Do I want a wood boiler?

[iceguy4]

Then get a hp water heater

Heat pump HW heater is a "no brainer" use only in the summer and it dehumidifies your basement for free....

 

[Floydian]

Hi Ruger,

Heat pump HW heater is a "no brainer" use only in the summer and it dehumidifies your basement for free....

Or you could use the HPWH in the winter if your basement is "too hot" when you are burning the wood stove and you would be partially heating your DHW with wood in a round about sort of way.

Yea what you are saying is a concern i suppose. It is tough to determine what is the right size and it could be expensive to get it wrong! The problem is conflicting goals. I am looking for long burn times that come with larger stoves but dont need the BTU output. I plan to put the unit in the basement so i would imagine that would require a little larger stove but maybe 70-80k BTUs is extreme. I came across those Walltherm units and thought that was really neat but figured it was something hard to obtain here in the US and had never heard of them before. There again though, they are only claiming a 4 hour burn time and i wont be home/awake to keep it going. I suppose there is just no getting around the shorter burn times of a smaller stove...
Now keeping in mind that I have limited experience with woodstoves, i'm goin to ask what will probably be a dumb question: If i go a little to big, would it be possible to just crack a basement window and allow some of the heat to escape or am i going to create drafty conditions or other issues? This is one of those questions i think i know the answer to but need to hear someone say it haha

I don't have personal experience with catalytic stoves so take this for what it's worth but some can be dialed way down to vary the output without the smoldering issues you get with not cat stoves. Check out the Hearth Room for more info......

Good luck,
Noah

 

[bpirger]

Are your floor joists for the upstairs open? You will get some "radiant" heat that way when it is baking in the basement. Dad heats his house now with a smallish Regency woodstove in the basement. They generally leave the door to the basement open and have a small fan sitting on board over the stairs to help circulate the warm air up. It generally does a decent job. baseboard comes on every now and then when it is really cold, or sometimes first thing in the morning. He does have insulation on the top 6' or so of the concrete....whatever code says. I know he wrote the check to have the house built the year after I started building mine. LOL He was done in 9 months, I'm on year 13. But I'll never have to come home to see my "insulated basement" and see concrete the bottom 3-4' of the wall all around! So many funny things that just aren't what was expected.....

Most important thing to live by. Dry wood. Cut, split, and stacked for at least one year....preferrably two....before you ever put it in the stove. This makes ALL the difference in the world when it comes to nice clean burning. Loading it up and shutting down the air to get that all night (or all day) burn when you are sleeping or gone....with wet wood...that is the source of almost all wood burning problems. It must be dry.

My advice is to put an inspection hatch in your soffit you put the chimney in. Peace of mind....you can pop it open and look inside once a year and see nice tight seems with no escaping soot or anything. I'd do that anyways. My stove pipe goes up through my trusses through my T&G pine ceiling...and I have a little access port I can open up and look upside to the bottom of the roof sheathing. Not ideal for insulation....but peace of mind. Of course, I haven't burned wood in the stove since Nov2010 either.....I'd want to clean the chimney before a burn to make sure no birds/bees have moved into the pipe!


Yes, you can always crack a window....but that's obviously wasteful....and worse yet you may find yourself sucking in chimney smoke.....

Agreed that you don't want to oversize....worse than being cold. Running full bore to keep warm is most efficient for the stove....smoldering the fire becuase it is only 40 outside is tough on the stove and chimney!

Dry wood....dry wood....make it a requirement....not just a goal.

 

[Ruger]

Are your floor joists for the upstairs open? You will get some "radiant" heat that way when it is baking in the basement. Dad heats his house now with a smallish Regency woodstove in the basement. They generally leave the door to the basement open and have a small fan sitting on board over the stairs to help circulate the warm air up. It generally does a decent job. baseboard comes on every now and then when it is really cold, or sometimes first thing in the morning. He does have insulation on the top 6' or so of the concrete....whatever code says. I know he wrote the check to have the house built the year after I started building mine. LOL He was done in 9 months, I'm on year 13. But I'll never have to come home to see my "insulated basement" and see concrete the bottom 3-4' of the wall all around! So many funny things that just aren't what was expected.....

Most important thing to live by. Dry wood. Cut, split, and stacked for at least one year....preferrably two....before you ever put it in the stove. This makes ALL the difference in the world when it comes to nice clean burning. Loading it up and shutting down the air to get that all night (or all day) burn when you are sleeping or gone....with wet wood...that is the source of almost all wood burning problems. It must be dry.

My advice is to put an inspection hatch in your soffit you put the chimney in. Peace of mind....you can pop it open and look inside once a year and see nice tight seems with no escaping soot or anything. I'd do that anyways. My stove pipe goes up through my trusses through my T&G pine ceiling...and I have a little access port I can open up and look upside to the bottom of the roof sheathing. Not ideal for insulation....but peace of mind. Of course, I haven't burned wood in the stove since Nov2010 either.....I'd want to clean the chimney before a burn to make sure no birds/bees have moved into the pipe!


Yes, you can always crack a window....but that's obviously wasteful....and worse yet you may find yourself sucking in chimney smoke.....

Agreed that you don't want to oversize....worse than being cold. Running full bore to keep warm is most efficient for the stove....smoldering the fire becuase it is only 40 outside is tough on the stove and chimney!

Dry wood....dry wood....make it a requirement....not just a goal.

I am hoping for some decent heat transfer through the floors because there is nothing between the open floor joists and the upstairs but a thin layer of oak flooring. If only wood was a better conductor I'd be in business!

Due to the way I will be running the chimney, it will be no problem to throw in a couple of hatches. Thanks for the tip.


This month I will be cutting some big oaks that fell from hurricane sandy and hopefully by splitting them smaller they will be ready to burn by late fall.

 

[maple1]

This month I will be cutting some big oaks that fell from hurricane sandy and hopefully by splitting them smaller they will be ready to burn by late fall.

I don't burn oak, but from what I've heard it takes at least 2 years to dry - preferably 3. And that time starts after it's split & stacked.

 

[Ruger]

This month I will be cutting some big oaks that fell from hurricane sandy and hopefully by splitting them smaller they will be ready to burn by late fall.

I don't burn oak, but from what I've heard it takes at least 2 years to dry - preferably 3. And that time starts after it's split & stacked.

I think you're right. Doing some looking around in this forum that seems to be the consensus. I had never heard that before. Not good news for someone with access to property full of about 70% mature oaks haha I guess it's still worth cutting but it's going to be a waiting game. Maybe I'll see what I can find to cut for next year with a one year dry time being enough.... Maybe I should start a new thread haha

 

[PassionForFire&Water]

I think you're right. Doing some looking around in this forum that seems to be the consensus. I had never heard that before. Not good news for someone with access to property full of about 70% mature oaks haha I guess it's still worth cutting but it's going to be a waiting game. Maybe I'll see what I can find to cut for next year with a one year dry time being enough.... Maybe I should start a new thread haha

It's money in the bank.