Most local wood suppliers cut it to 16" here. It makes it easy to measure out an exact cord. (48"x48"x96"). The Carrabasset is the F55, but I never hear it called by that odd name. It sounds like a car loving hound dog.
I would be a little concerned for using radiant heat as a back-up. We have radiant, in floor heat, in a slab ranch, and it takes quite a while to heat the floor enough to warm the house. The problem is once the floors are warm they will continue to radiate heat for a long time. If your radiant comes on during the day and then you build a fire at night in the stove it seems you will be using a lot of energy to heat the floors up and then you'll be cooking once the stove is running. I went with wood for this exact reason. Radiant heat sucks in the shoulder season unless you like to open windows to cool off. We run the radiant if we have a hectic week or if we are going on vacation, otherwise it's all Clydesdale for heating. Warm floors are wonderful but they can be a headache for quick or intermittent heating.
Hi,
We're hoping to build this year (tried last year and didn't happen). The house will be either SIP or conventional framing with cellulose and exterior rigid board. We'll have in-floor radiant on the main floor. Loft will be HWBB. Total sqft is 2100. The house will be a chalet style with great room and 23ft cathedral ceiling in that room. Obviously there is a lot of cubic volume of air on the main floor and my biggest concern is picking the right stove. I don't think in this instance I can clearly go by the stove manufacturer sqft ratings. In any case, I was looking at the Oslo as there is a good deal on a used one, but was also reading up on the Woodstocks. Although we'd like to run 24/7, this will not be possible all the time with our work schedules and so the radiant will take over on those days. We currently have a Regency in our house and that has worked well, but I think for the new house we'll need something much beefier with a good sized firebox. Any thoughts on what we should consider? Thanks.
I think either a Blaze King or one of the new hybrid stoves should work.
If you are starting from scratch a Blaze King would need an 8" pipe.
They have very long burn times on low.
I have a Harman TL-300 which could also work but it doesn't get the 40 hour burn times of the King.
Though with a King you can't grill a steak over a wood fire when it is -30 outside.
Just a heads up on having radiant heat. We had a full scribe log home with 22 ft cathedral ceilings. 18-24 inch log diameters. All radiant heat in the basement slab and under the main floors. Even though the logs held the heat mass, you will be waiting hours for the radiant heat to start warming you if it has been off all day because of another heat source. You'll wind up being cold and using a ton of energy to warm the house back up again. We had a solar gain of 7 degrees every sunny day in the winter, no heat needed by 10 am. At around 5 pm I would turn on our radiant heat so by 7 pm when the house cooled to 70 the radiant heat would have already caught up. Just something to think about. We were heating with a gasification wood boiler with 1600 gallons of thermal storage at the time, so the heat was free, so to speak, wood came from our property.Hi,
We're hoping to build this year (tried last year and didn't happen). The house will be either SIP or conventional framing with cellulose and exterior rigid board. We'll have in-floor radiant on the main floor. Loft will be HWBB. Total sqft is 2100. The house will be a chalet style with great room and 23ft cathedral ceiling in that room. Obviously there is a lot of cubic volume of air on the main floor and my biggest concern is picking the right stove. I don't think in this instance I can clearly go by the stove manufacturer sqft ratings. In any case, I was looking at the Oslo as there is a good deal on a used one, but was also reading up on the Woodstocks. Although we'd like to run 24/7, this will not be possible all the time with our work schedules and so the radiant will take over on those days. We currently have a Regency in our house and that has worked well, but I think for the new house we'll need something much beefier with a good sized firebox. Any thoughts on what we should consider? Thanks.
Just a heads up on having radiant heat. We had a full scribe log home with 22 ft cathedral ceilings. 18-24 inch log diameters. All radiant heat in the basement slab and under the main floors. Even though the logs held the heat mass, you will be waiting hours for the radiant heat to start warming you if it has been off all day because of another heat source. You'll wind up being cold and using a ton of energy to warm the house back up again. We had a solar gain of 7 degrees every sunny day in the winter, no heat needed by 10 am. At around 5 pm I would turn on our radiant heat so by 7 pm when the house cooled to 70 the radiant heat would have already caught up. Just something to think about. We were heating with a gasification wood boiler with 1600 gallons of thermal storage at the time, so the heat was free, so to speak, wood came from our property.
Woodstock progress hybrid...beautiful stove, easy to use, great customer support, tremendous heater, very efficient, fabulous view of fire, long burns.
yes, others have suggested this, but our schedules won't allow for 24/7 stove burning, so not sure soapstone would be right for us. Also the longer warm up times of stone may not be optimal for us as well, but I do like the stoves in general.
I'd keep the radiant heat no matter what. If you get tired of wood heat you now have a nice heating system. If you think the stove will be going out in the middle of the night, just set the radiant heat to come on at 74 degrees before turning in for the night. Then turn it down once you get up. You'll figure it out once you live with it a while. Nice thing about a wood stove, it works when the power is out.This is my biggest concern going with the woodstove. We've always wanted radiant, but even if we locate the thermostat far enough away, which really won''t be that far (~25') I can see the T-stat for the radiant being tripped off, even if we only set it to 68F. The stove IMO will easily get the room temp above that, so off goes the radiant, then middle of the night, if the stove goes out, we start to freeze. Slight exaggeration perhaps, but I don't want to upset the efficiency of the radiant in conjunction with the mod/con boiler. We have a lot of wood on our property, and I want to use it, plus the fact the woodstove as everyone knows, is great heat and provides nice ambiance.
The only other option would be to skip the radiant and go HHBB, but one of the 1st wish list items on our list was radiant and I don't think I could talk my wife out of it at this point.
Just to add, our radiant will only be on the main floor and will be the staple up install, not embedded in cement, so warm up times won't be as long as concrete, but still a concern.
Been there with the outdoor wood boiler, yes the mess will be outside but you'll burn 10-12 cords verses the 4 your burning now. Just think, all the wood you gather for one year for the outdoor boiler will last you 3 years inside. You'll get tired of harvesting that much wood every year, plus the power goes out, now your running a generator or things will start to freeze up. Inside wood stove, power goes out, enjoy the heat. wait until it's below zero out, blowing and you have to go outside to load the stove when you get home from work, and then before you go to bed. It get old! Then you'll have barrels full of ashes to deal with too. I had a big driveway to use mine on back then. I even went the gasification boiler route with 1600 gallons of storage in an out side insulated building. Again , the power goes out you banking on a generator from costing you a freeze up. And still a lot of wood. I'll take a simple wood stove any day and just sweep or vacuum up any mess. A lot less headaches and tinkering. A wood stove you can just enjoy!When properly designed and operated, hydronic radiant can provide a very efficient and comfortable home heating solution. It is also invisible, no ducts and no baseboards.
With my system I leave the thermostats set to 65deg F. This ensures that the home stays warm if the fire goes down or out. Radiant systems aren't designed to "quick heat" an area like forced hot air (FHA). I had FHA and hated it, dry and dust pushers. My radiant rarely comes on but when it does the system is (at the least) at ambient temperature from the wood stove and ready to take over. When my wood stove heats my den with stone flooring it can circulate back to the storage tank to help maintain its temp (120degF)
I wish my county allowed outdoor wood boilers, I would go that route to minimize the mess.
1800sqft colonial
dedicated 50gal oil fired water heater to supply 5 zone radiant system
(separate 32 gal for domestic H2O)
1400 series napoleon insert (4cords per year)
1,000 in ground fuel oil tank
Been there with the outdoor wood boiler, yes the mess will be outside but you'll burn 10-12 cords verses the 4 your burning now. Just think, all the wood you gather for one year for the outdoor boiler will last you 3 years inside. You'll get tired of harvesting that much wood every year, plus the power goes out, now your running a generator or things will start to freeze up. Inside wood stove, power goes out, enjoy the heat. wait until it's below zero out, blowing and you have to go outside to load the stove when you get home from work, and then before you go to bed. It get old! Then you'll have barrels full of ashes to deal with too. I had a big driveway to use mine on back then. I even went the gasification boiler route with 1600 gallons of storage in an out side insulated building. Again , the power goes out you banking on a generator from costing you a freeze up. And still a lot of wood. I'll take a simple wood stove any day and just sweep or vacuum up any mess. A lot less headaches and tinkering. A wood stove you can just enjoy!
Plus bothers the heck out of me that people are using 3 x the wood they need to ehat their houses. Somedy we may all be sorry. Wood takes time to grow, we need it to keep the air clean plus for a lot of other reasons, and more and more people are heating with wood. Makes me cry to see the woodlots that are being clear cut, the wood that is cut when there is plenty on the ground that would just take a bit more work to use...We are loosing so many of our tree species that we should be very careful about and hesitant to cut good live trees. IMO.
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