I moved wood into one of the basement wood racks last week getting ready to go for this season. Each rack down there holds half a cord. I've had it running a couple days now on some shoulder season wood and I'm getting my habits dialed back in for the season. This pic shows the primary air shut down to stove minimum and the flue stack damper 95% closed. The secondaries are kicked in and I get high heat (over 700* stove top) for the maximum time when set this way. Sorry for the cloudy picture through the stove window. You can just barely see that 4 of the 5 secondary tubes are spitting their mini blow torches. In 2 stroke terms, she's up on the pipe... This pic shows the reflector I made to get the radiant heat coming out the stove window to heat the ceiling of the basement so the warm air up there can be sucked into the return air duct of the furnace. This pulls the heat from down here and distributes it through the house using the furnace blower. No point in heating the cement floor, that doesn't help the bedrooms on the second floor... This is the temperature up in the floor joists at the furnace's return air duct intake. It was opened up at the end and top in two of the joist bays. Painting stuff black helps it absorb radiant heat so it can transfer that heat to the air up there being sucked into the furnace ductwork. Convection heated air also rises off the stove and is channeled into the bays and over to the duct intake. It got down to 28* outside last night and the furnace never kicked on.
Every year I try to do a little to improve the efficiency of the heating / cooling systems in the house. We replaced the whole heatpump system this past spring due to a bad A-coil that Lennox wanted a small fortune for. I decided to replace the whole system with a much more efficient unit. This new one has the varialble speed compressor and fans. I can easily tweek the fan speed in the house to move the air effectively to keep the temperatures throughout the house constant while not letting the wood stove "room" get too hot. I like options and tweaking things to get the most out of them. The woodstove is another tool to play with, just like my chainsaws... LOL Hoping to have all the systems here running tip / top efficiency so retirement in a few years will be a pleasant cruise.
Sounds as if the setup is doing the job. All that matters! If you ever feel like you have a loading door leak I'd look at the glass gasket at the very top. Unless it's deceiving in your pic it looks sucked in a bit. What do you get for register temps at different parts of the house? Ranch with basement I am guessing?
It is decieving. No leaks. I check the gaskets every year and keep an eye on them. I've never had to change them yet and this is the beginning of the seventh heating season on this stove. I've had to change several secondary air tubes over the years as they sometimes bind in the slip fit side of the stove and start bending due to the heat cycling. Not sure what the individual register temps are around the house but the only "cool" spot I have is the bathroom in the 1st floor master suite at about the furthest point from the woodstove. When these pictures were taken this morning about 2-1/2 hours into a burn cycle, the air temp leaving the furnace blower was 88*. This is a 2,700 sq.ft. Colonial 2 story home with a full unfinished basement under it. The extra 1st floor master suite is the only living space outside the main envelope of the house and even it has a full un-finished basement under it. That section of the basement is to be the theater / stereo room someday but kinda got taken over by the wifes hobbies... The plan was to never have to move ever again, hence the extra master suite on the first floor with the whole first floor being wheelchair accessable. There is even room on the stairways for those chair / go-kart thingy's on a rail someday... trying to plan ahead. The basement walk out door is right next to the woodstove and wood racks on the inside and 25' from the woodshed in my avatar on the outside.
Loaded the front wood rack this evening because the ground is frozen. It's been empty for 4 days using wood out of the rear rack. I usually wait for a break in the weather and frozen ground with no snow is a good thing to run the wheelbarrow on. Since it's supposed to rain tomorrow I figured I better hang a light and get it done this evening. It takes 9 HEAPING wheelbarrow loads to fill each basement rack, probably right at or just a little under 1/2 cord each. Rigged the LED trouble light for the evenings work out at the wood shed. Looking toward the basement door from around the end of the woodshed. Peeking in through the basement door to the "heat" room. This is the 5th wheelbarrow load about to be stacked in the front rack. The rack behind it has about 10 or 11 days worth of wood still in it and it will get used till it's empty. Each wheelbarrow load gets sprayed with indoor bug spray as it comes in. The frozen ground keeps the mess to a minimum although it's pretty easy to keep clean down here with the shop vac. Aaahhh! Full rack, time for a PBR... Mix of Pin Oak, Honey Locust, Wild Cherry, Crabapple, Hawthorne, and a little Sugar Maple.
Show me that reflector you made. It looks pretty cool. How much of a difference do you think it makes?
I think it made a significant difference in my application heating the whole house from my basement stove installation. Post #10 of the thread linked below gives some details of the reflector and the whole thread outlines the improvements I have done in the "heat room" over the years to improve efficiency of our heating. This whole woodstove / wood hoarding thing seems to have saved us a ton of money over the years although I kinda blow some of the "savings" on chainsaw stuff now... LOL Relflecting the heat back into the house I'm a tinkerer from birth and always looking to make things work a little better or make my life a little easier. I was sitting by the stove barefoot drinking a beer and got to thinking that heating the concrete floor wasn't warming our bedrooms on the second floor. One thing leads to another and things kinda snowball hopefully in a good way!!! I'll get some more pix here in a bit.
some more pix. It weighs maybe 3lbs. ish... It's easy to set out of the way when loading the stove and set back onto the shelf of woodstove with the little notches in the frame. Assembled from Locust slats with wood glue and brad nailer. I check the frame occasionally with the temp gun and it never gets over 100*F and I'm careful to remove any hotties from the stove shelf before putting it back on the stove.
Yes, I didn't have that on there for a long time and a couple weeks ago I was loading the stove with shorts on and backed into it and sliced my calf a little. So I put duct tape on and then some of the relfective metal tape over that.
