Hi Jim, I have a 3 bedroom ranch, 1,800 sf living area over 1,500 sf of family room & office. Upstairs I have a wood burning insert rated 40k btu. This is enough to keep the upstairs area warm (70-75F) for our normal winter days (highs around 40F, lows around 20F). The insert is centrally located and it is warmer near the stove but upper 60s in the bedrooms. Downstairs I have a 10kw Godin wood/coal stove. We do get stretches during the winter where our highs will be below freezing. If this is going to last a few days I light the Godin. With the two stoves running gently the house stays warm. The nice thing about the Godin is that I can get a 48 hour burn when using anthracite coal. This comes in handy when we go away for the weekend, saves firing the gas boiler. KaptJaq
What's funny is what "btu" stands for, and that we still need to convert it to another figure from across the pond. My house is going through big changes as far as appliances, insulation, and I'll be going from an open fireplace with a fan/ blower rack to an efficient epa approved fireplace insert after this weekend. It's also been a fairly mild season so far.
6 KW is about 20,000 BTU the way stoves are rated in the US. Is that a continuous 6KW rating or a peak rating?
Yes, I cut everything 22 to 24 inches in length. I don't split most pieces under 8-10 inches . It keeps s fire over night, which I love. It's the perfect house to satisfy my hoarding habits.
Thanks Gary, very kind of you to say so! 13 acres sounds a nice size plot, big but manageable? Does that keep you self sufficient in wood? Also is the wood boiler rigged up to rad's? Jim
SI units and their derivatives all the way in Europe my friend . Mind you the weather forecast will sometimes also quote in Farenheit but most peeps under 40 are more SI / decimal literate.
Fisher grandpa bear wood stove for 40 F and below. Oil fired furnace for the rest of the season. Huge old colonial with 13' ceilings , 6' x36" Windows, down stairs and 9' ceilings upstairs. Poorly installed vinyl windows I have to put plastic over the windows each winter. House has old/settled blown in insulation
Wow Rower, sounds like it's a wonderful character property, downside being it must be a dog to keep warm. What's your wood consumption like?
Backwoods Savage your cat stove sounds like a marvel of modern efficiency! I'm going to see if they're available over here for our next place
I live in 1000 sq. foot two story home, mediocre insulation, a free standing wood stove on the main floor and a propane furnace in the basement. The stove has a max output of 74,000 btu, and the propane only comes on when we are away due to that it is set to 55 F. This will be our first winter in this house so I'm not sure yet what our overall wood consumption will be, but so far we have burned about 2/3 of a cord of spruce. It's been warmer than usual here by about 10 degrees, hovering in the 30's during the day and dropping into the 20's at night. With those temps it's normally 80 in the living room where the stove is and around 70 in the rest of the house. I've been learning as I go, but all is well so far.
Here is my setup: Stove: Woodstock Fireview, ~ 2.2 cf firebox, Max 55,000 BTU/hr (Fireview Catalytic) Stove Location: living room corner install (my avatar) Total Approx House Area: 2400 sq ft 2 story Stove Room Temp: 69-73 F first floor, few degrees warmer second floor Extremity of House temp: 65 F (enclosed porch furthest from stove) 60 F (basement) Supplementary Heating: 100,000 BTU propane forced air furnace House Insulation: walls & ceilings excellent, windows poor (I use window insulation kits each year - much cheaper than replacing) Our house is nearly a cube shape with bedrooms upstairs. Ceiling is 17 ft high where stove is located so heat easily flows to all of upstairs. We normally keep bedroom doors closed. Our floor plan is open to a dining area, kitchen and foyer. The coolest rooms are the study and enclosed porch that are furthest away from the stove on the first floor. Basement is cool but never freezes. Most would consider a 2.2 cf firebox too small for our size house, however we keep our home a bit cooler than most and we benefit from our home's shape, bedroom locations and a good solar gain from our southern facing windows on the sunny days. I just replaced my 25 year old 2.2 cf Hearthstone Harvest stove with the WS Fireview. A couple times each winter (sub-zero & high wind days) my old stove could not maintain 68 F and the furnace had to assist. Looking forward to seeing how the Fireview performs in these kinds of conditions.
Stove: Englander 13-NC rated at 60,000 btu's to heat 1800 sq feet. 1.8 cu foot firebox. My house is under 1000 sq feet. Burn about 1 cord and 1/2 yearly but working on less with better insulation. Location: living room Outdoor temperature range for the heating season: -10 F to 40F House temperature range during the heating season: 71F to 77F, but sometimes I load the stove too far and it can get up into the mid 80's. Air Circulation: Electric fan is installed on the stove, but not used. Supplementary heat: none House insulation: Poor to fair but improving. A note on stove size. While a stove can be matched for the size of a house's square footage, it;s best to go at least one step up, even two, so that if you need more heat, it can be available. Currently I'm burning between 0.42 and 0.54 cubic feet of firewood per day with the average house temperature being maintained at 74 degrees.
1650 sq ft tri-level. Well insulated. 280 sq ft in lower level that is storage/work shop/furnace room. We close this off fall and spring and heat the mid and upper levels with an Englander 18 TR. It does the job till temps are consistently below 20. Cold winter months we open the lower level and heat with a Woodchuck 526 . 5-8 cords per winter and up to 2 tons of coal. I rarely let the propane kick on except for maybe in the spring when Im ready to puke over the thought of tending a fire. Don't know the BTU outputs. I think the Woodchuck is around 90,000 Propane furnace for back up in the upper level. Only does well if we close off both lower levels.
Stove: Carolina Water Stove, circa late 80's House: 1800 sqft brick ranch built in '86 Stove location is in the basement/garage With my waterstove, the stove box is surrounded by a jacket of water, I'm guessing 200 or more gallons. The fire heats up the water and I like to keep it in the 150°-190°F range, and don't let it drop below 120°F. The water is pumped up into basically a radiator that sits in my HVAC main trunk line. When the thermostat kicks in, both the water pump and HVAC blower turn on, the forced air picks up heat from the coil and heats the house just like the heat pump would. I keep my house at a constant 70° during the day and 65° at night and when we're away at work. What is interesting, is when the heat pump is on I have to keep the house at 72° and wear a long sleeved shirt to stay warm. But 70° with the stove running is almost comfortable enough for shorts and a t-shirt. So while it's force air, it almost acts like radiant heat. When temps are 30°F or more outside, I can get away with starting one fire in the evening and let it burn for around 4 hours and that stores enough energy in the water to heat the house for 24 hours. But the past couple winters when we've had steady temps in the single digits, I have to start fires in both the morning and evening, and use enough wood for about a 6 hour burn both times. I used about 3.5 cords each of the last 2 years.
This is something I forgot to touch on. Based on heat loss calcs and all that fun stuff, I should only need a stove about the size and rating of the Fireview (50,000-55,000 BTU). However, in the real world where I live, even the 30NC at 75,000 isn't always enough. Just shows ta go ya, insulation is very important. Can't stress that enough.
bassJAM this sounds like an excellent system, I wonder why it's not more common? Interesting hearing about everyone's different set ups, I really feel like I'm getting good intel' on you guys ;-)
1500 sq ft two story home Stove has 2.3 cu. ft firebox and rated for max BTU of 75,000 Burn around 3 cords a season in the house. House has upgraded modern windows and some extra insulation and vapor sealing, though it only has R12 insulation in the walls. Stove is in a larger 25 x 14 ft addition room with 10 ft ceilings on concrete slab floor, the rest of the house is on an insulated crawl space. In other words the stove is in the room that needs it the most and would be the hardest to heat with our back up heat pump. We can and do heat the house exclusively with the wood stove, especially when it gets colder (eg: -5 to -18 C , -5 to -0 F). However in the mildly cooler weather (eg: 0 C, 32 F or greater) we sometimes just use the heat pump because that's when the heat pump runs most efficiently and the wood stove not so much. The wood stove runs more efficiently when we can run it full out and not have to keep doing cold starts every day. Since the stove is in a room separated from the rest of the house we do use fans to help circulate the heat, especially when it gets colder and we are running the stove full out. We get 6 to 8 hour burn times in our Regency f2400 stove, burning nothing but Lodgepole pine. Burn times are fresh load to hot coals, no cold starts or kindling.
