need bigger stove

[all night moe]

Never thought of that! Thanks to both you and Stoveliker for that great suggestion!

If you do the foam insulation panels, don't forget the rim joists. It's the perimeter of the basement ''ceiling. '
If you have space somewhere, a couple of through the floor vents will help with heat convection.

 

[Bobbob]

I recently purchased a Buck 81. It's a nice stove, well built but when it's windy along with being cold, it just can't heat my 2400sq. ft home. The stove I had didn't have a problem plus I could bank it for overnight/workday burns and actually get useful heat where I can get long burns w/the 81, but not much heat. I was going to buy a Buck 91 but I have a 6" flu and the 91 has an 8" flu. My question is this, would I be able to use the Buck 91 w/a reducer? My chimney is 33' tall, drafts well and the stove is located in the basement in order to heat the whole house. I need to do something! Thanks for the advice!

I replaced a hitzer 983 with a buck 81 3 years ago. My set up is also in my basememt and I am trying to heat 3000 sq ft
(basement plus main floor).All the suggestions regarding insulation are great and will definitely make you gains in heat retention. However, just like me, you are never going to get the heat output from this stove that you are used to. My hitzer put out 40,000 more btu an hour than this stove does, but also ate twice the wood. I was talked out of the 91 by my dealer and wish I had a larger firebox, but like me, you can insulate better and come closer to your heating goals while using much less wood. Good luck

 

[MongoMongoson]

I've used/been around wood stoves for all of my 61 years and never seen two dampers on a wood stove....How would I install them? I have around 24" in my vertical pipe coming off the stove and 36" with a damper in my horizontal pipe.

View attachment 324898

That looks like single wall pipe. That makes adding a damper to the vertical pipe easy.

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[Wildbil]

The uninsulated walls are where most of the heat is being lost, about a third of what is being generated.

Is the basement footage included in the 2352sq my whole house is actually 3,232 but I keep 784 foot closed off

 

[Ashful]

He already has one.

Got it. Missed that! Thx.

 

[Wildbil]

Good catch on the chimney height and heat going up the flue.

And yes, a 2.5 cu.ft. firebox can go 8 hours on a load of fuel, but the heat output at the burn rate may be less than the OP needs in this weather, even after addressing any efficiency hit from the flue height.

As to two dampers vs. one, I'd just do one, at least to start. Yeah, it might only get you down to 0.07" WC after a fresh cleaning, but a week into burning on that pipe you'll be able to dial it down below 0.05" WC thanks to the way deposits build up around the damper. I see this after each year's cleaning. A 33 foot chimney is probably pulling around 0.20" to 0.30" WC on a high setting, once the pipe is heated, which is way too high.

I must admit I'm impressed with your knowledge! My chimney is tall because I live in a split level house with the basement being technically 2 stories below the bedrooms. Like I said, my old stove didn't have a problem heating my home, but , it had a bigger firebox. The Buck 81, for the stoves I could buy in my area, had the biggest firebox that I could get w/a 6" flu. I'm going to try to find someone in my area that can put some extra insulation in my attic and also try to put some insulation in the basement.

 

[Wildbil]

Just as a thought..... Is your wood dry? Lots of people I know that use a lot of wood dont actually have dry wood and they use more then me and get less heat.

Also you might want to add some foam board around the basement walls away from the stove to help with the heat loss. Took me like 2 days to do the whole basement with 1inch foam board some glue and some tape.

Yessir, I burn mostly oak and I'm usually 1-2 years ahead on my wood. I checked some w/a moisture meter this weekend and the readings ranged anywhere from 10%-20%.

 

[joop]

sunday supper with the kids make em work for the meal

 

[mellow]

Was your old stove running on that 6" or did you have a 6" liner installed at the same time as you got the buck 81?

 

[Wildbil]

Was your old stove running on that 6" or did you have a 6" liner installed at the same time as you got the buck 81?

It was using the 6" flu and never thought to add that my chimney doesn't have a liner.

 

[joop]

mostly oak usually means 2yrs drying minimum from what i read in posts,oak is a unicorn in my area.your wood might need more seasoning

 

[mellow]

Did you have the chimney inspected to make sure it is OK and doesn't have any cracks? Usually they will run a camera down it. Looks like an interior chimney.

 

[Wildbil]

mostly oak usually means 2yrs drying minimum from what i read in posts,oak is a unicorn in my area.your wood might need more seasoning

What should the moisture be? I checked it Saturday and most of my wood was 10%-20%?

 

[joop]

bring a split inside house let it come up to room temperature take outside split it and take the readings on the fresh split .15% would be good 18 20% will burn but your wasting energy boiling away the water

 

[stoveliker]

The point is to measure the moisture content on the inside of the split, as it dries from the outside in. Just measuring on the surface you can see when you bring in a split is not sufficient as that's the driest part.

 

[Wildbil]

Did you have the chimney inspected to make sure it is OK and doesn't have any cracks? Usually they will run a camera down it. Looks like an interior chimney.

There's no one in my area that does that to be honest. I even ask the local FD if they could recommend someone and they couldn't.

 

[kborndale]

There's no one in my area that does that to be honest. I even ask the local FD if they could recommend someone and they couldn't.

There aren't any chimney sweeps in your area that can inspect a chimney? Check here:

CSIA | Find Chimney Services in Your Area

Find chimney services companies in your area who employ CSIA Certified technicians. Filter results to see only companies matching your requirements. Have those copanies contact you about service and availability.

search.csia.org

 

[Wildbil]

There aren't any chimney sweeps in your area that can inspect a chimney? Check here:

CSIA | Find Chimney Services in Your Area

Find chimney services companies in your area who employ CSIA Certified technicians. Filter results to see only companies matching your requirements. Have those copanies contact you about service and availability.

search.csia.org

Thanks!! Looks like the closest one is around 90 miles from my home in NC

 

[begreen]

Is the basement footage included in the 2352sq my whole house is actually 3,232 but I keep 784 foot closed off

Figure about 1 cord in 3 is heating the earth around the home. Insulating the walls will make a notable improvement.

 

[Ashful]

Figure about 1 cord in 3 is heating the earth around the home. Insulating the walls will make a notable improvement.

^ This.

And speaking of "knowledgeable"... that's not me! I'm just verbose, and maybe good at connecting the dots others have laid out.

But living in an old un-insulated stone house, I do have ample experience in trying to heat masonry, like your basement walls. Remember, heat is transferred by three mechanisms:

1. Conduction, one object physically touching another
2. Radiation, the line-of-sight heat you feel standing in the sun, or facing a camp fire
3. Convection, the movement of heated air, hairdryer effect

Stoves move heat into your room by the latter two, radiation and convection. Of course, the convection starts via conduction, air touching hot stove.

The overwhelmingly-dominant effect for most stoves is radiation. There's always a little convection, but if your stove lacks a "convection jacket" or "convection top", the actual convection off the stove is going to be relatively low, in comparison to radiation. But remember, radiation works only by transferring energy to the objects within the stove's line of sight, and if you have concrete basement walls, that's where most of your hard-gathered and hard-split firewood BTU's are going.

An interior partition wall can accept this energy, and then conduct it to the air (slow effect, requires a lot of surface area at low temperature differential), where it is moved to the rest of the house by convection. But with an exterior masonry wall, especially one set in earth without a strong insulation barrier, that energy is mostly conducted out into the wet earth. There is no chance for it to conduct into the room, when resistance path and heat capacity of wet earth is so much better than room air.

If you have a stove in a basement, you would do well to pick a design that advertises itself as convective. Most of the cast-clad steel boxes (PE Alderlea or BK Ashford) fit this criteria, as do many others. In addition or alternative to that, getting the basement walls insulated would be huge.

 

[stoveliker]

Ashful is correct.
His remarks made me recall that "air absorbs about 50% of incoming (solar) infrared radiation", initially puzzling me considering the "radiative heat doesn't do much" (other than heating the furniture and walls) remark by Ashful.
But 50% is absorved *after a path length the thickness of the atmosphere*.
Your room is unfortunately much less sizable, and thus the radiative load only heats the solids in line of sight, and not much the air.

 

[Ashful]

Your room is unfortunately much less sizable, and thus the radiative load only heats the solids in line of sight, and not much the air.

I dunno... maybe we should ask! How big is your room, WildBil? Round to the nearest mile or kilometer.

I actually hadn't put much thought into the "why", but @stoveliker nailed it.

 

[Wildbil]

I

I dunno... maybe we should ask! How big is your room, WildBil? Round to the nearest mile or kilometer.

I actually hadn't put much thought into the "why", but @stoveliker nailed it.

If the wife had anything to do with it we'd have a house that was a couple of clicks long!! LOLOL!

 

[Wildbil]

^ This.

And speaking of "knowledgeable"... that's not me! I'm just verbose, and maybe good at connecting the dots others have laid out.

But living in an old un-insulated stone house, I do have ample experience in trying to heat masonry, like your basement walls. Remember, heat is transferred by three mechanisms:

1. Conduction, one object physically touching another
2. Radiation, the line-of-sight heat you feel standing in the sun, or facing a camp fire
3. Convection, the movement of heated air, hairdryer effect

Stoves move heat into your room by the latter two, radiation and convection. Of course, the convection starts via conduction, air touching hot stove.

The overwhelmingly-dominant effect for most stoves is radiation. There's always a little convection, but if your stove lacks a "convection jacket" or "convection top", the actual convection off the stove is going to be relatively low, in comparison to radiation. But remember, radiation works only by transferring energy to the objects within the stove's line of sight, and if you have concrete basement walls, that's where most of your hard-gathered and hard-split firewood BTU's are going.

An interior partition wall can accept this energy, and then conduct it to the air (slow effect, requires a lot of surface area at low temperature differential), where it is moved to the rest of the house by convection. But with an exterior masonry wall, especially one set in earth without a strong insulation barrier, that energy is mostly conducted out into the wet earth. There is no chance for it to conduct into the room, when resistance path and heat capacity of wet earth is so much better than room air.

If you have a stove in a basement, you would do well to pick a design that advertises itself as convective. Most of the cast-clad steel boxes (PE Alderlea or BK Ashford) fit this criteria, as do many others. In addition or alternative to that, getting the basement walls insulated would be huge.

I have a Buck 81 w/blower so guessing it's convective.? And already looking on Lowes website at foam insulation!! The wife likes the idea because she wants to finish the basement out anyway!

 

[Ashful]

Yep. With the blower running, you have forced convection. Even better if it's a good convective design, making maximum transfer efficiency to the air blowing across it. In any case, keep that blower running, to maximize the heat you're putting into the air... which will naturally minimize that radiating into the masonry, at the same burn rate.

If your stove has a thermostat rather than manual air control, you may find you need to reduce the thermostat setting to maintain the same burn rate, with the blower running. The blower can cool the thermostat, tricking it to open the air wider than it would without the blower running.