wood stoves

Maybe we could avoid the labor, consume the beer and still see each others stoves running?

 

Yeah that is a little more appealing.

 

If I had my way I would try a different stove about every 2 years just for the amusement and experience. I say 2 years because I think the first year is usually a learning curve.

 

Right on!

 

The "spring" sale is still on at the Durango store #1534...Englander 2,400 sq. ft. Wood-Burning Stove-30-NCH - The Home Depot

 

Pretty sure thats the store I "ordered from" back in april or may or whenever I bought mine

 

Pretty sure thats the store I "ordered from" back in april or may or whenever I bought mine

 

I bought mine fully loaded, no special deal, including 9% tax for just under 3000$. That's a lot more than an nc30 but very similar to the equivalent lopi or other high end wood stove. The hearthstone heritage that my bk replaced sells for 3500$+. I could have bought a harman pellet stove too but those buggers are like 4500$.

I'm thinking of buying another bk for the shop. Long unattended burn times are just so nice.

 

Well thats cheaper than I thought. But no dealers around here I dont think.

 

Pellets are nice just expensive for the pellets

 

Yeah I went over to the dark side last year with a fairly inexpensive pellet stove... this year the price of pellets is almost a wash vs. propane. However still a lot of work with pellets, and if you have a stove like mine it's a major PITA to clean and keep burning properly. And I don't trust them long term like a woodstove, with so much potential sources of failure of electronic parts... 3 different motors, igniter, electronic control board, exhaust sensor, vacuum sensor, etc. If I had to do it again I'd definitely not have got this stove, though perhaps saved up a bit more and watched craigslist and elsewhere for a used Harman to show up for a decent price.

 

T-Stew, I agree completely and the heat is different. considered putting one in basement buddy gave me.. 3 years old from home Depot but I was with oil at 3 a gallon then it wouldn't save money. heat is not a wood stove heat. clean it every day. no but I still would consider a BK king in basement long slow burns extra chimney thermostat controlled but take a long time to return of capital!

 

Just my opinion but pellets are the best idea yet regarding buring wood. Unfortunately, the predicted 'we will be up to our eyeballs in waste wood pellets for practically nothing' did not quite work out. If they were priced reasonably and readily available, it would be outstanding; the best features of burning wood at extremely high efficiency, the easiest possible loading / storing / handling method of dealing with wood that I can think of. Add to that automatic start, thermostatic control and virtually unlimited fuel supply (if the above worked out, I would feed the stove with an auger from a large hopper). Add to the above no bugs, no rot, no dirt and virtually no dust and it really is a slick way to go. But the infastructure never came to fruition or became competitive.

The small fuel really is the key; firewood would work just as well if it could be broken down into small blocks- say, nothing larger than 1" cubed. But the effort to reduce random wood types, sizes and shaped to that size is just too much to produce firewood.

I think what we have today in third or fourth generation, catalyist assisted woodstoves is about as close as we can reasonably get to high efficiency in wood burning. What the stoves need now is a little bit of automation; hey, automatic ice makers really sucked too until they put the 'automatic' in them (back in the '60's).

Brian

 

Bush people are working on an automatic wood stove for their smoker!

 

There popping up those wood pellet mills all over the south here. Small mills.

SC is one of the largest if not the largest exported of wood pellets to europe. I forget which we are..pretty bad since thats my field, kind of.

The problem is fixed costs. Those dont go down no matter how many pellets are bought or consumed.

If they really can use all mill waste its cheaper but as more of them pop up "waste" becomes a raw material and cost increases. Some of those pellet mills compete with the pulp wood market so they can control what comes in. Even if they buy "dirty fuel wood chips" its still cost about the same as pulp wood due to the extra redicuosly expensive chipper needed in the process.

 

We have a small Avalon Rainier stove. We purchased the GreenStart system with it to get our fires started. We simply love it! Are there other manufactureres that have a similar system?
Check it out! It works really well. GreenStart™ Wood Ignitor Option - Available Now on Vimeo

 

Yeah I think we are getting pretty close to maxing out efficiency in woodstoves. With something like the BK King, a long burn with some 'automation' is possible as well. We could still improve upon that, wouldn't be to hard to add some more sensors and automation - controlling based on a thermostat too. And with a really large firebox, you could get the same or longer burns than most all pellet stoves. But I suppose the risk is greater adding electronics, sensors, and automation to a woodstove. If something goes wrong in the pellet stove, you have like a cup full of pellets in the pot. If something goes wrong in the woodstove, you got like a million btu's sitting there in the firebox!

 

The risk part is really pretty easy to overcome- the unit just has to be designed to be 'fail safe'. That way, when power is lost, a mechanism fails or anything goes wrong, the draft closes either all the way or to a pre- defined, low setting. It is not the stove or a stove full of fuel that is dangerous, it is a draft that fails in a too large opening- the way around that is to have an electrical device hold the draft open and if, for any reason, that system fails, the draft is closed.

This is done all the time on things such as machine tools, elevators and so forth; without a correctly functioning mechanism, they either lock in place (elevator) or by default settle to a safe point.

Brian

 

If I remember correctly the the englander 30NC has just such a feature... at a fixed temp it has flap that drops and closes draft completely? Reset manually....

 

I agree about the pellet stoves 100%. I've had the exact thoughts in my head a few times. It really hit home for me when I bought my pellet smoker. I've messed with smokers before and you're constantly tending to it. My pellet smoker really is set it and forget it. The thermostat takes over and it feeds pellets when it needs them.

Unfortunately the lack of low cost pellets due to a few reasons is a deal breaker when it comes to heating the house.