Hello from the NWT - stove question

[Newbie78]

Yup.

Let's say it's -40 with a breeze. How much cooling will occur towards the top of a chimney? Or, more regularly here, -20...

It must be quite significant. Does anyone have a rough guideline?

My chimney is 7' above roofline. I don't like that, but it had to be to fit with the inside rooms.

 

[EatenByLimestone]

The only way to tell that is with a probe placed way up there! It may not be as much as we imagine. The stove is going to be drafting something fierce and you’re probably going to be raising stack temps naturally. Throw in 2 stories of it being internal and you may be able to keep them up! Of course, I may be completely wrong! I’ve never run past the -mid 20sF. I guess that isn’t too far away. Conversion says that was -31C.

 

[Newbie78]

-30C is where real cold starts to start.

I would have already been monitoring the top if I didn't have a steep steel roof which requires a bit of a "production" to get up there. Curious is all re temps at the top.

🧐🤔

 

[Mynamesnotrick]

@NWTstove

Late to the party, thanks for the tag @ABMax24 . That is a crap ton of oil to be burning annually, even in NWT. When we were just burning oil I didn't keep the upstairs 1200sqft at no +80d Fahrenheit. The 275M annual BTU in my sig is after the woodstove, with oil handling all domestic hot water and keeping the downstairs 1200sqft at +/- 65 to 70dF with our supplemental woodstove upstairs keeping my wife in a wardrobe somewhat more enticing than wrist to ankle flannel.

I think the first thing to look at is air leaks. Just get some sidewalk chalk and walk around all the penetrations in the outside walls. Where you feel cold air coming in, you got work to do next summer, leave a chalk mark on the wall. I got pretty good at making new interior window trim, none of the windows in my 1980 build had insulation between the window framing and the house framing. Get the special spray foam for windows and doors, but heed carefully the temp range on the spray can; you won't be spraying that stuff before May or so.

Don't forget to check light switches and receptacles on the exterior walls. I hate that I had to get good at bridging gaps between vapor barrier and jiffy boxes (without jacking up the drywall) in a build made before hats were a thing, but the $ saved on BTUs were worth the aggravation. Do the windows summer 2024 and think about bringing in a kegerator summer 2025 when you take on the jiffy boxes.

In Fairbanks, folks either have a woodstove or not, and if they do have a wood stove it is either a Blaze King or not. Given your oil consumption in NWT I suspect you have some low hanging (air sealing) fruit to go after no matter what energy source you choose for heating BTUs. Fixing your air leaks is going to lower your heating bills. However, dramatically reducing air turnover in your home might reveal moisture/mold issues that are currently under your radar.

One option would be to intentionally include an OAK (Outside Air Kit) with whatever new woodstove you choose. Sort of like the partially digested food in your gut is technically outside your body, having both an OAK and a chimney on your woodstove puts the stove on its own air circuit. Instead of walking around indoors with sidewalk chalk, walk around the outside of the home to see where heat is getting out through your walls.

With good or better air seals and reasonable insulation blanket, I personally would be looking at either a BK Princess (very common 6 inch chimney pipe) or a BK King (less common 8 inch chimney pipe required) to minimize my oil bill. The Ashford 30 (we had a 30.0 in the old house) is 'prettier' than a Princess to many people, but the A30, when all is said and done, is a little bit smaller draught horse than a Princess. Think of an grass fed Clydesdale standing next to an oat fed Percheron. These are both, on a global scale, big big stoves, but you do live in NWT.

With no kids at home, the wife and I had a pretty reasonable electricity bill, about 12kwh per day summertime. The difference between a A30 and a Princess was about the same as our electric usage, the Princess is a little bit bigger stove; enough bigger to make all of our electricity if the conversion was 100% efficient.

Given the above, my third choice would be a current iteration of the BK30 box, 30.2 I think.

If you are serious about supplementing with wood heat ( no brainer at 65 degrees north) I suggest you start bringing in wood today. All the spruces you can have split, stacked off the ground and top covered before +/- April 1, 2024 will be ready to burn in September 2024. Birch is kinda borderlin-ish. With 9 years experience, I can season birch in one summer. My first year as a new burner, it took me two full summers to get birch fully seasoned. Make room for 6-8 cords of softwood, but accept all the birch you can fit on the rest of your lot if the price is right.

As far as kids, I am on one extreme end of the teeter tooter. Little boys are going to still be checking to see if the force of gravity ever takes a break in their late 20s. Hot things burn. Hissy things bite, though we don't have any snakes this far north. Bears kick human buttocks. Mama moose has sharp heavy hooves. You certainly may put a fence around your wood stove if it makes you or your wife feel better, but sooner or later the world is going to hold my kids and your kids accountable for having made bad choices. My personal opinion is the sooner children learn this, preferably before puberty, the more likely they are to listen to me when I tell them things they do not want to hear. This is very much a disputable matter. I am in no way a parenting consultant. This is an area where you (and your wife) are going to have to work out your own salvation. There is no fence around the wood stove at my house.

@Poindexter could you expand a little bit on why you’d choose the Princess over the Ashford?
I’m looking at the brochure, and while the princess has a slightly higher maximum BTU, the ashford is slightly higher running on high according to the brochure.
I live in northern New England and have a house built in the 80s. 2400+ heated area, not particularly drafty.

Biggest nuance right now is i have a decent amount of logs cut to 18+ and it seems like they might load better in the Ashford.

I want to buy the stove for the long term. I’m struggling to parse the pros and cons between these two stoves. Would love your opinion. Thanks!

 

[NWTstove]

@Poindexter could you expand a little bit on why you’d choose the Princess over the Ashford?
I’m looking at the brochure, and while the princess has a slightly higher maximum BTU, the ashford is slightly higher running on high according to the brochure.
I live in northern New England and have a house built in the 80s. 2400+ heated area, not particularly drafty.

Biggest nuance right now is i have a decent amount of logs cut to 18+ and it seems like they might load better in the Ashford.

I want to buy the stove for the long term. I’m struggling to parse the pros and cons between these two stoves. Would love your opinion. Thanks!

Having used my Ashford for 1 full year now, I'm very pleased with it. My wood stove installer even wants to switch his princess for an Ashford, the traditional look is fantastic. I have the grey one.

I just installed the fan kits and they make a huge difference. In effect, the air leaving the chimney is way cooler. I can't even get the Ashford to max temp if I'm using the fans cause they blow the heat out into the room faster than it can build. In other words, the stove is cooler, the room is warmer.

Most importantly, I've cut all my logs to 19 inches and they all fit. In fact, you can do almost 21 inches if you put the back end above the stone level (in the top six inches, resting on the 19 inch ones underneath). I wouldn't recommend cutting longer than 19 though. If you cut them at 15, the extra 4 inches lost means almost 25% more trips to get wood each winter. I want a full stove in all directions.

The Ashford is a beat, my kids love it. I carry them downstairs and put a fire on for them every morning.

From what I've read, princess and Ashford are equivalent, so pick the one that looks the best.

 

[begreen]

There are some notable differences between the two. The Princess is an unappologetic hunk of steel. The Ashford cloaks the steel body in an attractive castiron jacket. The Princess a deeper firebox which means more ash capacity for less frequent ash dumping. If a cooktop is important, the Princess's top is exposed while the Ashford requires lifting the (heavy) lid off to expose the steel top.