Heating options for new build

[Crossfire600]

Originally Posted by 6.7traveler

Planning a new build as soon as the snow melts. I've decided to upgrade from my highly efficient barrel stove which is excellent at keeping the place either 40 or 120 degrees and boasts an impressive 2-3 hour burn time .

The place will be approx 1100 square feet with a 500 square foot loft, open floor plan and heavily and tightly insulated with massive amounts of closed cell spray foam if that helps. I have only burned maybe a cord and a half of wood this year as it's been warm and my place is insulated well.

Here are my options I'm thinking of:

1) Sell a kidney and take out a second mortgage to buy a Blaze King Princess wood stove. Everyone that has one seems to love them. The only downsides I know of is the high price tag and I have read that they can be finicky depending on what kind of wood you have (which wood stove isn't finicky? ) and that you have to replace the CAT from time to time. Supposedly you can get up to a 20 hour burn time with hardwoods (of which I have none) and a 12+ Hour burn time with softwoods (which I have a lot of).

2) Order a wood stove off Amazon Prime and get it delivered right to my door. They have quite a few EPA certified wood stoves in the $600-$1000 with free shipping, that got pretty good reviews. The pros of this option are the low price tag and convenience of being delivered. Obviously they won't get the burn time of a Blaze king, but I really only need it to have an 8 hour burn time, which would be a huge improvement over the barrel stove I have now.

3) Get a cheaper wood stove and add a Toyo oil heater just to maintain the temperature at night. The pros are less attention needed to run the oil heater and possibly easier to maintain consistent temps when used in conjunction with the wood stove. The cons are the extra price and that I think it will make me lazy on my wood cutting duties. The plan would be just to run at night to conserve oil, but knowing that I had the option to skimp on wood, I might use it more than I think . Also oil is cheap right now, but could very easily go back up and the price is out of my control. I have plenty of free wood.

4) Get another type of woodstove somewhere in fairbanks that I don't know about yet. That's why I'm asking for recommendations on here .

I don't know about pellet stoves as I am on solar/battery power and would prefer to have something that uses no electricity to operate.

Thanks for any insight or recommendations.

Jump on the "Solar power" grant program that our government came out with. Hey it's "free" right? Sorry about the sarcasm.. Can't help myself.

[6.7traveler]

My solar "system" isn't that big and I doubt it would qualify for any grants, plus I'm a rugged individualist and never take any sort of government money or assistance (except for my affordable health care plan which I was forced to purchase or pay a hefty tax penalty every year) . I'm not too far away from power lines and probably will eventually bring them to my property when I get some extra $$$, but for now my small scale solar set up works quite well. I had to use the generator to charge up my batteries at times this winter and for high draw items like saws, but with all this feburary sunshine I haven't had to run it for quite some time. If I was smart I would invest in a small scall wind turbine set up and I would have all the power I need living in Delta.

As for my heating system, I'm actually now leaning towards building a rocket mass heater. It heats to extremely high temperatures and then has 50-100 feet of chimney buried in a thermal bank that captures all the heat and stores it to be slowly released over 2-3 days. I went to a UAF co-op extension class where we built one last summer and they are quite cool. Rocket Mass Heaters

Plus they are much cheaper than the blaze king. I'd love to have the blaze king but I could buy an ATV for the price of one .

[Dakster]

I like those rocket mass heater's... I thought those are a great idea on how to keep the heat in instead of out of the flue. However, having no personal experience with different types of heaters - I read the thread, but stayed out of it. Now if you need to know about how to air condition a place.... Let me know. (and I hope that in my life time we are not worrying about AC in Alaska in the winter)

Good luck with the build and let us know how it turns out.

[6.7traveler]

Hopefully we never need AC up here, but at this rate who knows ? Hopefully the rocket mass heater build goes smoothly. There may be a UAF extension rocket mass heater class/workshop held on my property this summer, still in talks with the instructor. They have a few workshops every summer but are mostly mock ups where they tear them down at the end of the class so it will be cool to build the real deal. I have to get a bunch of 2.5 inch thick firebrick for this which is only sold down in Anchorage. I also need to locate some clay (not the sandy stuff that people call clay up here), which is hard to find in Alaska. If anyone has a good clay source they know of, let me know ! The back up plan is to Amazon prime myself big bags of clay. Got to love amazon prime.

[Dakster]

I'll check around down here in Anchorage for clay. I sorta know what you need. There is a rock/cement type plant that I see in South Anchorage. Wonder if they have it?

That would be great if you had a class on your property where you build the real thing.... If you were closer I'd go to the class!

[riceme]

Hey, 6.7. There's a 2010 Blaze King for sale in NP on Fairbanks Craigslist for 1k obo. I have the link & will send to you when I get home if you don't look it up. Or PM me your email address

[Music_Man]

here is an older one for $800
blaze king
and the one riceme referred to
Blaze king wood stove

[riceme]

Thanks, MM. I don't think I would mess with the older one, but the 2010 could be a good deal... I can't read the specs on my phone.

[6.7traveler]

Thanks, I will check them out.