Evening All, In another thread some of you guys were quoting room temperatures after a night of burning with low external temps. I was very impressed with the temperatures you were maintaining but then it occurred to me that you guys will have much higher output stoves or systems linked to heating i.e radiator systems or other means of heating the whole house from your wood burning units. So if you can be bothered I'd be interested to hear what your set up is, base the temperatures you post on a typical winters day in your neck of the woods after the stove has been running for several hours.. Mine are as follows: Stove: 6kw free standing wood burner used with Eco Fan Stove Location: GF sitting room Total Approx House Area: 1,000 sq feet (I told you land is at a premium in the UK) Stove Room Temp (Assuming External temp of 40 F): 75 F Extremity of House temp: 60 F Supplementary Heating: Gas to radiator central heating (only used very occasionally) House Insulation: Poor / Average (I'm just rating this from very poor, poor, average, good, very good) I appreciate this may well be duplicating a previous thread so I shan't be offended if no one posts (but please do refer me to the thread in question!). Cheers, Jim
Not well insulated 1200 sq. ft. ranch house, and most is on concrete slab. Wood stove is only heat until it gets down to about 5-10f, then we have a small gas fired, direct vent heater (about 12,000 btu) in the back of the house that gets used as well. Stove room and nearby is obviously the warmest area, and in the far bedroom with a difficult path for air to reach it, can get down to about 62-64 during the cold months. We're seeing about 40f right now, but it's a few degrees warmer than normal.
Hi papadave, Thanks for taking the time to reply. I'm curious, what's the stoves rated output and do you do anything to improve circulation? So no source of heating in many of the rooms? That's hard to imagine for me as in Britain 99% of homes will have either a radiator, electric heater or stove in each room & we don't even get "real cold". Jim
Mine are as follows: Stove: Charmaster wood/oil combo forced air unit (170,000 btu input on oil) burns 2/3-1 cord of wood per week in coldest part of winter Stove Location: basement Total Approx House Area: 3,200 sq ft Stove Room Temp (Assuming External temp of 40 F): 90-95 F Extremity of House temp: 74 F (coldest room when balance of house is 80 deg F Supplementary Heating: fireplace-never used House Insulation: very good
We've had the ESW NC30 since middle of March '14. I think the output is rated at 75-80,000 btu or something. I'd have to look it up. We upgraded the blower and also have a convection deck (prototype) to help direct airflow out into the house. Our bedroom is at the other end of the house and is an add-on, and the heat has to travel in a convoluted path to get to the room. If we run the DV heater in the laundry room, it's warmer. but we don't do that much unless it's down around 5-10 or below. The house is actually very open, with 2 bedrooms off the main living area. The warm air from the stove has to make a left turn to get to the other end of the house.
Suddenly feeling very sorry for my little stove and now I understand how your keeping so warm despite the low temps. Still I imagine we all share in the gratification of heating our homes and families by our own efforts, you can take the man out of the cave n all that..
Our stove struggled to keep the house warm. I increased the attic insulation from R30 (poorly installed) to R60.
Wood stove fireplace insert, large pellet stove, no back up heat besides plug in electrical space heaters is how we ended up. We did major insulating in the main part of the house, and added windows for passive heat gain from the sun. Working pretty well so far
Jim, I notice you and others from your area like to quote the kw output of the stove but that is a bit foreign to us folk here, no pun intended. Here we just go by the btu output of the stoves. Like the maximum heat output for our stove is rated at 55,000 btu. Our home used to be very poorly insulated and very drafty. We were cold during winter even with a larger stove. We used up to 7 1/2 cord of wood per winter but usually closer to 6. We did close off part of the house during late December-January and February. Then we bought the Fireview and no longer did we close off part of the house and finally were able to stay warm all winter long. We cut our wood usage to 3 cord or less, depending on the type of winter we had. Then we replaced all the windows and doors and added insulation. We also added a room. Wood use is very close to what it was before the change. Our house is a bit larger than yours but not much. Last February was an extremely cold month; the coldest on record. We had 3 mornings of -20 or lower with the lowest at -26. That morning the house temperature dropped to 72 and was cool but not terribly uncomfortable. We were able to raise the temperature back to 80 with not much problem. But those temperatures are not typical for this area.
I have a Fisher Papa Bear heating 1800 square feet plus basement. Stove is in the basement. No heat is used other than woodstove, although I can turn on propane I just don't. I like the house around 70. House is 40 years old and fairly well insulated. Last February we had -20 wind chills and I was able to keep the house around 74 degrees, although I burned a lot of wood doing it!
Welcome Jim I am enjoying your posts! Probably like a few others here I have 3 different heating systems. 1: A pellet burning insert that will max out at 37000 btu 2: A outdoor wood boiler that is rated at 120,000 btu 3: A propane forced air furnace rated a 90,000 btu Heating a 20 yearold 2 storyouse that is insulated well but that has a lot of windows and dormers of about 3000 square feet. Sometimes I will run 2 of the system in conjunction with each other just depending on our schedules,weather and how ambitious I am! This year I will probably burn 3-4 tons of pellets, 4-5 cord of wood and 6-8 hundred gallons of propane. Our house sits on the highest spot of our 13 acres so it always catches the wind! Gary
Actually does pretty good during the summer. Leave the windows open at night and close them down during the day helps to keep it cooler. Gotta replace my A/C next summer as it wasn't working this summer and the new roof ate up a lot of money! Gary
We have about 2200 sq ft of living space. Used to heat with 5-6 cords of wood in an Allnighter. Now we have a pellet stove and heat with 5-6 tons. We have a new central gas baseboard heating system. No idea what that cost will be. It is a new type. 95% efficient. Out system isn't hooked up yet in our living space, but is upstairs where my son and his family live. We are 75-80 F inside. Wife likes it warm or there is Heck to pay!
New well insulated 2600sqft home Harman TL300 rated at 75000btu. Stove is in the middle of the finished walkout lower level with a stair well located in the middle of our home to the main level. I did not put any insulation in the floor as required by code here as I wanted the heat to rise thru the drop ceiling and act like a radiant floor heater which it does VERY well. I also put a dutch door at the top of the stair well so I can regulate the air flow up to the main level. This set up has worked great and we have not had any need for added fans to move the heat around the house at all. Also have forced hot air furnace run on propane gas and a gas fireplace in the living room. These are run to take the chile out on those days the wood stove is overkill. We burn about 3-4 cord of Oak and 1 cord of pine per season. Propane use runs about 400 gal. per year but that's heating,cooking,and cloth dryer. We like the house at 68-70deg.f for the day time and 58deg. overnight for sleeping. The wood stove keeps the house in those temps easily with the out door temps. from 5 deg.f to 50 then it becomes overkill for the house over 50.
The B in BTU stands for British, but our friends in the UK now use KW. (SI and all that) Ironic, eh? OTOH...Mr. Watt was a Scotsman, I believe.
Welcome - I read and enjoyed the first thread. Have a picture of my grandfather visiting Culmstock, which appears to be in your general neck of the woods. Stove: 80,000 BTU max free standing wood burner, burn 8 cord per year Stove Location: Kitchen Total Approx House Area: 3,500 sq feet plus basement, but many doors are left closed this time of year Stove Room Temp (Assuming External temp of 40 F): 75 F Extremity of House temp: 45 F on a windy cold night, places in the basement will freeze. Supplementary Heating: Oil, forced hot air (used in the depth of winter as supplementary) House Insulation: Poor for modern standards (built in 1790's), upgrades planned for attic.
