Spent the last couple days building/filling a storage bin in the basement(dungeon.) 10'x6'x6' with removable end gates (2x10 planks just sit inside) Put a load of kiln dried Oak wood in it. About 1 1/2 cords. Wood comes from a local furniture manufacturer. Wood is 3"x3" and 3"x4" and ranges from 2-12" long. When I reload I've been throwing a layer of these on the bottom and a locust split or two on top. The kiln dried takes off real fast and the locust burns nice and slow. TimK
Nice storage are. Wish I had a basement. Notice you have a Fireview in, what appears to be, an uninsulated basement. How's that working out for you?
"Notice you have a Fireview in, what appears to be, an uninsulated basement. How's that working out for you?" Well...not as good as i had hoped, but it is keeping the house up to temp so far. Although it hasn't been real cold this week. I turned my oil furnace off Monday when I fired up the wood stove and I am going to try to keep it turned off thru the next cold spell. I am really firing the wood stove hot tonite to try to warm the house up after letting it cool down today. If I need to kick the oil furnace on occasionally to keep the house comfortable I will, but I hope the Fireview will keep up. The second floor in the house is the coldest part. The house is a cape cod with one big room on the second floor and it never did get warm enough even with the oil furnace. I think the heat ducts were undersized and there was no returns. Just what flowed down the steps. The insulation isn't good either. So it will be a work in progress to see if I can get it figured out. When I get the new duct work in (I just replaced the oil furnace) I want to try cutting in 2 or 3 returns right over the wood stove and running the blower on low to see if it will spread the heat around and pull the heat away from the wood stove. That's the one thing I never liked about a wood stove. When your in front of it, your too hot and when you go to the next room it's not warm enough.
No option of putting the stove on the first floor? You've got a lot working against you in this situation. You are losing a ton of heat to the walls of the basement. If you are fighting bad insulation, and I can relate to that... deeply, there is going to be a very good change you are going to be very frustrated when the temps really dip and you have sustained winter weather.
Do you have any spare cash? My suggestion would be to go as large as possible if you are going with an uninsulated basement install. A 30, or one of the economic competitors, would be more appropriate. In know way am I saying the Fireview is not a capable heater, but in your situation, it is not the ideal stove. If you can not move the stove up to the first level, you need to go larger. The 30 is the cheapest way to do this unless you want to go with a used stove, then your options open up a bit economically. If money isn't an issue, get a 3+ cu ft stove in there.
I agree with BB , you are fighting an epic battle in your basement with a large uninsulated space. A first floor stove install would be ideal. Worst case, considering your circumstances, you may have to continue supplementing with your oil burner. Which sucks because your trying to make this all work with a wood stove. Do you have any others options you can work with?
That bin is great TD! I wish we had a good furniture supplier around here or someone who kiln dried. An idea to help in the basement at least till something more can be done would be to line the walls with insulation board. Like the pink or green 4*6 panels from Home Depot or Lowe's.
I'm planning to jack the house up 32" in the spring and install some new beams and remodel about 600+ sqft of the basement into a family room. It will be insulated and then some when it gets done. My house isn't laid out very good for a first floor install. I would need to carry the wood into the the back door and to the front of the house. I just didn't want to have the stove (and mess) in the living room. The basement install was the easiest and quickest way I could get this thing going. This was an existing unlined chimney that served the oil furnace. I removed the old oil furnace and installed the new oil furnace with a power venter on the opposite side of the house. This left me with a rec room that is 16x32 with no obstacles. And the wood stove will be the focal point. (the oil furnace was in the biggest room of the basement and the oil tank, washer, dryer, water heater, well tank, plumbing and wash tub were on the opposite side of the house)
I think that is his best bet. Tim, you might also even consider a temporary partition with fiberglass batting that would cut off the half of your basement that the bin is in and drive the heat up your stairwell from the section with the Fireview. Then you could just apply the insulation board inside that partitioned area.
I was looking into that last nite. I think I could do a temporary wall with 2x2s and R-max to cut the basement in half. Then R-max to 2 remaining exterior walls. I should be able to do it with about 16 sheets of R-max Can I safely hang the R-max behind the wood stove?
Just got back from a little road trip and found the house 4* cooler than I left it. That doesn't seem too bad considering it's only 19* outside. We were gone for 4 hours. I stuffed the box before I left and cut the air down just a little to make sure the wood lasted. When I came home I stuffed the fire box as tight as possible and turned the air back up. I hope I can get the house back up where it was. We will see
We use 18 gallon plastic totes to bring wood in. I can haul 3 totes at a time on my hand truck & there is no problem with debris/trash falling like there is if you are carrying it in by the arm load. (Totes are only $5 at WalMart) Note: We use 14-16" splits. If you use longer splits you will need a larger tote. Another option to using a hand truck/cart would be a wagon.
