Other Uses for Your Stove

[Caw]

How warm do you get the rocks get? I like that idea maybe I'll see if the kids want to try it.

 

[SpaceBus]

How warm do you get the rocks get? I like that idea maybe I'll see if the kids want to try it.

I try not to let the stones get blazing hot, you can definitely let them get too hot to use. I put them on a cooler spot on my stove, say a place that gets up to maybe 400F. I wrap the stones in a a dish towel or something. My wife usually holds it for a few minutes and determines if it is at the right temp.

 

[DuaeGuttae]

My mother also used to wrap the stones in a towel. I don't remember the incident, but I do know that she has a pair of flannel sheets that are lightly scorched on the foot area because of using a stone that was too hot to preheat the bed. It is good, therefore, to be aware of the temperature.

We don't actually put our stones on the stove, just in front of it or to the side a bit. They are small stones that even my youngest children (4 and 8) can carry comfortably. They prefer to hold them in their hands unwrapped or to put their feet on them to warm them up. This is not the traditional method and is not as effective as using a bigger, hotter stone wrapped up, but my kids are more likely to use the little stones they prefer.

 

[Caw]

I'll see if they want to try it. They tend to be too hot and sleeping in shorts and a t-shirt in the middle of winter though so we'll see. The stairwell upstairs is in the stove room so the bedrooms stay pretty warm. The wife and I close our door at night a lot (we're the first door from the stairs) to make it more comfy.

 

[bigealta]

Pizza oven.
View attachment 275020View attachment 275021

Any chance you could start a new thread on cooking pizza in the wood stove? Looks awesome. I’m way into making pizza in oven and bbq and cast iron. Would love some tips / pics on the finer points of doing it in the wood stove.

 

[Stelcom66]

Been cooking stew on the top of the stove all day. No electricity at all required - got to simmering on it's own. Smells so good in the house. Like others here I used it so speed up frozen dough that needs to thaw. I used to take it out overnight. Now if I take it out around 9am, and put it a few feet from the stove. it's risen plenty by 5pm.

Interesting posts of what other things were cooked with a wood stove, like sweet potato and pizza.

 

[Stelcom66]

My mom grew up in Vermont and used to heat soapstone on the stove for us to use as footwarmers in bed. We brought the custom to Texas...

I'd assume you were one of the few that had a wood stove it Texas. It had to have been terrible for most not being equipped to handle weather like last week's, especially with no electricity.

 

[jetsam]

It's my wintertime chain dryer. I degrease chains before I grind them, and drip-dry is a recipe for rust.

I drop chainsaw chains out of the ultrasonic degreaser bath right onto the edge of stovetop, and bake athem dry.

In the summer I guess I'll use an air compressor, bah.

(Note that you should keep your IR gun handy if you want to try this, you don't want to change the temper on the steel.)

 

[Stelcom66]

It's my wintertime chain dryer. I degrease chains before I grind them, and drip-dry is a recipe for rust...

Is that a heat powered fan? If yes how do you like it? I have an small 12v fan from an old phone system that I run with 6v to keep it quiet.

 

[jetsam]

Is that a heat powered fan? If yes how do you like it? I have an small 12v fan from an old phone system that I run with 6v to keep it quiet.

I like it extremely well. It runs 8+ months per year, costs $30, and its heatsink body adds a lot to my insert's low surface area.

What it is not is a big strong fan that blows hot air across the house.

I think that if people calibrated their expectations to what tegfans actually are instead of thinking that it's an air mover, they'd be considered a must-have for semiflush insert owners.

Less of a must-have for freestander owners, as they already have a lot of surface area going!

 

[Caw]

I like it extremely well. It runs 8+ months per year, costs $30, and its heatsink body adds a lot to my insert's low surface area.

What it is not is a big strong fan that blows hot air across the house.

I think that if people calibrated their expectations to what tegfans actually are instead of thinking that it's an air mover, they'd be considered a must-have for semiflush insert owners.

Less of a must-have for freestander owners, as they already have a lot of surface area going!

I have a semi-flush Osburn 1600 that protrudes about 8 inches and I've been really wondering about one of these. Could you share the model of yours please?

 

[jetsam]

I have a semi-flush Osburn 1600 that protrudes about 8 inches and I've been really wondering about one of these. Could you share the model of yours please?

It's VODA brand, and isn't available on Amazon anymore (I bought it in 2018).

They have a lot of tegfans to choose from through!

My two tips would be to get the blades perfectly balanced before running it (I use a 12x12 porcelain tile for a flat surface), and respect the bimetallic foot- I stopped putting mine in the middle of the stove over the cat, as stovetops over 600 lift it so much that the fan falls off (which requires another round of blade-levelling).

 

[Stelcom66]

I like it extremely well. It runs 8+ months per year, costs $30, .....

$30! That's quite a great price. Most I've seen are almost double that. Still, I'd consider getting one if it was significantly more than $30. The one I have sounds similar - it just gets the air moving a bit which is what I need. I have another similar fan in the corner of the entry to the dining room (120vac) which brings air in from the living room. The one I have on the stove is raised up about 8" and I have aluminum foil underneath it, otherwise it would probably get damaged.

I just like the idea of heat being used to power the one you have, and since it's right on stop of the stove it may even be more effective than mine.

 

[Caw]

My main reason for asking was to help out in a power outage situation. I get good convection with my blower and a tower fan moving air down the hallway....heats the house well. But those are obviously toast when we lose power. I was thinking one of these will at least get some air moving.

 

[Stelcom66]

Same here re: power outages. Once you get used to the warm air moving, it would be nice to keep it that way all the time.

 

[jetsam]

It's not an air mover, really. The fan motor is small. If definitely helps conduct heat off of the steel body of the stove, but it does not blow hot air around the house.

You could upgrade it to be much more robust, but you would need to research and source appropriate TEG modules and a motor, which would definitely cost more than the original fan. (And a TEG module is not a TEG module... they have varying operational hot side and cold side heat ranges, as well as different output curves.... and the choices for modules that put out power and don't melt at 700°F hot side are pretty slim, if I recall from the last time I looked it up. Chances are that you won't be able to just order one piece off Amazon when you identify parts that fit your output needs... and once you clear that hurdle, you're on to looking for a motor that fits in your chassis, AND will run directly on the output of the TEG(s) ... it's not rocket science, but it's not 5 minutes of research either.)

If you want something that will run progressively faster until it melts, they make little Stirling engine fans, but they are hundreds of dollars. For that price you can buy a solar panel, a charge controller, an inverter, and a deep cycle battery. Plug in your old box fan, and it will both strip tons of heat off the stove and move air around the house.

50w * 24h = 1.2kwh, at 85% inverter efficiency = 1.4kwh, so you need around 117 AH of battery to run for 24 hours . Figure 20% charging loss and 10% charge controller loss, that's around 160AH. At 4 hours per day of max output, you need about 500w of panel to keep the fan running on medium 24/7. (Or go buy a generator...)

 

[Caw]

I am planning to just buy a tiny generator to plug the fridges, well, and blower into during outages but it's gonna be a next year thing I think. Not quite in the budget this year.

I've spent so much money getting set up for wood it really adds up. All the tools, building materials for storage racks, etc. Not to mention the cost for the logs in the first place. It's my first year so it's all up front...moving forward it'll just be the cost of the log deliveries plus incidentals. I was thinking this might be a good little thing to have tho.

 

[Stelcom66]

I'd add the cost of an old truck to the list as well, then there's the work involved. I'd hate to be without a wood stove though!

 

[Caw]

Agreed, it's worth all the investment IMO.

 

[stoveliker]

Less of a must-have for freestander owners, as they already have a lot of surface area going!

Lol, I have one too - and I guess "must have" depends on what the "must" is. We all have "toys" that are "must haves"...
I have not measured whether it adds any heat extraction by standing on the outer jacket of the Chinook - but I do use it to hear when the cat is increasing or decreasing temperature (after reloading, having it on high, and sitting on a chair e.g. reading a bit waiting for the dial-down moment but not being able to see the cat gauge, the frequency of the fan tells me when it's time to go and have a look...).
So, must have? No. But yes

I do have to say that it ran way, WAY faster on the old DutchWest - I had it standing on the <1/8" steel slab covering the cat, having the circular cat only 1" or so below that slab with the gases coming up through it and taking a 90 degree turn to horizontal right below that slab. When the cat went to 1500 F, the fan actually lifted off the stove top. Not because of the fan blades, but because of the bimetal strip on the bottom that would lift it up a bit if it got too hot, protecting the thermoelectric element from overheating by decreasing the heat input into the fan.

 

[jetsam]

Lol, I have one too - and I guess "must have" depends on what the "must" is. We all have "toys" that are "must haves"...
I have not measured whether it adds any heat extraction by standing on the outer jacket of the Chinook - but I do use it to hear when the cat is increasing or decreasing temperature (after reloading, having it on high, and sitting on a chair e.g. reading a bit waiting for the dial-down moment but not being able to see the cat gauge, the frequency of the fan tells me when it's time to go and have a look...).
So, must have? No. But yes

I do have to say that it ran way, WAY faster on the old DutchWest - I had it standing on the <1/8" steel slab covering the cat, having the circular cat only 1" or so below that slab with the gases coming up through it and taking a 90 degree turn to horizontal right below that slab. When the cat went to 1500 F, the fan actually lifted off the stove top. Not because of the fan blades, but because of the bimetal strip on the bottom that would lift it up a bit if it got too hot, protecting the thermoelectric element from overheating by decreasing the heat input into the fan.

Yeah, mine will jump off the frigging stove if I leave it over the cat with the thermostat on high. Got tired of straightening the blades and now it lives off to the side a bit.

 

[Stelcom66]

...the frequency of the fan tells me when it's time to go and have a look...).

I do have to say that it ran way, WAY faster on the old DutchWest ...

Another incentive for me to get one of those fans - I bought a replacement thermometer several years ago but it doesn't seem to be working. The fan would be a good indicator of the stove temperature. I have a Vermont Castings DutchWest.

 

[DuaeGuttae]

I'd assume you were one of the few that had a wood stove it Texas. It had to have been terrible for most not being equipped to handle weather like last week's, especially with no electricity.

Stoves are certainly not very popular in our part of Texas (we're northwest of San Antonio). I do think they're more popular in other parts of the state, but nothing like what you're going to find in areas that use more energy to cool than to heat. We were very thankful to have ours even though we didn't suffer the loss of our utilities as others did (though we still shut off parts of our house, kept all thermostats at 60, and didn't allow showers or laundry the entire week), but just about everyone else we know in the state had to deal with long outages, lack of water, and/or breaking pipes. It was horrible for many, and there will be many long-lasting effects.

 

[begreen]

Stoves are certainly not very popular in our part of Texas (we're northwest of San Antonio). It was horrible for many, and there will be many long-lasting effects.

Indeed, it was bad for many in Texas. Hope the worst is now behind them and I am glad you folks are ok. The garden might not be, but that can start again.

 

[Riteway]

What stove is that? Looks like the same surround as my Osburn 1600. Nice hearth! I wish mine was raised like that to save my knees.

We also use the stove as a winter clothes and boots warmer of course. Nothing like toast yboots when going outside on a cold day.

It's a Drolet 1800i, which is made by the same parent company (SBI) as your stove. Drolet is their "budget" line, but I wouldn't be surprised if some parts and components were shared across the different lines.