Where's all the Fisher, Kodiak and other Smoke dragon People?

The new Kodiak class.

Already gone. I like your thinking about the smoker. A grand paw bear would be the ticket. I know of one. It is huge; a person could crawl up in it and be reasonably comfortable.

 

i know yer right but we just load ours up, crank the dampers down almost shut, let it smolder all night, heat it up in the morn. meanwhile, we just put another blanket on the bed. when this one's days are done i'll take the doors and scrap it.

 

I have an at least 35 to 40 yr. old La Crosse wood burning furnace. After a rough first year and a half and a lot of advice from guys on an un-named wood burning site, it really kicks azz. I'm about ready to move to an insert because I'm getting a little long in the tooth for cutting splitting and stacking all the wood it eats.

 

Black Bart does the job when it's July but leaves a lot to be desired once it gets cold. It's days are numbered. If it wasn't sitting on 60 acres of easy firewood, it would have been gone a long time ago.

 

That thing has a great blower system and can put out/move massive heat...just can't do anything for more than 4 hours without attention. I've gotten spoiled by 24 hour burns at home.

 

the fishers, earthstoves and the like were a big technological leap when they came around. the first "airtights". when used responsibly they can burn relatively clean if run hot. you can get midair secondaries in them above the fire, but the wood use to do that is really high. the real problem with these stoves is banking them back especially soon after reloading before the wood has started coaling out.

loading green wood on top for the "long burn" is bad as well. the wood only lasts longer because it takes so long to dry out over the coals before it starts outgassing and really starts burning. i remember as a kid loading up the old "dragon" we had in our basement it heated wonderfully but it was so heavy on wood usage compared to a modern reburn stove i'd hate having to go back to it.

 

here's the thing Dave (and im not beatin on ya bro) if everyone did this modification and operated the stove as you do there wouldn't be as much need for further regulation, but like the guy who was cramming crap in his OWB over there in the other thread, we cant expect everyone to be responsible enough to practice proper burning techniques, not to mention the ability(or willingness) to do the fab work you have done to your units. BUT we can do the work needed to make it happen at the industry level so when its uncrated in the home and installed the benefits of what you are doing on your own are already built into the unit. the rest is all about education a field i am increasingly wanting to get involved in and stressing at the industry level.

look at what you have done and learned in the process to do what you have done to make your stoves more efficient (a stock fisher ain't gonna do what yours does is it?) why did ya do it? im thinking because you wanted more out of your stove than i gave you out of the crate, right? because you wanted more heat with less wood, less waste right?

if you ever get down this way look me up ahead of time, i'll see about getting you a look at what we do and how, our job is to make heat and make as much as we can as clean as we can, we're good at it, you are educated enough to understand it, i think you would be impressed with what we can do

 

hell Dave , you should be teaching! certs like that are priceless. my boss (and mentor) is a boiler certified welder himself, learned a lot about welding from him, learned a lot about business as well.

as for big bro, im not exactly excited at whats happening these days (have a silverado myself) fodder for a different forum i suppose

anyway, my request to think on, don't let your knowledge die with you, teach my friend, pass it on to the next generation. skills like those you possess are rare these days. visit a high school or two, see the industrial arts teachers and offer up your knowledge on the art of welding, it truly is an art, and one which is becoming scarce these days.

 

nothing wrong with CAD, so long as someone knows how to sharpen a pencil and use if as well. some things work out better on paper than they do in solid works (what we use) or another CAD program.

someone who can do it for real is an asset which is becoming more and more rare. IMHO tech is great but its a tool like a pencil, of which one should know how to use both

 

Late to this thread, but I loved my old Vigilant. Ran it till it died. Too bad VC didn't keep it simple with the EPA stoves. That damm thing was a heat monster.

 

How much more wood do these burn than a modern EPA stove? I know it's hard to generalize on a large population, but is it a 1/3rd more?

 

Depends upon the stove and the need you have.

For me, I could get the stove room with the Vigilant up to 90+ degrees if I wanted. But, the usable burn time was 5-8 hours. Clearly a 90+ degree stove room is not needed. The Defiant in the same room would provide 8-14 hours and last year I was getting 12 hours of usable heat from the 30 in the same room.

All three stoves are about the same size in terms of firebox capacity. But the Defiant and 30 are more capable of moving the heat around. Can't say for certain how much would I saved for a variety of reasons.