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We have a new high efficiency stove with cooktop.
And an endless supply of wood.
I have found that there is definitely an art to building, burning, and maintaining a fire.
Which is why many get frustrated and talk crap about it, especially the city slickers that move out to the “country” with these delusional pipe dreams after watching a few off grid homestead shows on TV.. Once you master the technique, heating(and cooking) with a wood stove becomes as easy and second nature as driving a car or whatever.
Used a wood stove as our only heat source for 5 years. Then used it for a backup for 20. We moved 4 years ago and there is no place to put one in here. And it would be nice because natural gas has doubled in price this winter.
Used a wood stove as our only heat source for 5 years.
We use our wood stove as a backup source here in Idaho. When living in Michigan many years ago, we managed to use our fireplace as the ONLY heat source (when we were at home) during the winter.
We designed and built two heatilator wood fireplaces (one for each level of the house) with brick front. These heatilator fireplaces are as efficient as Franklin stoves.
What we did was to close all the bedroom doors and moved our mattress to the living room next to the fireplace. Yes, this was extreme but we were frugal newlyweds who were determined to pay off our mortgage in 2 years (we had a 50% down payment). We only moved the mattress back to our bedroom when we had visitors ;-)
Our gas bills were something like $20/month (in the late 70s) mainly for the water heater, gas stove/oven and home heating when we were at work. I don't remember how much that we paid for electricity but it was pretty minimum (~ $15/month ?). We bought woods as small logs and split them ourselves. The area where we lived was very wooded so firewood was very cheap ($25 or so for a full cord which lasted the whole winter).
One reason I posted about this is I have been surprised how many other wood stove users are still using "old tech" smoky stoves. Particularly considering that "cash for clunkers" wood-stove exchange program in my county.
The old school stoves burn 3 cords of wood to generate the heat that a new tech stove will make from 2 cords. Unless you are getting your wood nearly free, not hard to see that the new stove would pay for itself quickly, and avoid the need to clean your chimney as often, plus reduce the chances of a chimney fire.
I guess I can't fix stupid, any more than anyone else can.
We are planning on a metal roof soon.
We are in a wet area with lots of trees.
I’m tired of killing the mossy roof stuff a couple times each year.
I’m also always removing tree debris junk from around our 4 skylights.
They actually do more harm than good so I’m going to remove them when we get the new roof.
Metal roofs just seem so much safer than a comp roof when it comes to fires and maintenance falls.
M3Mitch ... (Ireland) Waterford manufacturing shut down some years ago when the workforce when out on strike and the company tried to maintain production, but could not. The company was then sold to another European (German, IIRC) holding company that owned a couple of other wood stove manufacturers, but they also had ongoing production/labor problems with the facility. After a couple of failed attempts to re-open the plant, it was finally sold to a Chinese manufacturing company. They shipped the Waterford wood stove molds to china and liquidated the Ireland facility, continuing to make some of the stoves in China with their domestic cast iron.
That Chinese cast iron proved to be an entirely different item than the stuff that the Waterford plant spec'd which worked very well in their patterns and molds. At that time, Lehman's was the USA importer of the Waterford line and the Chinese made stoves were having warranty issues with cracking/warping of the cast iron stove parts ... which had never been a problem with the Irish made stoves. Of the wood stove lines that Lehman's handled then, the Waterford Stanley wood cookstove was marketed as the "top of the line" cookstove ... expensive, with all the typical options (side racks, water heater, etc) ... and it became a looser for them. So Lehman's discontinued importing the line and had a modest inventory of original Ireland made parts on hand which they used to support the stoves. It's been some number of years since I got another side rack to complement the one I had on my Waterford Stanley, but it was obviously Ireland made parts that they sent to me.
In due course, the Waterford line manufacturing was shut down a few years ago.
I've now used a Waterford Stanley cookstove for over 22 years in our Wyoming prairie home. While it was intended to be a supplemental heat source to our propane/HWBB heat, and cookstove for winter use, it has proven itself to be the primary heat source for 3-4 months of our winters here. The biggest limitation of the Stanley is the smaller firebox compared to larger dedicated heating-only wood stoves. Our main supply of firewood is the beetle-kill downed or dead pine trees in the region, and with well-aged wood split into 4-5" dia chunks, a good clean fire typically needs to be restoked every 4-5 hours. In a typical Wyoming winter here, I go through 3-4 cords and we appreciate the bone-warming radiant heat from this stove ... as well, we cook a fair number of meals on it. The oven is big enough for a big roast or turkey, or loaves of bread or pies.
I bought the Stanley from a fellow who'd bought it from Lehman's just around the time that Colorado counties were enacting new wood stove installation bans and bans against using existing wood stoves on high pollution days. The Stanley was brand new, still in all the original shipping packaging ... as the fellow's building contractor refused to install the stove in their new house. Had he read the Waterford certification labels on the stove, he would have seen that the cookstove was in compliance with the wood stove emissions requirements at the time. This was a rather expensive stove and the fellow sold it to me for 1/4 of what he'd paid Lehman's for it since he thought it was no longer allowed to be used. I've found the stove to be very clean burning ... it is an "art" to build a good-sized fire in it, then close the intake air almost completely shut and the internal stove damper almost closed, too. What I get is a huge bed of hot coals that burn very cleanly, almost ash and smoke free. Even when I add more wood, the controlled fire quickly turns to coals and I can usually close the intake air down within a few minutes. The stove is still well within compliance with the emissions standards of today, even without a catalytic converter.
I've also installed two of the Waterford Leprechaun stoves and they, too, burn very cleanly and are excellent heaters in the enclosed patios where I used them. When we moved out of our previous house, I took those stoves with me ... they just are too nice to leave to somebody who didn't appreciate their functionality and size. I replaced them there with cheap Vogelganzg Franklin-style stoves ... and the difference in heating ability and clean burning was very dramatic. The V-stoves burned 3 times the wood to produce 1/2 the heat, although they were a nicer cosmetic presence in the seasonal patio areas. I'd acquired the Leprechaun stoves when Eagle County/Vail started banning the use of wood stoves in the area and were declaring "no burn days" where they used heat sensors to verify that wood stoves were either not being used or were allowing the fires to die out within a certain number of hours after the ban was declared. Many wood stoves were taken out of service, replaced with gas-fired stoves or inserts ... hence, a glut of many wood burning appliances available for scrap at the time.
I'd tried using a couple of soapstone stoves ... (Vermont Castings, IIRC) ... and could never get them to heat as efficiently as the cast-iron Waterfords. Don't know why, but they simply didn't work out for us at altitude and we'd tried several different stack configurations/dampers and stack caps that could create a draft. The radiant heat from the soapstone stove was, IMO, not any better than from the heavy cast iron of the Waterford stoves.
RE: glowing embers going up a stove pipe and landing on nearby combustible surfaces .... Even in our strong Wyoming winds, a properly controlled wood stove fire doesn't produce such embers. Even with a stack cap that induces a draft from any wind direction, we don't allow enough airflow up the stack to carry embers up from the fire. When I clean out the stack, the elbow at the base has very little clean ash to remove, so there's the evidence that very little combustible stuff ever makes it to the stack. I think that this is a key concern in safe operation of a wood-fired appliance; ie, cleaning out the stack periodically, especially if the wood stove is used ... as we do ... continuously for months on end during our typical 5-6 months of winter heating season. I'll shut the stove down for a night and then brush out the stack the next day. We are running a triple-wall stack, which I think runs hotter on the inside up the height of the column compared to a 2-wall stack, so it maintains the velocity of the flue but with the lesser air volume as I've mentioned above.
In my understanding there are two primary sources of house fires from woodstoves.
1- some idiot insists on constructing wood stick framing up against [wood touching the fireplace or stove] so the wood will be heated when the stove gets hot.
or
2- some idiot puts combustible shingles [cedar shake or asphalt composite] on their roof, in the hope that hot embers land on it and burn the roof.
If people would insist upon observing building codes and fire codes, by never allowing any combustible material to be heated by their wood stove, it would greatly reduce the incidence of house fires.
In my understanding there are two primary sources of house fires from woodstoves.
1- some idiot insists on constructing wood stick framing up against [wood touching the fireplace or stove] so the wood will be heated when the stove gets hot.
or
2- some idiot puts combustible shingles [cedar shake or asphalt composite] on their roof, in the hope that hot embers land on it and burn the roof.
If people would insist upon observing building codes and fire codes, by never allowing any combustible material to be heated by their wood stove, it would greatly reduce the incidence of house fires.
You can not fix stupid.
Also people burn green lumber which will coat the inside of the flue with flammable material. And some species of wood contain creosote which burn on the inside of the flue.
Also people burn green lumber which will coat the inside of the flue with flammable material.
Which has exactly ZERO effect on causing house fires.
You could coat the entire lining of a stove pipe with creosote and light it all up. If you have not first violated building codes how does that heat escape the stove pipe to burn the house?
It doesn't.
Either someone put wood up against and in direct contact with the stovepipe / chimney, or else some idiot covered the roof with petroleum based asphalt shingles.
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