Wood Stoves: what's new in the world of wood heat.

Lit the Defiant two days ago and the house is still warm...OK just kidding, but I did light a 3 piece fire and it's just so fast and warm.

Waiting for it to get colder and need it every morning. Not yet, but soon.

Hey Adam, is that stove for your current house or new house? When it comes time to move it, and you need some equipment, I have a bucket truck that has hoisted wood stoves before.

I miss wood heat. I never ended up finishing the refurb of that soapstone wood stove I was working on, since it required a bunch of new parts, and it got really cold in the workshop (oh the irony ), but we did use the fireplace quite a bit. The next place will need to have wood heat provisions.

Unfortunately my wife and I are living in an apartment building right now. (God I fucking hate neighbors) Our landlord would be really pissed if we installed this stove in the apartment.

Bucket truck, eh? Don't think I need it to move the stove, but....

Yup. F-350 diesel with a 32' altec boom. It comes in handy now and then. It is in the body shop right now, but should come out looking like a brand new... 1990 F-350 .

Neighbors aren't all that bad. I am trying to tap the 30-something year old mom next door. She will succumb to my charms one of these days.

Colder weather is coming here. Lit the stove this AM again. 3 sticks was all we needed. Laid another for tomorrow cause at 8 pm it was 32 degrees outside, and the sky is completely clear, so the temps are going to drop a bit more. I love wood burning season.

One nice thing about a small house is we don't need much heat after mid day, so I get ready the night before with a one match fire - get up in AM, light the stove and get the coffee machine going, by the time the coffee is brewing, the stove doors can be shut and by the time the first cup of coffee, it's warming up fast.

Drying out the masonry heaters today.

Bitchin...

'HeaterS' as in more than one??

Is it residential or commercial building/lodge etc?... got some more pics??

66 upstairs this morning,
54 downstairs in my office.

Something has to be done as there is no excuse for a house built in the last 30 years to be so cold.

Have you turned on the heat yet this year??

Good one A-Bone, but yes, the heat is on. Fe Woman is keeping it low to try and save money. We need the insulation fairies to visit our attic!

I'm not sure what the building standards are down there, but even up here (New Hampster) it is amazing how drafty and poorly insulated many homes built over the last couple of decades are... I'm telling you, there would be a market for super-high efficiency homes around here if they could be built within a couple percentage points of a regular house..

I keep adding insulation to my home and it helps but the real deal breaker is the glass. We are passive solar and during a sunny day it's great but if you don't close the curtains at night it's really drafty. My stove pulls the cold air across the room and it feels like wind......if you sit sideways to the stove on a cold night one side is toast and the other is cool.

I will eventually give up our floor to ceiling south facing fixed panels for smaller units with operable awning units at the sill and hydronic heat below.

Anyway, is the problem maybe lots of glass and maybe not lack of insulation?

We have a online program here in NY called rescheck that all new buildings and additions have to pass. It's very interesting, if you have a building that is not passing and you simply try to add additional insulation to the envelope to get it to pass it won't work. If you want dramatic positive performance results, just reduce the glazed area from your exterior walls and bam, the building passes. Recently, on a set of house plans the client insisted on tons of windows and glass doors which I gave her but when I ran rescheck sure enough, no go. I raised all the window sills by 3" (keeping the heads the same) and I got a passing mark. The owner never noticed. Point being glass sucks when talking heat loss! If your going to invest money and time, the best bang for the buck is good windows!

Makes sense... the R value, even on brand-new, decent quality windows, is pretty damn low... in fact.. shockingly low...

http://www.coloradoenergy.org/procorner/stuff/r-values.htm

Really the major savings in upgrading to new windows from old windows is in air-infiltration via tighter constuction....

one pane of glass is less than R-1.

New triple pane insulated units are above R-3, the difference is huge.

I remember my old house.....single pane with storms. I added the tape on plastic on the inside and what a difference! In the kitchen I used to smoke by the stove exhaust and hang with the wife........I melted a perfect head hole in the bottom of the plastic panel and the amount of cold air rushing thru that little hole was enough to put out a match. That's infiltration. Adding insulating glass fixes heat loss, both contribute to a drafty house.

That's the tricky part. Our latest research is on doing ICFs all the way to the roof. Originally the cost was way too high, but after shopping around and finding a guy that's willing to work with us through it- it might pencil out. Obviously I'll keep you in the loop and hope you'll stop by from time to time after we break ground.

oh yeah- I just bought an excavator. Pics to come.

I take it you didn't plumb in a combustion air intake for the stove. That's a common mistake and one that is easy to deal with during construction, not so much after.

It also reduces the low humidity problem.

I'm considering an outdoor air kit, it would help to create pressure inside the house instead of sucking cold dry air in. My stove is all set to add the kit, but plumbing a duct to the outside is a pain, my hearth is tile and the stove weighs about 700lbs.

Been looking at the concept of rocket mass stoves, focusing on hot, clean burns, and suckin as much heat as possible from the burn.

Those things are very nice!

Makes me want to be a dog.