Does OAK Make Stove Run Colder?
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I am getting back to the original inquiry and have yet to debate the OAK-
I wonder if when you start a fire in a wood stove or fireplace and you open a door or window, the fire springs to life...
Is that just the draft up the chimney, or is it the increased o2- likely a combination so its hard to say....
with the pellet stove there is a forced draft, so we are only increasing the available o2, which intuitively sounds wise, especially for the room occupants...
Its hard to believ there is no hard science behind this yet- it seems that Harman is on board with the OAK, but maybe does not want to drive away non-oak customers...
Also Englander / Summers Heat stoves comes stock with an OAK...
I hope the 3 inch hole in my wall isn't for nothing... building the OAK is a serious PITA.
Anka
I wonder if when you start a fire in a wood stove or fireplace and you open a door or window, the fire springs to life...
Is that just the draft up the chimney, or is it the increased o2- likely a combination so its hard to say....
with the pellet stove there is a forced draft, so we are only increasing the available o2, which intuitively sounds wise, especially for the room occupants...
Its hard to believ there is no hard science behind this yet- it seems that Harman is on board with the OAK, but maybe does not want to drive away non-oak customers...
Also Englander / Summers Heat stoves comes stock with an OAK...
I hope the 3 inch hole in my wall isn't for nothing... building the OAK is a serious PITA.
Anka
Gone for the day, sorry!
M'kay.
1. Smokey, we've fermented plenty of things around here, most of them intentionally, but we do not distill. I sometimes wish, in a nostalgic fashion, that it was legal to distill, not because I think I have anything to offer the world in terms of distilled beverages (I don't) but because I am afraid that we are losing old skill sets as the old timers pass away. I don't wish it enough to break the law though, so I don't go anywhere near distillation. Besides, I took chemistry in college and I about had my fill of flammable substances and open flames. Add blown glass and joint grease to that and you have an organics lab! and I'm so done with that part of my life.
2. I'm probably singing to the choir here but keep those pickled eggs in the fridge. I'd have to go digging around online but I think I read a report of botulism poisoning from pickled eggs kept on the shelf. As I recall, the vinegar solution didn't make it far enough into the egg to pickle the yolk, or something like that.
3. We are, budget permitting (and with the energy issues on the national and international agenda, it may be a budget requirement) about to investigate some serious insulation. We don't know if it's possible to blow insulation in our exterior walls but we're gonna find out.
4. Back to the original question, with an offshoot: I sort of understand the operational flowchart of the pellet stove and I sort of don't. I know that the OAK supplies outside air for combustion. I have pulled the sides off and the motor with the fan out of the exhaust pipe port to do The Big Clean, and I have cleaned that little paddle-wheel looking fan on the other side. I don't know what the paddle wheel fan does. What blows or draws combustion air through the burn pot? The convection tubes at the top of the fire box, the ones that blow heat out into the room, where do they terminate on the other side? Are they drawing room air in to be heated? (I would guess so...) and if so, where is the room air drawn inside? Where does the damper fit into this equation? Literally, where in the circuit? I know what it does- but where *exactly* in the circuit is it placed? Is it controlling the air flow from the OAK? and this leads me to the point of this point:
5. How are the damper and the OAK related? I ask because, while our damper has 6 marked settings, "Low" to 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, most of our flame variation occurs between "Low" and 1. No kidding. The whole "set the damper" exercise when one sets the damper at the point at which the flame changes from lazy to active- that setting on our stove is between "Low" and 1. Beyond 2, the flame is almost blow torch or bunsen burner quality.
No matter where the damper is set, we have a "burn cycle" in which the flame ranges from almost out to a nice, white, tight blaze. When a fresh load of pellets is delivered to the pot by the auger and it catches fire, it burns high, tight and bright until the pellets are almost gone, down to cinders. About the lowest we can set our feed and have the stove stay on is between 2.5 and 3. At 2 or below we risk the stove going out because the pellets in the pot burn completely to nothing.
My guess is that we have a quick, hard burn because we have so much fresh combustion air coming into the burn pot from the OAK, with its short excursion to the outside. Also, the exhaust vent is a horizontal short excursion to outside, with one 45' elbow inside the house. My guess is that the draw is pretty phenomenal.
6. Per this thread and another thread in which I inquired about setting the damper, I'm trying to set the stove to wring the most btu's out of the pellets, and also trying to send as much of that heat as possible into the house rather than out of the exhaust pipe.
Am I getting this quick combustion due to the short excursion of both the exhaust pipe and the OAK? Figuring this out will go a long way toward us setting the stove at the right feed rate and damper settings.
7. OH, and the blower fan- I know it pushes heated air out of the stove and into the house, but I swear, the higher we have our blower set, the more active our flame seems. How is that happening? Or am I imagining that?
8. Our pellets don't "dance" in the burn pot, no matter how wide open we are running the stove. I don't think that's a function of how hot the stove is running; we can have it blazing away but the pellets don't popcorn. Is that a function of the engineering of the Napolian "Dancing Flames" burn pot?
M'kay.
1. Smokey, we've fermented plenty of things around here, most of them intentionally, but we do not distill. I sometimes wish, in a nostalgic fashion, that it was legal to distill, not because I think I have anything to offer the world in terms of distilled beverages (I don't) but because I am afraid that we are losing old skill sets as the old timers pass away. I don't wish it enough to break the law though, so I don't go anywhere near distillation. Besides, I took chemistry in college and I about had my fill of flammable substances and open flames. Add blown glass and joint grease to that and you have an organics lab! and I'm so done with that part of my life.
2. I'm probably singing to the choir here but keep those pickled eggs in the fridge. I'd have to go digging around online but I think I read a report of botulism poisoning from pickled eggs kept on the shelf. As I recall, the vinegar solution didn't make it far enough into the egg to pickle the yolk, or something like that.
3. We are, budget permitting (and with the energy issues on the national and international agenda, it may be a budget requirement) about to investigate some serious insulation. We don't know if it's possible to blow insulation in our exterior walls but we're gonna find out.
4. Back to the original question, with an offshoot: I sort of understand the operational flowchart of the pellet stove and I sort of don't. I know that the OAK supplies outside air for combustion. I have pulled the sides off and the motor with the fan out of the exhaust pipe port to do The Big Clean, and I have cleaned that little paddle-wheel looking fan on the other side. I don't know what the paddle wheel fan does. What blows or draws combustion air through the burn pot? The convection tubes at the top of the fire box, the ones that blow heat out into the room, where do they terminate on the other side? Are they drawing room air in to be heated? (I would guess so...) and if so, where is the room air drawn inside? Where does the damper fit into this equation? Literally, where in the circuit? I know what it does- but where *exactly* in the circuit is it placed? Is it controlling the air flow from the OAK? and this leads me to the point of this point:
5. How are the damper and the OAK related? I ask because, while our damper has 6 marked settings, "Low" to 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, most of our flame variation occurs between "Low" and 1. No kidding. The whole "set the damper" exercise when one sets the damper at the point at which the flame changes from lazy to active- that setting on our stove is between "Low" and 1. Beyond 2, the flame is almost blow torch or bunsen burner quality.
No matter where the damper is set, we have a "burn cycle" in which the flame ranges from almost out to a nice, white, tight blaze. When a fresh load of pellets is delivered to the pot by the auger and it catches fire, it burns high, tight and bright until the pellets are almost gone, down to cinders. About the lowest we can set our feed and have the stove stay on is between 2.5 and 3. At 2 or below we risk the stove going out because the pellets in the pot burn completely to nothing.
My guess is that we have a quick, hard burn because we have so much fresh combustion air coming into the burn pot from the OAK, with its short excursion to the outside. Also, the exhaust vent is a horizontal short excursion to outside, with one 45' elbow inside the house. My guess is that the draw is pretty phenomenal.
6. Per this thread and another thread in which I inquired about setting the damper, I'm trying to set the stove to wring the most btu's out of the pellets, and also trying to send as much of that heat as possible into the house rather than out of the exhaust pipe.
Am I getting this quick combustion due to the short excursion of both the exhaust pipe and the OAK? Figuring this out will go a long way toward us setting the stove at the right feed rate and damper settings.
7. OH, and the blower fan- I know it pushes heated air out of the stove and into the house, but I swear, the higher we have our blower set, the more active our flame seems. How is that happening? Or am I imagining that?
8. Our pellets don't "dance" in the burn pot, no matter how wide open we are running the stove. I don't think that's a function of how hot the stove is running; we can have it blazing away but the pellets don't popcorn. Is that a function of the engineering of the Napolian "Dancing Flames" burn pot?
4. Back to the original question, with an offshoot: I sort of understand the operational flowchart of the pellet stove and I sort of don’t. I know that the OAK supplies outside air for combustion. I have pulled the sides off and the motor with the fan out of the exhaust pipe port to do The Big Clean, and I have cleaned that little paddle-wheel looking fan on the other side. I don’t know what the paddle wheel fan does. What blows or draws combustion air through the burn pot? The convection tubes at the top of the fire box, the ones that blow heat out into the room, where do they terminate on the other side? Are they drawing room air in to be heated? (I would guess so…) and if so, where is the room air drawn inside? Where does the damper fit into this equation? Literally, where in the circuit? I know what it does- but where *exactly* in the circuit is it placed? Is it controlling the air flow from the OAK? and this leads me to the point of this point:
The air that the convection fan uses enters from the stove shell and gets drawn through a squirrel cage and pushed through the heat exchanger.
If your air intake isn't hooked to an OAK it is possible for the convection blower to affect the burn in the fire pot by using a fraction of the air that would otherwise get sucked into the air intake. The effect can also be one of increasing the flame intensity if the convection blower is located so that the suction will draw more air past the air intake than otherwise would be available for the air intake (depends upon net pressure differences). The damper sits in the air intake. To complicate things some stove air intakes have their own set of inside air ports that are in use even if you hook up an OAK.
Now back to pickled eggs.
I'm aware of issues dealing with pickling eggs, the case you are remembering was when someone heard that you could speed up getting the pickle throughout the egg by piercing it , they used an unsterilized object and deposited contaminates directly into the egg.
Since what I'm planing on doing also involves cured meat it will definitely be a refrigerator pickle. I normally do a batch of sour pickles as refrigerator pickles other than those most of the pickles I do are true blue store on a shelve pickle.
About the distillation it is possible to do so provided you obtain a permit from the feds and comply with the tax laws. They can't turn you down if you have a clean record. The big thing isn't the distilling it is the guvmint wanting its cut.
The air that the convection fan uses enters from the stove shell and gets drawn through a squirrel cage and pushed through the heat exchanger.
If your air intake isn't hooked to an OAK it is possible for the convection blower to affect the burn in the fire pot by using a fraction of the air that would otherwise get sucked into the air intake. The effect can also be one of increasing the flame intensity if the convection blower is located so that the suction will draw more air past the air intake than otherwise would be available for the air intake (depends upon net pressure differences). The damper sits in the air intake. To complicate things some stove air intakes have their own set of inside air ports that are in use even if you hook up an OAK.
Now back to pickled eggs.
I'm aware of issues dealing with pickling eggs, the case you are remembering was when someone heard that you could speed up getting the pickle throughout the egg by piercing it , they used an unsterilized object and deposited contaminates directly into the egg.
Since what I'm planing on doing also involves cured meat it will definitely be a refrigerator pickle. I normally do a batch of sour pickles as refrigerator pickles other than those most of the pickles I do are true blue store on a shelve pickle.
About the distillation it is possible to do so provided you obtain a permit from the feds and comply with the tax laws. They can't turn you down if you have a clean record. The big thing isn't the distilling it is the guvmint wanting its cut.
Considering the temps inside the firebox can reach 1100F I really doubt that the stove cares if the incoming air is 70F or 0F...
Krooser, that's a really good point.
This is more of a damper thread post, but since we last discussed it in this thread I thought I'd pop back in with an update. We are back to running the stove with the damper set on 2.
I think the stove dumps more heat into the house when the damper is on 1 or 1.5, but the burn pot fills up with ash too quickly. There is enough ash in the pot after 24 hours of burn that we are getting the classic lazy, sooty flame.
We clean the stove daily, but we know that it's preemptive on most days. We could go for longer between cleanings but usually our daytime temps here in central VA are high enough that shutting the stove down for about an hour a day to cool it and clean it is no big deal. If we burn at 1-1.5 damper setting we'll *have* to shut it down to cool and clean the burn pot at least once a day. We had so much ash in the pot that we barely made a 24 hour burn. I want to burn the stove cleanly enough that when we hit really cold spells we can go for a couple of days without disrupting the heat flow and dropping the temperature in the house, or if we both get sick or some other calamity strikes we can stretch out our cleaning schedule a bit.
Today we've been burning all day at a damper setting of 2 and there's barely any ash in the pot. So, 2 it is.
I figured that out last year but I made myself go through the exercise again this year. Hopefully with a few more seasons of burning pellets on board I'll learn to trust my own conclusions.
Do me a favor, y'all- if I show up here next year and start cranking on the whole "damper vs. feed vs. OAK vs. stove temps" again please just say to me, "FEED 4, DAMPER 2, BLOWER 4 NOW GO CHILL, BECA!"
This is more of a damper thread post, but since we last discussed it in this thread I thought I'd pop back in with an update. We are back to running the stove with the damper set on 2.
I think the stove dumps more heat into the house when the damper is on 1 or 1.5, but the burn pot fills up with ash too quickly. There is enough ash in the pot after 24 hours of burn that we are getting the classic lazy, sooty flame.
We clean the stove daily, but we know that it's preemptive on most days. We could go for longer between cleanings but usually our daytime temps here in central VA are high enough that shutting the stove down for about an hour a day to cool it and clean it is no big deal. If we burn at 1-1.5 damper setting we'll *have* to shut it down to cool and clean the burn pot at least once a day. We had so much ash in the pot that we barely made a 24 hour burn. I want to burn the stove cleanly enough that when we hit really cold spells we can go for a couple of days without disrupting the heat flow and dropping the temperature in the house, or if we both get sick or some other calamity strikes we can stretch out our cleaning schedule a bit.
Today we've been burning all day at a damper setting of 2 and there's barely any ash in the pot. So, 2 it is.
I figured that out last year but I made myself go through the exercise again this year. Hopefully with a few more seasons of burning pellets on board I'll learn to trust my own conclusions.
Do me a favor, y'all- if I show up here next year and start cranking on the whole "damper vs. feed vs. OAK vs. stove temps" again please just say to me, "FEED 4, DAMPER 2, BLOWER 4 NOW GO CHILL, BECA!"
becasunshine said:
The air box is right next to the burn pot, the air box is hot because of close proximity to the burn pot.
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