WildOlive said:
A couple of the articles I've read online (I know one was Mother Earth News, can't remember where the other one was) have stated that if you burn wood, a chimney fire is a matter of when, not if. What's the deal with that? It makes it sound as if you will inevitably have a fire at some point, even if you do everything right.
He has admitted that at least half the reason he didn't want wood was he didn't want to deal with cutting, stacking, chopping, etc. I have promised we will buy our wood, delivered, have the thing professionally installed and maintained, only run it in the daytime when we are home, and get our 6 & 9 yr. old slaves to do as much as is safe. We have a dairy farm, and his days are pretty full already. When I suggested a propane stove as a possible alternative, he shot it down immediately saying it would be foolish when we have all this woodland with free fuel. We joke a bit about society collapsing, but I do like his line of thinking on this. I'm sure by the end of summer we'll have a woodstove! We're having some other work done on the house this summer, so it makes sense to do it now.
I'm having fun researching my options, at any rate. All I know is I want a non catalytic stove and I want to be able to cook on it. We have a drafty 150 year old two story, 3,000 sq. ft. farm house. Any suggestions are more than welcome.
Welcome to the forum WildOlive. You will find much knowledge in these pages of hearth.com as there are many, many good folks here and they are willing to help.
To start with, we have much in common as both my wife and I grew up on dairy farms and we both still love the old farm houses.
I have lots to say but will try to keep it short. First I'd like to comment on that Mother Earth News article. We have had folks come on this forum and spout the same junk. One fellow in particular stands out in my memory and he appeared to want to help others but I had to take him up after he spouted the same thing and did it more than once. So, if I keep burning wood then that means that I will have a chimney fire?
! Well, we're past 50 years of wood burning and have not had a chimney fire yet nor do we expect to. There is no reason to have one!
So how do you keep from having those chimney fires? That is easy to answer but not so easy to do for most folks. The biggest key is what BeGreen touched on. It is all in the fuel you burn. Imagine what would happen if you put poor fuel in those tractors. They certainly would not perform as they should and the same thing will happen with a wood stove. Burn poor fuel and you will have problems. The key is to have 2-3 years worth of wood, cut, split and stacked out in the wind. That assures your wood will be good to burn and not cause that creosote in the chimney.
Now what about that chimney that goes out through the wall and up the side of the house? Well, it is the most ideal if it goes up inside the house but that does not mean it can't be done the other way. Our present chimney goes up along the outside of the house and we have no problems with it and we do not have it enclosed in a chase either. So although it is not the very best method, it can and will work.
You will have a wood stove by the end of the summer?! Great.....but please realize that right now you need to be thinking more about the fuel. Wood can not be handled like gas or oil. That is, with gas or oil, when you need some you just order it and can burn it right away. Not so with wood! Wood needs time to dry properly and most wood burns best if it has been split and stacked for a year. Oak needs even more time and we won't burn it until it has been split and stacked for 3 years!
Okay, what about that stove? You state, "All I know is I want a non catalytic stove and I want to be able to cook on it." So I have to ask, why are you set on a non catalytic stove? You want to cook on it? Great! Before we purchased our last stove we too had decided to stay away from a cat stove because we had heard some bad things about them. We now know that indeed there have been a few bad ones but that was some time ago.
Story short, we ended up buying a cat stove and absolutely love it. Why? It cut our fuel needs in half and we stay warmer too! How can you lose with that? Oh yes, the cooking. Hardly a day goes by during the winter months that something is not cooking on our catalytic stove. Not only that, but we also have a soapstone stove. Can you really cook on one of those? Yes!
The insulation and new windows will certainly help a lot and we wish you well on this project. It sounds like you have a couple of young hands there to help and this is good for them. I started helping with the wood stove and the wood when I was about 5 or 6 years old....and I still love it.
Keep smiling!
Dennis