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Thanks for the economical wood stove idea and the links for the parts.
That is cool! I mean HOT.
I also like the self supporting roof, that way if you want walls you can put them any where!
Thank you.
I take it all apart each summer, to clean and inspect. I assume that a barrel will burn through eventually.
When I was making it, folks repeatedly told me that it would burn through in the first season.
This is it's third season.
I do have spare barrels standing by, should one of these decide to burn through.
sigh
Anyway thanks!
I have decided that I do not like the copper tubing wrapped on the outside though.
I can not seem to really get the secondary combustion chamber to light off good. It will get good and hot, but not like what the physics says it should be getting.
And the water is not heating as much as I want it to.
I am going to change it. I think that maybe putting the tubing inside the upper barrel will cause the water to be heated better.
I did one once where the tubing was inside the stove pipe. My goodness that seriously heated the water! The water 'percolated' up through the tubing, flashing to steam on it's way, it came out with a lot of force.
I think that my next modification will be to move the 50' of tubing inside the upper barrel and see if that heats the water any better.
Last winter I had problems with the thermal bank bursting it's seams. Water needs to be allowed to expand when it is heated. I did not include enough expansion room, now we have more expansion room for it.
forest what do you do about over presure?do you have some type of expantion tank or an overflow of some sort?
I was using a row of 55-gallon drums, but they were not designed to hold this much pressure.
Now I am using a group of old water-heaters [they are designed to hold the pressure]. Each water heater is laying on it's side, the 'inlet' and 'outlet' connections are level with each other. So each tank can only fill up to about 60%, the remainder being an air pocket. A compressible air pocket.
I do have a pressure relief valve connected directly to the copper tubing, just in case.
Since the floor loop, the towel rack, and thermal bank are each in series with each other; everything that flows through one also flows through the others.
The towel rack design makes it a super good air seperator. So any air bubbles that begin to go through the loops get trapped nicely in the towel
rack.
Thank you.
I have decided that I do not like the copper tubing wrapped on the outside though.
I can not seem to really get the secondary combustion chamber to light off good. It will get good and hot, but not like what the physics says it should be getting.
And the water is not heating as much as I want it to.
It's too bad there was not a thermal fire proof blanket you could wrap a round the tubing.
It's too bad there was not a thermal fire proof blanket you could wrap a round the tubing.
Actually I do have some 'fire-proof' blankets. [rated at 3500 degrees]
But wrapping the outside of a barrel would only lessen the amount of heat it radiates.
Our interior walls and ceiling are light wood grain and dark trim. All fittings and hardware are black wrought iron. Including the wall sconces that are going up. So a black stove kind of fits.
Not enough heat goes from the exterior of the barrel through the tubing to be transfered to the flowing water inside. I think that by moving the tubing to inside the secondary combustion chamber, it should increase how many Btus go into the water by about 3X.
One end of the house, the East end. Is all windows. that end of the house is 40 foot wide. And the pool area is the entire width of that wall. The pool area is 40' by 8'.
We have three sides of the pool done currently in concrete. The rebar is in place for the fourth remaining side. It will all need to be tiled, before it is really 'finished' though.
Being a retiree on pension, my current funding is low, so progress is slow. The house is going along much faster, up to the point when my savings ran out.
No matter, it will be finished one day.
I am very pleased that we have been able to move to an area like this, where we can live on such a low cost-of-living
This is great!
We would never have been able to build such a large house, with so many customized options, most anywhere else stateside.
One end of the house, the East end. Is all windows. that end of the house is 40 foot wide. And the pool area is the entire width of that wall. The pool area is 40' by 8'.
We have three sides of the pool done currently in concrete. The rebar is in place for the fourth remaining side. It will all need to be tiled, before it is really 'finished' though.
Being a retiree on pension, my current funding is low, so progress is slow. The house is going along much faster, up to the point when my savings ran out.
No matter, it will be finished one day.
I am very pleased that we have been able to move to an area like this, where we can live on such a low cost-of-living
This is great!
We would never have been able to build such a large house, with so many customized options, most anywhere else stateside.
I do like Maine
Your doing great, Time is with you and being retired you have all that time to work on your home and property, I am sure when the money is not there that you have plenty to do till the next check. I and my wife have been looking at many fixer uppers we are excited, and cant wait to land one. We are now looking near the Bangor area. I was assured by a few other posters that Houlton would not fit our needs. Any way we hope to get a home we can do the work our self. I am handy in many areas. I like your survivalist skills, I was brought up the same way although the military had nothing to do with who I am.
Last edited by truthseeker2012; 12-30-2008 at 05:36 PM..
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