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i'm looking to install a kimberly wood stove in my tiny house. what are peoples thoughts on them. i would use it to heat my house cook and bake. there's also something stating that it can make power to run low draw appliances and to charge my batteries if there's no sun out to make my solar system work. though i can't find the device to make power any thoughts on that on?? as well as it will heat water also this sounds like an off griders dream
as one who relies upon a proven and popular wood stove (Waterford Stanley) for primary heating and many months of cooking (stovetop and oven) in my two-story house in a 6,000' elevation winter climate area ... I was interested in the Kimberly stove concept since I had room for two of them if needed.
Well, it doesn't look so good:
From "Tiny House" magazine, a review thread in 2014:
"The Kimberly Wood Stove Review self.TinyHouses
Submitted 1 year ago by genuinely__curious
The kimberly wood stove is often being advertised for tiny homes but if you do the research, you can't really find any threads by real people reviewing the stove. You can find pre-approved testimonials on licensed dealers websites, but how can you be sure it's honest? I purchased the Kimberly stove made by unforgettable fire LLC and I am completely unsatisfied with how this nearly $4,000 stove functions. I live in a 16ft traditional mongolian ger with felted wool insulation. The winters here sit around 20 degrees fahrenheit but it can get as cold as -20. So my insulation level isn't incredible, but it's a pretty tiny space with enough stuff inside to creat termal mass. From reading the specs I assumed this stove would be more than enough to heat our space and we could cook on top of it since we're off grid.
Turns out i was wrong. I installed the stove, fired it up, and was overwhelmed with smoke. After a while the unit got hot enough to actually push the gas up and out. The glass door turned black and although a fire was happening inside, the surface was not hot. I instantly think... how can you get a hot enough fire in such a tiny little box? You can't really... but I'll tell you how i figured it out. For the next couple of days i played with the stove, tried cooking on it, played with different fuels, attempted to get the claimed 8 hour burn time. No success. The guy who sold me the stove (a licensed dealer) actually came to my home to see what the deal was. We used the pressed saw dust log (without wax) becasue that's what the designer of the stove likes to use and we got just slightly better results. The thing is, i live in the woods. I want to burn wood. I enjoy firewood collecting and splitting logs. I suddenly think, damn, this is going to take all the fun out of having a wood stove. Plus, the wood stove needs to be cleaned all the time, and the smoke in the chimney is so cold that it produces a ton of creosote which will drip down the pipe over time. I get an email from the licensed dealer saying "great news" which basically explaines that the parts in the gasifier don't work, but he's got the new parts and will test them out in his stove and then send them over to me. The licensed dealer installs the new parts and still cannot produce the BTU's/hour or the 8 hour burn time. As a reslut, he has stopped selling the stoves. The people i know who have experience with this stove all really want it to work like it says it works. We do everything we can to make it work like it says it works and it does not. Roger, the owner of the company, will not refund for either a broken stove or an unsatisfied customer and quickly becomes rude in his email exchanges. If you have a super insulated dwelling and like using presto logs or getting really well cured hard woods and then chopping them into tiny chunks... maybe you still shouldn't get this stove. Way too much money for way too little functionality. I am posting this because I cannot find a space for people to post honest reviews on this stove and because I think you should be aware of what you might be getting in to if you buy this stove."
Additionally, when I looked at the promo literature for this stove, I noted that it required small chunks of wood to burn in it. I normally cut my firewood to 14" long pieces, preferably split or rounds not larger in diameter than 5"-6". But the Kimberly takes those 5" pieces and has you cut them into slices only an inch or two thick. They mention using those compressed chip fireplace "logs" as an ideal fuel, with those rounds being split into those slices. Those "logs" are incredibly expensive per BTU/box compared to cords of wood gathered over the course of a couple afternoons, usually 3-4 loads with my pick-up and a 2-axle car trailer (so it's not piled very high on that).
IMO, that kinda' defeats the purpose of burning firewood which we lay in 6 cords each winter of the beetle kill pine tree sourced firewood from our local national forests that are permitted to gather firewood from each year. And it's a lot more work to create little slices than burning split chunks of wood. Even with my electric chainsaw, it would take many additional hours of work each year to create a winter's pile of wood supply for the Kimberly. And remember, you've only got a small cooktop with a Kimberly, not a lot of room for a couple of pans ... nor a stove. Not gonna' happen in my house.
PS: I've got a Waterford Leprechaun wood box stove, one of their smallest stoves. I used it to heat an enclosed south facing patio area for years and it was such a marvelous performer that I took it from the house when we sold it ... with intent to use it when we built another south enclosed area on our new (well, to us, anyway ... it's an 1880's farmhouse) house when we had the time to build the structure. It's a fairly clean burning design, although it's biggest drawback is that the small firebox won't stow enough fuel to run for more than several hours. But it does burn hot and efficiently with a flame path baffle labrinth to create the clean burn. It's got a lot of surface area for cooking. The later models had a supplied air intake port for combustion; ie, you could bring in combustion air from the outside of the space so you weren't taking heated air away from the interior, so much the better for heating efficiency.
Am not sure that these are distributed/imported into the USA anymore due to changes in importer here (IIRC, Lehman's is now the sole USA importer) and production changes at the Waterford plant after their outside take-over a few years ago (plus the strike which affected their Irish foundry production, now a lot of parts are made in China and shipped to Ireland for assembly). Waterford is still one of the two leading suppliers of wood burning stoves in the British Isles ... you'll typically find them or a Rayburn stove in most homes there.
Another small but highly efficient wood heating stove I've got is a small Jotul Combi-Fire. Bought it from a friend who used it as the primary heat source in his Woodland Park CO house for a couple of years, but he grew tired of the wood gathering and stoking the stove, so replaced it with a pellet stove with an extra high capacity hopper that would fuel it for days on end. I know from experience that this stove would reliably heat a 1,000 sq ft house in sub-zero conditions. The only drawback is that it's a very "modern" looking shape that's butt ugly when in a more traditional looking house ... as ours now is. I used this stove for years to heat a small workshop and it's a marvel of efficiency ... can toss a few chunks of wood into it with some crumpled newspaper pages, light it, and have useful heat within two minutes. The stovetop is big enough for a pot and pan. The footprint of the stove isn't much bigger than the space needed for the Kimberly, although you'll need a bit more clearance on the back and sides, and it's not much taller than the Kimberly. Probably not as clean burning as the Kimberly, but if you regulate it properly and keep the fire hot, it will be a clean burning stove. The Swede's know how to build a durable efficient clean burning stove, and this was one of the best. These, and similar Euro stoves are not uncommon to find used in many areas of the USA ... and at a fraction of the price of a Kimberly. I paid $250 for my Jotul and passed up many other units of the same size and quality. More recently, I bought an older "cannon" stove, fairly ornate ... I think it was a parlor stove with all the nickle trim on it; one broken leg (gotta' weld it together, but a brick is working well for that corner now) on it, but it works fine for supplemental heat in my workshop and it burns anything in the 24" diameter firebox. Not very efficient, but offcuts and scraps are plentiful from a neighbor's wood shelter and small barn business, so he's happy to load up my pickup truck and see the stuff hauled away.
PPS: a quick websearch shows that the Leprechaun II is still imported into the USA and available from several suppliers, pretty clean little burner rated at 33,000 BTU's. Lehman's still carries or can order parts for it, too. The firebox is essentially the same size in this little box stove as is in my big Stanley cook stove.
If your in the Northeast I'd suggest looking at coal stoves. Easier to use, safer and loads of other benefits like a minimum 12 hour burn time for hand fired models. The only benefit wood has over coal is less ash. With anthracite you can even burn in close urban environment without any issues, there is no soot.
As far as cost for the fuel at market value it will beat wood in most areas. Of course if you are cutting the wood yourself your cost goes way down if you don't want to include your time.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ground_pounder
i would use it to heat my house cook and bake.
You can get fully refurbished and functioning stoves complete with a full oven that will operate with coal or wood, they are not cheap. If you are interested in something like this look for the models with auxiliary propane/gas. You use the propane/gas in the warmer months so you're not cooking yourself out of the room.
there's also something stating that it can make power to run low draw appliances and to charge my batteries if there's no sun out to make my solar system work.
The only way I'm aware of to do this is with a steam generator. Very expensive and you need a boiler, steam generators are not very efficient. If you already have the battery capacity that is one big hurdle you have overcome.
Quote:
as well as it will heat water also this sounds like an off griders dream
You can heat domestic hot water with any solid fuel appliance. It's pretty simple using a thermosiphon, you need a small coil in the combustion chamber a few feet long and a storage tank.
As the water heats up in the coil it will naturally move to the top of the tank and be replaced with colder water in the bottom of the tank.
Here is the basic design, note the height of the bottom of the tank at the very least should be level with the coil. You also want it close to the stove.
The water takes a while to heat up but you might be able to heat something like 40 gallons overnight. Because the water heats up slowly this two tank system is the most efficient and practical way for average use. The second tank is heated with electric, gas or whatever. All the hot water going into the second tank is preheated preventing it from heating up cold water from the tap. You don't need two tanks but if your storage tank is not heated you'll need to schedule your water usage because it is a slow process.
Also note there is two pressure relief valve's listed here, you only need one.
Last edited by thecoalman; 02-22-2016 at 12:21 AM..
I am having difficulty finding the BTU rating for a kimberly wood stove.
$4,500 is a really high price.
Woodstoves are great I like them. However the OP mentioned 'tiny' house so it is extremely important to be able to cook on whatever woodstove you get.
To be functional a woodstove needs to at least heat water, and if you are in a small house then it needs to cook your food.
the BTU rating is UPTO 40'000 BTU'S yes 4,500 is a really steep price for this stove but they claim you'll make it back in savings in the instalation vs a regular stove. that's not impressive to me!! as the first poster stated that there's very few or no owner reviews as well as i have been reading the same thing about people getting the 8 hour burn time wich there not getting it. i googled out the burn times for the presto logs wich most are burning in the kimberly and it seems they only last for 2 hours and there not cheap. as the reviews i read are all dealer reviews. the colal man had a nice stove posted but the stove has to go into a 200 sq ft house
We bought a Kimberly and we are very disappointed in it. It fails to put out much heat at all. The maker, Roger, came to our fifth wheel and it was installed all correctly and everything, but he said we had air leaks. WE have always been able to keep our house warm with an electric heater. This stove cannot keep the house above 60 degrees when it’s cold outside. It has a hard time keeping it warm even when it’s in the low 40’s. WE have had to run the electric heater also. Our trailer isn’t that old, 2006, and it has the Alaskan Pac so it heats pretty easily. The stove just fails to put out any heat, much. Roger said he would send us a iron top for the stove, but as of yet, no top. It’s been about three weeks, so we are thinking no top. Just wanted to let you know not to spend the extra money for the Kimberly because it really doesn’t help with heating.
this just answered my question from a poster on another site!!
I too, have read that they are overpriced and don't work well, although I have no personal experience with one. $4500 for a stove is ludicrous though.
There are plenty of small wood stoves for under $1000, some with free amazon prime shipping.
I wouldn't want to cook on a wood stove in a tiny house unless I lived in the arctic. Any wood stove that puts of enough heat to actually warm the place is going to heat you out of the house before you can fry up an egg. If not, it would heat up food so painfully slow, you'll have to start cooking an hour before you're ready to eat.
While not as "green", for practical purposes in a tinyhouse, I'd get a small propane cook stove and an on demand propane water heater (cheap on amazon prime) for hot water.
and it seems they only last for 2 hours and there not cheap. as the reviews i read are all dealer reviews. the colal man had a nice stove posted but the stove has to go into a 200 sq ft house
You're going to be to feeding your heating system every two hours? That's going to get old really quick.
One of the benefits of coal stove is you can more precisely control the BTU output. This throws people off that have used wood because you fill the stove to capacity. The heat output and burn rate is controlled by the air. Most people get on 12 hour schedule so they aren't actually burning them at their maximum capacity. Most people are using them for "supplementary" heat, supplementary is in quotes because the coal stove is usually providing most of the heat in the house and the primary heat is for the swing.
I didn't realize you meant as small as 200 sq. ft., there is smaller version with one burner. You can actually get these brand new. It's 90K however you don't have to burn it maximum, you might even be able to get 24 hours out it. At their lowest setting some people have gone as long as 48 hours on some stoves, very little heat but in your case that's what you want.
I don't know about the ability of hot water and you'd have to be careful with that because that is cast. The hot water coils usually require that you drill a hole. Larry who builds those stoves is readily available if you send him an email if you have any questions for the hot water. He'll be able to tell you yes or no.
One other thing, if you are going to consider coal buy one from manufacturer that has designed it for coal. You can burn wood in most coal stoves, some were even labeled dual fuel until the recent EPA regulations. They are designed for coal and it won't be as efficient with wood as a wood stove. You cannot burn coal in a regular wood stove and anything labeled for wood and coal designed by wood burning manufacturer should be carefully researched if you want to use coal.
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