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Thread: It's all wood

  1. #16
    tripledog's Avatar
    tripledog is offline I could be geriatricdog... at my age Got the holeshot
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    If you have a block chimney, make sure you have a cap on it. If not, water can permeate the masonry, freeze, expand, and crack the chimney. I may sound like Captain Obvious, but I am speaking from first hand experience. Sure is nice to have wood heat!

  2. #17
    Dave Little's Avatar
    Dave Little is offline At The Back Of The Pack Arm chair racerAt the back of the pack
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    You're always welcome John. If the elbows you got don't take the heat well, I mean they will for a while but that style are definitely the Achilles heal of the exhaust system. The range of movement is nice but I just don't trust them especially the first one leaving the firebox when that thing gets really honking.You may want to consider this style: no seems, less modes of failure and made from thicker material but limited to just 90 degrees. It may look like you can move these, but trust me you can't. The ripples are just there for the bending machine. They are a good compromise from going with the overkill of 1/4" process piping 90's I mentioned.


  3. #18
    fabiodriven's Avatar
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    I will keep those in mind Dave!

    It was cold today and I was anxious to get home and burn some wood. I lit the wood stove first and then fired the furnace. Getting the stove warmed up can take some time, however warming the furnace up takes far longer. Obviously the benefits of the furnace far outweigh the fact that it takes longer to get warm, that's just physics. It's bigger. So I had both chimneys smoking away and holy crap did I burn a ton of wood getting both of those hot! I don't mind, I'll just have to make more wood. The stove and the furnace are on opposite sides of the house which I feel is beneficial. I can't really rate the furnace yet on how it heats my home as there is still no ductwork in place. The blower is in place and working. Obviously my floors are warm which is fantastic, but I can't wait to see what it does with the ducting. I had the living room up to almost 80 at one point, which is where I usually keep it with the stove, and by that point the furnace was starting to make some heat so I let the stove go out to see what the furnace would do (sans ducting). The far side of the house from the furnace, where it was 80, went down to 67 almost immediately after the stove went out. It hovered right around there but it did take quite some time to truly get that furnace cranking. All this is fairly irrelevant anyways as there's no ducting. The house is getting insulated next week as well so that's yet another variable to add in.

    Tonight is my first test to see if this thing can run overnight and even better, hopefully constantly. I loaded the thing to the tits probably about a half hour ago. One big thing to take into consideration is that my wood is unseasoned at best, green in many cases. A good drafting stove with a stainless liner will draft enough to burn anything after you get the fire hot and it will do it safely, but it won't do it efficiently. It's full bore, all or nothing. You can't always "shut the stove down" and let it burn slow. I'm shutting it down tonight to see what I can do. I stuffed it with four huge logs on top of a red hot coal bed and then filled it in with split oak. It holds a massive amount of wood. I closed the damper on the loading door all the way and shut the damper on the clean out door then backed it off one turn. This will be my first test at what I should have it set at. I've read that guys grind the stops off the clean out damper to seal them off even tighter, so I figure if they're doing that with seasoned wood I'll need a bit more draft. We'll see tonight how one turn out does.
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  4. #19
    tripledog's Avatar
    tripledog is offline I could be geriatricdog... at my age Got the holeshot
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    It is nice to know that I am not the only one learning the quirks and nuances of newly installed wood fired heating equipment. Even though I am heating with bone dry black walnut, I have to open the upper air intake on my woodstove or I will get back drafts and or creosote buildup. The stainless chimney acts much differently than my old block chimney did, and I am still learning how to use it. In the meantime, my house is so warm that it is uncomfortable.

  5. #20
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    You might want to get a magnetic themometer and place it on the stove pipe. This way you can monitor how hot the stove burns when you shut it down for the night (and during the day). I run about 200 degrees all night and when I wake up there is still enough wood and coals to get a good hot fire going. It's a PIA to always start a fire every time you need heat and saves a lot of wood too. You're going to have to find out where the stove damping is best by trial and error. With the amount of wood you stuffed in there and the right damping you should have not burned all your wood out.
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  6. #21
    tripledog's Avatar
    tripledog is offline I could be geriatricdog... at my age Got the holeshot
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    My stove runs 24/7. The only time I shut it down is to clean the chimney and that piece of crap cap that I will be replacing SOON. Major design flaw with the Duravent chimney cap. I have to get on the roof today just to clean the cap. The chimney is clean, but the cap is plugged. I just cleaned it 2 weeks ago.

  7. #22
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    Why does the cap clog? Does it have a screen or some thing?
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  8. #23
    tripledog's Avatar
    tripledog is offline I could be geriatricdog... at my age Got the holeshot
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    Quote Originally Posted by 88 Turbo Coupe View Post
    Why does the cap clog? Does it have a screen or some thing?
    Yes. It has a spark arrestor screen. At the risk of further trampling on Fabio's thread, the details are listed in post #14.

  9. #24
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    Sorry. No trampling intended. At least he knows not to use that cap.
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  10. #25
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    Been stuffin 12 cord a yr thru this allnighter for the last 7 yrs. Works great, keeps the place warmer than necessary. Never once had to douche the chimney. Burn clean wood and runnit HOT, no pronlems. The burn time is impressive on this. Keep a 3-4" bed of ash and 24hr burn times are nothing out of the ordinary.

    I also go through 3-5 cord in the garage depending how much im out there.

    Heres the inhouse setup. The fireplace base is 8foot by 8foot deep and is an impressive pc. The allnighter eats 2' wood, but will handle 28"



  11. #26
    fabiodriven's Avatar
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    The furnace did end up making through the night with the blower shutting off as I walked to the basement door at about 5:45 this morning. That makes it about a 7.5 hour burn last night. I messed up this morning and should have directed more of my time towards full bore burning to get it hot, so in turn I ended up loading it with split wood rather than logs in an attempt not to snuff the fire out. I had an early day at work today and was home by about 11am after having loaded the furnace at a little after 6am which is about 5 hours. It had blown right through the split wood and would have been completely out within 6 hours. Tonight I loaded it heavy with really big logs and shut all the dampers all the way. I'm confident it will be going in the morning. I can't wait to see what it's like with the duct work in place!
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  12. #27
    fabiodriven's Avatar
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    Yar so the holidays have taken a toll on the time frame of this install, plus we're really not in any hurry. The house has been plenty warm with the furnace running but I've fired the stove as well a few times just to warm the house a bit faster. As of now it's still not ducted upstairs, it just blows up the stairway. I got the walls in the house insulated a week ago, not the ceiling yet, but that has made an enormous difference in the heat as well. An unexpected side effect of having the wood furnace in the basement is instant hot water that lasts a lot longer. I wouldn't doubt the furnace is causing the hot water heater to come on a lot less, although the furnace's blower is probably taking whatever energy would have been saved because of that.

    We initially were going to insulate all the ducting but opted out of that idea for two reasons. To save money by not buying insulation, and there is no reason to insulate the ducts from the basement as it's about 95 degrees down there. Actually now that I say that I'll have to get a thermometer and see how hot it is down there. All the floors in the house are nice and toasty!

    So we're about halfway done at this point. As usual, the results with Steve involved are impressive. The man knows his ductwork and is going far, far above and beyond what I was going to do. I've pulled the boiler and baseboards right out of the house as well as the plumbing to it all. I will say that I absolutely will not miss the old baseboard heat. It gets kicked, the covers fall off, they get dusty and nasty, the bed pumps into it over and over and over and over and faster and faster... There's probably 20% of the heating system left in the house in a couple of different rooms, but I'll get to them when I do. As I remove the baseboard I have to sand, then joint compound, then sand again, then paint, then put the base trim in, so it does take some time. I just finished my bedroom tonight and I'll be moving into the living room soon. That's going to take longer because I have to paint the whole living room anyways rather than just match the existing paint.

    Another benefit is the size of the wood this thing will take. Bigger wood means less processing, it just swallows logs. Less processing, bigger wood, less handling of the wood as it burns longer and one piece is the size of 4 pieces for the old wood stove. One thing that will have to be done before next year, I will need a hatch into the basement for firing logs down there. As of now I have to lump the logs down by and, bobbling down the stairs and over the cat and whatever else is in the way. A fall will be eminent. There is an old coal chute that's been bricked over so I'll have to blow that back open and get the old oil tank out of the way.

    The system will have two 8" main trunk lines, one with three registers and one with two, and each trunk line will have its own damper as well as each register for a total of 7 dampers. I will be able to fine tune the direction of the heat and put more or less heat in virtually any part of the house that I want to. It's quite impressive to me really and nothing like whatever I was going to build, haha!



    This is the line that goes to my bedroom. It is the longest and most turbulent run with the 45's having to clear the newly installed support beam. The beam was just put in last month during the remodel of the bathroom once it was discovered that the plumbers had cut all the joists to run the plumbing to my bathroom. That occurred long before I bought the house, but you certainly could feel it in the floors. Even with the length of the run and the bends it still flows absolutely fine, but it wouldn't matter if it didn't. I could just send more air that way with my dampers. Steve was concerned with the flow of this pipe, but if there is any room in the house I would want cooler than the rest it would be the bedroom for sure. I'd rather have that a tad cooler. I like the house between 75-80 but that's too hot for sleeping in a bed.



    The line going to the left is the run to my bedroom again from the other side.



    Steve's schematic is very impressive. He spent about 3 hours here the first day just measuring and imagining what he needed to do. I thought it seemed a bit excessive at the time, after he threw away his first two schematics and began again, but as with all things mechanical with Steve involved you just cannot argue with the results. I've learned to be patient as it always pays off. This was his 5th or 6th version of the schematic I think and it's even evolved a bit more since I took this picture, haha.



    So here's about 80% of my old heating system. It'll be on its way to the scrap yard as soon as possible. The first picture is what's left of the boiler after I attacked it. It's no wonder the thing was running at about 3% efficiency as the inside was literally caked with soot, rust, crud, crap, and ca-ca. I guess it would have been kind of a big deal to dig that far into it to clean all that schmegma out of there which is why nobody ever did it or suggested it. It was a disgusting, fossil fuel sucking, cancer causing turd and I couldn't be happier to be it's unmaker.







    I was thinking earlier to myself "Dafaq would anyone care about my heating system for?", but then I'd find myself just walking around down there looking at it and touching the ducts and stuff. It's a really nice setup and it's really going to heat this place nice. Thanks for all the help Steve!
    Last edited by fabiodriven; 12-30-2014 at 11:01 PM.
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  13. #28
    fabiodriven's Avatar
    fabiodriven is offline Aspiring romance novel cover model, and the Official 3WW slayer of thieves and swindlers. Catch me if you can
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    Another thing I'd like to ad for anyone who has one of these units or something similar, or for those who are interested in getting one. While I was researching my unit (the night I got it home after I bought it), I read somewhere to seal off the loading door damper completely. I hadn't yet done that until today. I took the cover off the loading door and shut the damper all the way. You used to be able to see inside through the gap in the damper even when it was closed all the way. Obviously that's not good for the longevity of the burn time. I hesitated to seal it off as I was using the damper, but after having sealed it today I can say that should be the first thing a user of one of these furnaces should do. The stove runs much better altogether and I'm curious to see how long she burns tonight. It's been burning plenty long already but it should only burn longer now.



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  14. #29
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    Did you cut up the floor at all yet Johnny??

    I just have to get that fitting extension I need and we'll finish the back run soon.....
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  15. #30
    fabiodriven's Avatar
    fabiodriven is offline Aspiring romance novel cover model, and the Official 3WW slayer of thieves and swindlers. Catch me if you can
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    This winter has been HARSH! The furnace runs pretty much twenty four hours a day now which keeps the house at about 60-ish with the system still not ducted upstairs. When relaxing for the night I'll start the wood stove upstairs and then you can bring the temperature up to whatever you need and then some. Sky is the limit really. After installing the furnace and getting the walls insulated this place is plenty warm.

    I didn't get this furnace until winter had already started, so I really wasn't prepared with wood. I had a decent amount already processed but I knew it wasn't enough, plus it was split a lot smaller than ideal for the furnace. It was split for the stove which is smaller. The furnace just eats little wood right up. I had been processing the big wood for the furnace as I was going along, however everything has been covered in a few feet of snow for about a month now leaving my wood processing operation dead in the water. I figured no worries, I'd call my buddy next town over and just pay him to deliver me some wood. I don't like to pay for it but I will if need be. Turns out he's buried, no wood. Same with just about everyone around, so I bought coal instead. The coal works great in conjunction with wood but just OK by itself. The coal/wood combination is better than just the wood by far, but almost everything I've burned this year has been unseasoned, so I still don't even know how the furnace will do with seasoned wood. Coal by itself is OK, but it's slow to control and makes a ton of ash. Takes a while to heat it up and it can sneak up on you.

    I didn't want to get stuck with just coal by itself but I was running out of options, plus the stove can't burn coal without the coal basket being put in which isn't even worth the effort. The furnace takes whatever, no modifications. Then I thought about wood bricks. They're like giant pellets you burn like wood. This is day one of me burning wood bricks which has prompted me to write this right now. These bricks are insane! They burn hot and they burn long, hotter and longer than coal, wood, or a mix. I am really impressed with these things so if anyone is curious about them I would definitely give them a shot!
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