Wood burning stoves

creosote

Well-Known Member
That's the first thing that came to mind, when I read Almond and madrone.

Also, welcome rugerden.
This is a great place.
 

Glaciers

Alaska Land of the Midnight Sun
Those things were used by the Army to heat all kinds of spaces, up through WWII. They are "dual fuel" and can burn coal or wood.

Yeah, I've had this one 45 years. I've burned wood in mine but you're not going to get much sleep as it sucks the wood up. Wood needs to be about 12 to 14 inches as well. Puts out about half the heat for a lot of wood.
Back late 70's right after the pipeline ended a friend who built log houses with natural logs got a contract to build a place on the Chena River just outside of town. Had to build it in the winter. Mike built a tent with reinforced visqueen over the whole place. Small two bedroom. He used a Cannon #20 like mine and burned coal in that tent. The setup was he had a fan about 3 feet in diameter blowing over the stove and just kept the air damper wide open. The one time I came by the stove was glowing bright orange even with the fan. Had a good heat shield backing that curved up over the stove and had the chimney and roof jack running through that. Quite the setup.
 

Petrol & Powder

Well-Known Member
I had an out door boiler in that last home we sold , 7 year's ago that thing was a wood eatin SOB ---- but had all the heat & hot water you could ever want, went through 30 to 40 fasecord a year----all northern Mi. red oak. No wonder I had back surgery!!
............

Like everything in life, those outdoor boilers are compromises. The have some attractive features and some not-so attractive features.
On the plus side: All of the ash, wood chips, bugs and other mess; stays outside. The control of the heat indoors is as simple as setting a thermostat. And they can run for many hours with little attention.
It is that last trait of long burn times between stoking that makes them so inefficient.
In order to achieve long run times, the fire box on those boilers needs to be huge. That results in a slow, smoldering fire that produces lots of smoke (and lost potential energy) and it consumes LOTS of wood. The trade off for that inefficiency is that you don't have to put on your coat, boots and gloves every 2 hours and go feed the beast but when you do feed it - it eats a lot.

Like most things in life, you need to decide what you want.
 

L Ross

Well-Known Member
Like everything in life, those outdoor boilers are compromises. The have some attractive features and some not-so attractive features.
On the plus side: All of the ash, wood chips, bugs and other mess; stays outside. The control of the heat indoors is as simple as setting a thermostat. And they can run for many hours with little attention.
It is that last trait of long burn times between stoking that makes them so inefficient.
In order to achieve long run times, the fire box on those boilers needs to be huge. That results in a slow, smoldering fire that produces lots of smoke (and lost potential energy) and it consumes LOTS of wood. The trade off for that inefficiency is that you don't have to put on your coat, boots and gloves every 2 hours and go feed the beast but when you do feed it - it eats a lot.

Like most things in life, you need to decide what you want.
Well put. We thought several times about installing a Central Boiler, and with our acreage of hard woods it makes some sense. There were two factors swaying us away from it. First was all of the trouble my brother had with his first outdoor boiler with broken welds, warrantee work, then the expired warrantee. I have not heard of those issues with the Central Boiler brand. The second issue is the realization that Sue and I cannot chuck 3 foot lengths of firewood through a stove door any more, our lower backs just won't handle it and we can see out 70's on the near horizon. Frankly it is getting tough just lifting the larger blocks up on a splitter, and those are just 16/18" lengths.
 

Cadillac Jeff

Well-Known Member
Yes Mr. Ross, Dad's central boiler was GREAT, only took 4 to 7 chunk's & he loaded it once a day. & this is N. Mi.< six mo. of winter.
But yea the centrals are what I would go with, I just don't want to cut,stack,load & emty ash's anymore...
Jeff
 

Bret4207

At the casting bench in the sky. RIP Bret.
One heat source providing heat to 2 buildings, 24/7, with no danger from chimney fire (we're a good 20 minutes from town at fire truck speed), reduced insurance costs, no smoke/ash/dirt/wood in the house, nice even hot water heat in any room I choose to run a line to, plus all the domestic hot water I can use AND only having to fire it 2-3 times a day? I go though massive amounts of wood as it is, I'm not seeing much of a downside outside of setup and cost.
 

L Ross

Well-Known Member
Oh well, just tossed a chunk of red elm in the Devil's box and I got a bunch of S.L. 53 brass to go size.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Ian

Petrol & Powder

Well-Known Member
Everyone has a different situation and everything in life is a compromise. You pick what's important to you and what works for your situation.

One solution for one person does not dictate the solutions for everyone else.

I think the key takeaway is to make INFORMED decisions. Think long term.
 

Glaciers

Alaska Land of the Midnight Sun
The problem here is we get a inversion and the outdoor boilers (mostly Central Boilers in this area) as P&P says if you want a long burn, smoked a lot. I remember over by one of our Elementary Schools just out of town there was 2 outdoor boilers and with the inversion the smoke was held right on the ground. Some days you could barely see to drive to the school. It was bad. There were other areas just as bad. That got our Air Quality Program kicked into high gear. They were outlawed an a exchange program created to get them out.
When as in this area the winter cold sits on top of the town holding everything in because we rarely have wind or even a breeze for weeks at a time, it was bad. Glad to see them go.
The quantity wood wood consumed was just rediculess. Most did not have 100 acres, most were in neaborhood's of 1 or 2 acres. Folks would start burning green wood because of the volumes needed which just made the problem worse.
I have a hard time cutting and splitting up to 9 cords in a timely fashion so wood will be dry the fall time. In this country everything is frozen solid by October and stays that way till late April, so you need to at least drop trees in the fall and cut and split as soon as snow is off the ground. Most of my life is in the rear view mirror and someday I won't be able put up the wood. Can't afford to buy to much wood, but that's a ways in the future for that problem.
 
Last edited:

L Ross

Well-Known Member
The problem here is we get a inversion and the outdoor boilers (mostly Central Boilers in this area) as P&P says if you want a long burn, smoked a lot. I remember over by one of our Elementary Schools just out of town there was 2 outdoor boilers and with the inversion the smoke was held right on the ground. Some days you could barely see to drive to the school. It was bad. There were other areas just as bad. That got our Air Quality Program kicked into high gear. They were outlawed an a exchange program created to get them out.
When as in this area the winter cold sits on top of the town holding everything in because we rarely have wind or even a breeze for weeks at a time, it was bad. Glad to see them go.
The quantity wood wood consumed was just rediculess. Most did not have 100 acres, most were in neaborhood's of 1 or 2 acres. Folks would start burning green wood because of the volumes need which just made the problem worse.
I have a hard time cutting and splitting up to 9 cords in a timely fashion so wood will be dry the fall time. In this country everything is frozen solid by October and stays that way till late April, so you need to at least drop trees in the fall and cut and split as soon as snow is off the ground. Most of my life is in the rear view mirror and someday I won't be able put up the wood. Can't afford to buy to much wood, but that's a ways in the future for that problem.
My Dad used to warn me of the evils of burning green wood in a stove inside of a home. There is an Indian Reservation not far from where my Dad grew up on the farm. An Indian neighbor used to do some day labor on the farm and went up North deer hunting with a local group of guys from the area. This Indian guy, Tony, lived in a tarpaper shack, not an uncommon situation in rural America in the 40's, and was a bachelor. Tony get busy with one thing or another and before you know it, the Winter wolf was at the door and there was not enough wood to heat the shack over Winter. Compromises had to be made and one solution was to burn green popple. Popple splits pretty nice anyway and you can lop up a few trees with a Swede saw. It really splits nice when it's frozen, and with a little encouragement, will burn. Dad said one time when he went along with his Dad to see Tony, his father pointed out the creosote running out of every pipe joint of the stove pipe serving as a chimney sticking through the wall of Tony's shack. Dad said there was even a puddle of creosote on snowy ground under the pipe elbow.

Dad never mentioned Tony's shack burning down, but the dire warning of burning green wood in an indoor stove has stuck with me all of these years. Which no doubt was the point of the lesson from my Grandpa to Dad and thence unto me. Dad also told me that Tony would leave the deer shack up North in the dark, and return after dark, unless he came in during the day dragging his buck. Dad said Tony was sitting on a stump when my Father walked up and his old hat and shoulders had 3" of freshly fallen snow on them, and there was no sign that Tony had moved for hours. I never, ever, was able to develop that degree of discipline.
 

Glaciers

Alaska Land of the Midnight Sun
Yeah chimney fires are a problem with greener wood and certain kinds of woods are worse than others obviously. That's one reason why I make sure I use dry wood and remove most of the bark off of birch. But the catalytic style stove burns more completely and lowers stack temperature where when the stove is running at a good burn the stack will drop to about 270* to 300* or so.
 

Petrol & Powder

Well-Known Member
Incomplete combustion in the stove results in unburned hydrocarbons going up the flue in the form of gases. Those gases represent lost potential energy that the fuel contained but was not burned. As those gases get farther from the stove and into the cooler sections of the flue, they condense and collect on the walls of the flue. The resulting build up is known as creosote but that's a rather broad term.
While most people recognize that a build up of creosote is dangerous because it can ignite and create a chimney fire, many people don't seem to recognize that it is LOST potential heat. It is like running an engine with an over-rich fuel mixture. A large portion of the fuel is simply going out the tailpipe without producing any useful power.

My father worked with a guy that lived in a small concrete block cabin while he built his house. He burned pine exclusively, and often green pine at that, because that's what he had. His chimney was clean despite the poor quality of his firewood because he always ran the fire hot. It wasn't ideal but it worked.
 

Bret4207

At the casting bench in the sky. RIP Bret.
Ah but you will see the downside. Being a youngster you haven't yet seen it but every year that wood gets harder and harder to cut, split & stack.

Youngster? I'm 61 and have arthritis. I'm also smart enough to use mechanical means every way I can. It's all in setting things up right.

There are ways to mitigate the creosote issue. An insulated chimney is #1. Running the fire hot at least once a day helps. Dry wood helps. But I don't beleive there is any system that totally negates creosote buildup. It's a matter of degree IMO. I'll continue to brush out the chimney pretty much every time we bring a load of wood to the basement, which is every week at least.
 
Last edited:

Rick

Moderator
Staff member
Youngster? I'm 61 and have arthritis. I'm also smart enough to use mechanical means every way I can. It's all in setting things up right.

Yep, that's much like I thought way back when I was a whipper snapper of 61. :rofl: Yep got all the mechanical means including two log splitters. Still every year it gets harder.
 

L Ross

Well-Known Member
Youngster? I'm 61 and have arthritis. I'm also smart enough to use mechanical means every way I can. It's all in setting things up right.

There are ways to mitigate the creosote issue. An insulated chimney is #1. Running the fire hot at least once a day helps. Dry wood helps. But I don't beleive there is any system that totally negates creosote buildup. It's a matter of degree IMO. I'll continue to brush out the chimney pretty much every time we bring a load of wood to the basement, which is every week at least.
o_OOnce a week?! Holy cow! I brush ours out in Fall before the first fire and that's it. I have an 8" brush attached to 20' of chain. Our chimney is a clay flue liner in a cinder block chimney on out side south wall of the house. I climb upon the roof and my wife is on the ground at the clean out door. When I shine a strong light down the flue I see basically nothing. I swirl the chain around as I slowly lower it until the brush is at the top of the flue. Then Sue pulls the brush down with the chain. Usually we will not get enough soot to fill couple of three pound coffee cans. And it is dry powdery soot at that.

My biggest problem with the exterior chimney is that when I don't run a fire for a couple of days I get a cold down draft and have to heat the stove pipe with a propane torch until I see no condensation forming under the flame. Then it will draw. With the cold weather we are having, and running a fire every day from 5:30 am until 9 pm the chimney never really cools back down enough to cause problems even when well below zero.
 

Bret4207

At the casting bench in the sky. RIP Bret.
I use a rod type cleaner, you screw the sections together. I have a ground level cleanout and tee, well, a couple feet above ground level actually. I wait till the fire dies down, brush INTO the stove itself through the horizontal section that runs through the foundation and then go up the chimney with a wire bristle cleaner. We do get gooey creosote sometimes, that stuff is half water I think. The chunky stuff breaks loose easily. It's the semi-gooey stuff that ends up rock hard that seems to be the big issue. Yes, once a week or every 10 days or so. I've had 3 chimney fires. No damage from any of them other than having to replace a section of insulated pipe. But, I'd rather be safe and be able to sleep soundly at night. Our wood furnace is a leaky, pretty well worn old thing. I'd love to replace it, but it's sort of built into the house, so it's a ginormous project.
 

Bret4207

At the casting bench in the sky. RIP Bret.
Yep, that's much like I thought way back when I was a whipper snapper of 61. :rofl: Yep got all the mechanical means including two log splitters. Still every year it gets harder.

No doubt you're absolutely right and I'm dead wrong. I didn't realize you were 387 years old there Methusula. My bad.