wouldn't suspect this, but it is rare that a chimney sweep knows enough to adequately judge the safety of any installation. To be fair, I checked the site out, very briefly, by clicking on "do I need to reline my chimney" and found the advice to be a combination of incomplete, outdated and downright dangerous ideas.

Most glaring was the implicit approval of installing fireplace inserts in factory-built "zero clearance" sheet metal fireplaces. Those were designed to be safe with an open fire, with huge quantities of dilution air from the room keeping firebox and flue temps down. (It's a well known fact that a fire in an open fireplace sucks so much room air from the house that it causes your furnace to run more often!)

All fireplace inserts with doors (enclosed, controlled combustion) generate far higher temps than factory built fireplaces can protect against, and installing them plugs the hole the dilution air needs to enter through. Such installations usually block the air intakes for the air cooled chimneys as well.

Remember that right behind, beside and above any zero clearance fireplace you will find the wood framing of the house. I've inspected dozens of those installations and found charred studs behind the walls on several of them. There's typically not enough oxygen behind those walls to support flame, but two of those inspections were of homes that burned down for that very reason.

In both cases, I was there as an expert witness on behalf of the insurance carrier. In one case, the house had changed hands several times and there was no documentation of who installed it or ever swept the chimney. The home inspector had covered his ass, too, so the carrier paid the claim. In the other case, the last guy to sweep the chimney and declare the installation good to go was pursued for the loss, which was total.

This is a serious subject. You need to cook wherever you are, and a lot of us need to heat our homes as well. Alternate heat is one of the most basic survival preps, and for most of the country, that means using wood for fuel. We really should resurrect the wood stove thread, make it a sticky, and as long as I'm around I'll see to it that the advice people get is state of the art.

 

so glad to see you pop in, I need advice. I live in a home that has a closed fire place, ( the boxed it off and there for the hole is there but no grate and sides and top are boarded in. I need an alternate heat source. I live where it gets below zero at least 45% of the time. days are not as bad, but nights are killers. days usually in the teens for 70% of the time, nights hinging on 0 or below that.
winter starts by November 30th and stays well into June! I want to have a small wood stove I cand warm my baies up with, and cook on. ( I have alternate stoves to cook on )( propane and coleman fuel)what can I set up that will sit on rock base ( slab ?? and pipe go out a window and not cause a ton smoke in the house.?
is this even a possibility ??
YouTube - PART 4 - PREPARING AND SURVIVAL IN THE CITY.

 

(Mods - this is another thread that probably ought to be merged into the wood stove thread.)

I've sold a few cookstoves and really like the ones made by Margin Stoves. Margin isn't a huge operation - it's owned by a Mennonite family up in Canada and last I knew the factory was out behind their house. Nonetheless, the design and build quality are off the charts.

Margin is the only one to put secondary burn tubes in the firebox of some of their cookstoves (the Flameview models) making them the most fuel efficient and cleanest burning of any cookstove made.

Although it's not my site, you can look at them here.

I'm still a dealer for them and I'll make any Monkey an unbeatable deal on stove and pipe if they're serious. These are built to order and take a couple of months to arrive. Import duties and truck freight will add an easy $500 to $1000 to the prices shown.

The quandary is where to install one. They put out a lot of heat, and if you're cooking much they can run you out of your house unless it's really cold. You sure wouldn't want to cook much in July!

An outdoor kitchen makes sense, although if you get the hot water tank you have to either drain it after every use or protect it from freezing when it's cold. It would be nice to attach the outdoor kitchen to the house with a hallway or something so you could benefit from all the heat when it was cold out.

As to buying a used stove, Disciple is absolutely right - watch out! I knew a guy who restored antique cookstoves. Restorations can be a real bear, and he advised a lot of people to scrap their stoves rather than rebuild them. He had a ongoing troubles with the county over the chemicals he used in re-plating the parts and eventually closed up the business over the environmental BS. (Good thing they never saw the foundry where he reproduced worn out firebox parts...)

 

How funny to see that video - I bought one of those brand new in the box at a garage sale for $40 last year. Guess I got a deal! That thing wouldn't heat a house very well, though. It's too small. It obviously wasn't built for longevity, either, and as thin as the steel is you'll burn through it if you use it regularly.

Judging by the temps mentioned, you must live pretty far north. As cold as it gets you need a properly installed modern stove. You'll be relying on it half of every year so you shouldn't risk a cheap surplus stove or a half a**ed emergency installation with the wrong pipe running out the window.

Properly installed, you can go to sleep without a worry and keep the house warm. Cheap pipe running out the window, combined with some strong wind = carbon monoxide and a very long nap.

Keep in mind that with a couple of dutch ovens you can cook almost anything on the flat surface of a regular wood stove. Whenever it's cold out it'll be burning anyway, so take the opportunity to save your other fuels. Assuming you have wood growing nearby, it's worth doing and doing right. I need some info to advise you further: Style of house (ranch, two story, split level)??? Square footage? When built? How well insulated?

(And please, mods - let's merge these threads...)

 

I am not allowed a wood stove, hence the sneaking of a small one LOL, I live in a government home so no wood stove can be. But Im assuming when crap hits the fan there not going to worry about little old me since there are over 1,000 other government homes they rent to in my city. I am thinking of gettign a nice wood stove, and putting it into the garage in case crap hits, then installing it.

 

OK. Now what you said makes some sense.

(I was a little concerned there.)

Installed as intended, that little mil surp stove's single wall pipe would mostly be inside a tent where it's warm. Any outdoor run of that uninsulated pipe will cool too quickly and fill up with creosote within days. That will lead to either a chimney fire in cheap pipe that can't protect the structure, or combustion gases backing up into the house.

You actually can run the pipe out a window, but it needs to be Class A pipe with correct clearances and properly anchored. Also, it needs to rise at least two feet above any part of the building/roof structure that's within 10 feet of where the pipe is. (For a good draft, a little more than that minimum height is usually better.)

So do it right. Get a good stove and decent pipe, and work out the installation in advance. Then just keep everything in the garage. (And be sure you have a way to move it if you have to bug out. Arriving somewhere with a spare wood stove and pipe could make you rather popular.)

 

Thanks for merging threads, ghrit.

We were talking about a high wind cap, right? The ones I use look like THIS, although I get mine from a different manufacturer. The prices there look a bit high as well, but that gives you an idea. And yes, they can be adapted to fit any shape flue tile.

Also, my supplier has a custom shop and they'll fab a matching flue adapter out of identical stainless that's stout enough to allow you to really anchor the cap.

If you're interested, get me some dimensions and a pic of the chimney and I'll get you a quote.

 

Wow.... you bought one for only $40 new in box. That's great. Since you're a dealer and give all Monkeys "special" deals.... I'd like to take that off your hands if.... CANDY hasn't already asked you for it. Sure does beat this pricing on a box stove from Home Depot but then again maybe not because of shipping and handling costs, US Stove Logwood 1,600 sq. ft. Wood Stove - 2421 at The Home Depot. There's a smaller version too for even less money. Could work in a pinch but would need a local professional to help with the install in our basement.

 

hey thats a great stove!!!! will heat my living room perfectly!!!

 

oh and I want to 40.00 stove!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

I asked 1st for his worthless garage sale junk. My Dad has one of those Home Depot elcheapos in his basement on concrete and I have to tell you the heat radiates up and heats his entire little house. I think his whole house is only about 1200 sq feet though and.... we're in USDA zone 5 and you're in 4 so that's going to play into the equation too. His was installed by a local stone mason for $200 whom I suspect installed it properly. My dad has the smaller Home Depot unit than the one I linked to. He only paid around $200 plus sales tax.

 

OMG.... Sorry. I'll unwatch or unsubscribe or whatever to this thread.

 

I see mentioned cooking on a wood stove. Ours will handle up to 4 pans at one time on the top. It boils water in an old tea pot now. I also have a basement fireplace. My goal there is to have my brother in law (welder) build us a nice cooking grate for that fire place for in door winter cooking over a wood fire. My wife wants me to build a brick outdoor oven and cooking stove. Since we started using wood we have so much more money to spend on other preps. The savings allowed us to fill our new pantry and buy our first real Generator. I am getting Propane tanks and reserve propane put away for the future as well. Hot water is still an issue but will tackle that one this summer. Most likely will use wood for that as well. Kingfish