Stove pipe costs

If you do use a magnetic stick- on thermometer on the stove pipe, or a probe- type thermometer in the stove pipe, they are pretty inaccurate on starting the stove. Often, dangerously so. They respond slowly, taking minutes to come up to temperature, and it is easy to watch either one but especially the magnetic types, climb slowly all the while well in a safe zone of temperature, while the inside of the pipe is much, much hotter.

Again, it depends tremendously on the particular stove; on my stove, it is almost impossible to get the stack temps. (internal) up to 800 F without really flogging the stove. But on some types and brands, it can rise w/in a minute to over 800 F while the stove is still relatively cool and the outside of the pipe and thermometer slowly climb; you will think all is well and be putting a column of fire into the chimney. That is not a problem as long as there is no or very little wet or shiny creosote int there, the danger is always that you can set the creosote on fire by mistake.

A woodstove is not hard to use and they are not particularly dangerous IMO, I am just trying to pass along one of the trouble areas to be aware of, not afraid of. That is exactly how I started my only chimney fire BTW, an older, direct flue stove where there was a clear path from the top of the stove right up the flue. In starting it one day, I got it going pretty fast and while I did not overheat the stove, I did manage to get the inside of the bottom of the chimney hot enough to light the deposits in it.

Best of luck going forward and enjoy that stove.

Brian

 

So which one is best to use for better accuracies? Most folks I talk to say their best therm is a magnet on the stove and a probe in the pipe... Ive asked the question if I should use a thermocouple from the website Auber Instruments ? Not that it is completely necessary but my being deaf will have some trial and error . Just wonder if these are really worth it....
I thought this is where that master/slave with the alarm and light would come in handy if such inaccuracies were to become dangerously hot, Id at least be alerted about it.

 

Right- it is absolutely not necessary, we burned wood in stoves for 500 years without them and most people burn successfully without them today. But I think they are an excellent tool to help with both the learning curve on a new stove as well as monitoring temps. during start up. It makes it easy to come up to the temp. limit and hold the stove there or just below, all the while knowing you are not overshooting a temperature.

There are people using the single channel types, and some using the single channel types with remotes so the stove can be monitored from another room. Quite a few seen very happy with that set up and it certainly seem like a good idea. Fairly inexpensive too.

A few of us are using multi- channel, thermocouple based reading and recording devices. More expensive and a little more complicated but it allows to look at what the stove did overnight. I use one just like this: 4 Channel K Type Digital Thermocouple Thermometer Measurer SD Logger Generic | eBay. It has thermocouples that monitor and record temps. in intervals of your choice (from 1 second to a much longer interval, I cannot remember what but it is too long for our purposes) and saves that data to a removable SD card. Take the SC card to a computer, read the data into Excel or similar and make a graph for one or more days to see how the stove behaved while you were asleep. It also has visual and audio alarms on each channel for over or under temp. limits, although the audio alarm is not that loud, and the visual alarm is just a flashing LED and neither will really work in another room.

The data looks like what is shown here, just about 1/2 way down the page: Ideal Steel Season #2 Tips, Tricks, and Improvements. Lots of information there such as when the wood stopped gassing, when the combustor fell way off in temperature (stopped burning gasses) and so forth. Makes it easy to make small adjustments and learn how to burn the stove for long burns, efficiently.

But not needed at all, although I do think a one- channel thermocuple reader and a thermoccouple stuck into the flue above the stove will work wonders in showing a woodburner how hot the exhaust really is. It will also show anyone that while it seems that woodstoves are slow to respond to changes in something like draft, really they are not and the stove responds w/in seconds, you just cannot see that with a magnet thermometer. IT responds in minutes so does not show the changes actually happening in the stove.

 

I used a slightly different approach to do the exact same thing: run a new, S.S. chimney up the outside of my house. Mine is identical to yours except inside a chase. And I never would have done that if I were not already literally building a new second floor on my house, I would have done what you did.


The chimney is 4" away from the house wall, the chase is 16" wide and the soffit is 24" wide so it appears that the chase 'cuts' right through the roof overhang; it does not do that, the chase is two built in two parts, one below the soffit and one above and there is no chase inside the house. There is a S.S. cap plate on top of the chase but eventually it will be covered with siding to match the house. Although I guess the Zip sheathing DOES match the house already.

BTW: everything see in this photo, staring about 9" above the tall first floor windows, is new construction, inside and out. The house suffered a structural roof failure due to snow loads and so the roof needed to be replaced. But as the house is ancient post- and- beam construction, just building an new roof was not possible so new walls were required. And as there are no bearing walls inside the house (it is a 'magic' house) or at the outside walls, and the floor structure is inadequate, an entire new flooring system was installed ABOVE the existing first floor ceiling system; the second floor is not attached to anything inside the house and spans the entire 24' from outside wall to outside wall. Fast, easy and cheap.... yeah, it ain't none of those.

Brian

 

Brian, that looks great! I plan on doing the same when we reside our house. I personally don't mind how mine currently looks, my wife in the other hand...

 

Thanks. I assure you it DOES NOT look great but hopefully it has a little potential to not look awful once finished. And my wife will readily confirm that- we have been living in this.... this.... thing for almost two years now, my time, and apparently 23 years her time. but not so much her

And as I said, if I had an already finished house as you do, I would probably do the same thing. Adding a chase is a bit involved, requires hacking into and refinishing both the house siding as well as a piece of the roof, and usually requires gutter be cut and that is an entire 'can of worms' in itself. Which is exactly why the chase on my house is narrower than the soffits, and one reason why the soffits are so wide in the first place.

And frankly I am more than a little wary of what that chase will look like when finished. The house will be medium or a touch darker gray with white trim, and that chase will be fully trimmed on top and all four (two on the side of the house) and I am afraid it will stand out like, well, like a gigantic chimney chase! I made it 40" wide so it would not look like a ridiculously tall telephone booth and am hoping that aspect ratio, 16" deep X 40" wide looks as [not odd and not 'funny'] as possible.

A lot of the house's design has been done to avoid it being 'funny' looking rather than to achieve something positive. To be brutally honest, this is our last shot at this house or any substantial building or re- building project, and because it is so all- encompassing, it has been a real challenge, at least for me, to avoid the proverbial 'stepping in it' as we go along. Honestly, I am not a negative person but this whole project has my hair standing on end waiting for the hammer- blow that something atrocious will (or already has and we just do not yet know it) happen. Now, all of that negative thinking aside, so far it is turning out fantastically, way overbuilt and robust, with a tremendous amount of thought and agonizing in all facets that are coming together into a very human- friendly, very good service house I think. This is what we are aiming at eventually:


Note: the woodstove uses a new S.S. chimeny in the center of the house and it has its own 3' tall chase just off the center of the house. That chase is 20" square and will also be sided and trimmed to match the house.

Brian

 

I think it looks great, I know what will look good when finished and what won't lol. It certainly looks like you have yourself on the right track to pulling it all together nicely. What type of siding are you going to be using? Cement board, cedar?

 

Thanks again. I certainly hope you are right 'cause there is no adjustment now....

Nope, vinyl. Yep, the cheap, junky but functional and maintenance free vinyl siding. That way the vinyl can sit on the house and I can ignore it to cut firewood! <big grin> The plan is for around the windows and probably for the outside 90 is to use 'plank' vinyl dimensional pieces. More expensive but truly maintenance free and they clean up like new (at least in white). I did cover the first addition to the building with #1 VG cedar clap board and while it looked stunning, it required far too much maintenance for us. Bought and played around with some cementitious 'clap board' and while it is not hugely expensive, it still requires paint and other maintenance so we have a winner in vinyl. Not likely to occur this year anyway; working on the interior this year. And we need an entire staircase between floors so that will be a major undertaking as well, especially trying to keep the construction mess out of the first floor :-(

Brian

 

Thanks Eric.

Not sure but I think Chief Architect. I did not do it, a local architect did. He layed out the house, steered me to 'the right thing' in one- million instances, provided drawings, including floor-plans and structural drawings that anyone could follow for something like $1,600 as I remember. I am a designer myself and actually an engineer but mechanical,not architectural and so found it was easier to farm it out than learn how to deal with carpentry menus in Solidworks and do it myself. In fact, I did the final, fine, tweaked layout in Solidworks and wish I had gone back to him for the same task; for perhaps $300 to $500, I would not have to have spent so much time interpreting and explaining my drawings / renderings. I generally work on small, manufactured parts that become part of a large- scale assembly or line, and no one ever asks if the facia goes behind the front of the mold cavity, for example.

Brian

 

I have been a serious devotee of Solidworks since 2001. Tried Inventor and found it a bit clunky, no offense to those who use it. Of course tried ProE because everyone has to do so: the original sucked really bad, which is why three of the top echelon members of that company broke off and started (wait for it....) Solidworks in the first place. ProE tried to respond with WildFire (ProE with a Solidworks- like front end) and while it was OK, they missed a lot of the point in making the user choose planes and such up front and align them.... or pay the price afterward. Solidworks avoided such nonsense and hit true paydirt IMO.

BTW- while I would never post my bona fides, I use Solidworks as the mechanical design arm for electro- mechanical projects, mostly larger production lines (assembly, inspection, gauging, testing, etc.). As a mechanical engineer, I am in the odd slot of being an automation engineer, based generally in motion control, and have written an awful lot of code (asm., C and proprietary code of the particular controller, with Delta Tau being the proffered choice) and so am a bit of an odd- ball in that I cross that 'impenetrable barrier' between mechaican / electrical / electronics fields. Even worse is when I design PC boards (Yikes!).

Anyway, none of this has prepared me or provided a background, tools or anything else for domicile building. The 'rules' come out of left field and often make absolutely no sense but hey, it is not my world, I just live here. So I am trying my best to wiggle through building code, electrical code, mechanical code (had a 'boiler certified' person tell me I could not add any more circuits to my existing boiler and after asking him why, he told me I had reached the limit. Limit? Then I asked him how many BTU's each zone used and how many would be the maximum and he looked at me like a deer blinded in the headlights) and so forth. So in addition to actually making a house that works for its occupants, is comfortable, serviceable and user-friendly, I have to conform to these 'rules'.

Sorry, it has been a pretty wearing process for two years now.....Illegitimi non carborundum always applies but sometimes they get close. :-( and at the same time.

Brian