Anyone use a Caframo Ecofan?

Title says it all

 

Pricey.
I know someone who has one, but never paid much attention to how well it works moving air.

 

I bought one five years ago. It lasted two or three winters. Did not move much air. Worked better in the kitchen location than the den for moving heat. Not worth the price if you are hoping to move heat around.

Mine was also the larger, three blade, fan.

 

Have 2 of them on top of our wood stove in our little cabin. They're amazing. Drives the heat under the loft easily. Set them at the rear of the stove blowing over the top and watch em rip.

 

BackSav… not sure what happened with your fans. Also, not sure about the surface heat on top of the stove. Ours gets very hot on top and the fans sit at the very back. They draw cool air from behind the stove and I guess the heat from the stove creates the power to run them. Ours will get rotating more than fast enough to drive the heat 15'-20' out in front of the stove. Don't know how long they'll last but we really noticed a huge difference in distribution of the heat. It was just going straight up to the peak of the roof making the loft too warm and the downstairs too cold.

 

Ok, think I may play around and make one. Just gotta find me a Seebeck generator. It's on the list, just not at the top.

 

I'd say, when the stove is good and hot, these fans are pushing almost the same air as a 6" muffin fan. They are not turning slow, that's for sure. A muffin fan would be better, but we don't have power. Works great for the cabin.

 

seems to be a "teg" powered fan, teg's convert thermal energy into electricity (dc im sure) which powers a small motor to drive the fan. the differential temp across the teg is what creates the current, the higher the "delta T" the faster the fan spins.

strikes me they wouldnt knock a picture off the wall across the room, but they would stir the air to some extent. biggest limitation is the amount of current the teg can generate, the fan is necessarily lightweight with such a small motor.

 

Yup, it's a pretty interesting concept. The more differential in temp, the better. That's why it works best (with a hot stove) with it sitting right on the rear edge of the stove… where it can get as cool air as possible to draw from at the rear of the stove, while the base of the fan sits right on the hot stove top. Base of the unit is hot while those fins up top get the cooler air, pulled thru them from the rear. If they were placed in any other position on a stove, I'm sure they would be considered duds. The stove I have at home probably wouldn't work as well because the top surface, near the rear of the stove, is raised a bit, and doesn't get as hot as the lower front surface.

They're pretty quiet too. All you hear are the blades moving air… no motor sounds.

 

there were some fellows at the DC thing that were demonstrating a camp stove wich was about the size of a coffee can which had a teg mounted to use to charge cell phones and such. its an amazing litle tidbit of technology

 

You can make one for less than $20 if you are handy. I made a video that shows how I built a little reading light, and it touches on the fan project as well. I posted it in Adam's Hoarder's TV thread a while ago. It's here....

 

Waking up a dead thread, but my wife wanted one of these, and I was skeptical. She found one for about $50, and someone had given us that amount as a gift, so we bought it. This is the model we have Caframo 800CAXBX Limited Original Ecofan.

Surprisingly, I really like it. It does not "blow" a lot of air around, but I think it does help circulate it in the way we wish. Perhaps as much, it is easy to see how the stovetop temp is doing from across the room by how fast it is turning.

For $100 plus, no thanks, but I like ours for the price we paid. I may buy a secong, and set it on the other side of the stove.

Greg

 

I had one. It helped stir the atmosphere in the house just enough to get some extra heat into the master bedroom. Pretty expensive but I liked it. Didn't last a whole season though. I think I got it too hot.

 

Have 2 of those in our cabin. Love em. They make all the difference in moving the heated air under the loft area. Turned em sideways here while I cooked some hobo hash fer lunch.

 

I had one but it did not work well with the "waffle top" of my Jotul f 100. The top of the Castine is pretty flat, so I may borrow it back from my brother to try it.

My stove is 3/4 in my fireplace, so I'm thinking it can help move some air out of the firebox from the stove top and behind it. There is really no room for an electric blower.

I hear they need to be kept clean for
longer life.

I like the black blades on them. Used to have gold or silver.

 

They do need that flat hot surface near the rear so they can blow the air forward over the rest of the stove top. The cooler the air coming from the back of the fan vs the hotter surface, the better... when our stove is cranking, those fans are moving some air.

 

I am usually running 500 stove top, I'll have to measure the air temp.