I forgot to ask, how do you insulate the bilco opening so you don't loose heat since you're burning from the basement and is your basement insulated?
You can say that again. Before I could use the old stairs, I had added supports underneath. When I pulled the stairs, they pretty much fell apart from their own weight. Man... glad I did put sumthin under there... the Liberty weighs 500 lbs and came down them !!!
If that was my setup I'd glue some thick foam board to the underside of those doors, and make a rubber "flap" to the center seam to help hold in vapor. Either way I'd LOVE to be able to dump my wood directly into the stove area......would make life a lot easier!
There's an old outside door that works fine so far. Concrete walls below ground and the boxing is insulated. The Liberty bout drove us out of the house last year on a couple burns, so I'm not sure I'll do much more to seal the door area. We'll see. I have some old 6" ductpipe that I may hook up to a perfectly placed (by others) floor vent above & behind the stove. 2 more, just like them, at the other end of the house for cold air returns too.
Boy somebody got stingy when they built that stairwell, it looks there's just barely enough room in there for all the treads and risers. I got my wood burning fix last weekend when I fired up the wood stove in the shop. It is still plenty warm outside but I had some wood I was staining and I wanted to get a few coats on quick so I got the shop up to 45 C (113 F), with the fans blowin, it was like a kiln in there.
Yeah, stingy and hammered by the look of things. Didn't hurt my feelins' to see those go up in flames.
LOL, I held back on commenting on the stairs themselves just in case you had built them,,,, didn't want to ruffle any feathers.
