Making yer own backup generator?

I guess you've never heated a house with a hand-fed wood stove.

jsw

Reply to
Jim Wilkins
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Certainly not on purpose. I hate smoke-leaking, er, woodburning stoves. No regulation, smoke everywhere, stratified heat levels.

They get an F for complete failure in my book. Gimme gas-fired forced air, _any_ day. I ripped crappy, expensive old 240v electric baseboard heat and a broken (cracked flue) fireplace out of here when I moved in.

-- Win first, Fight later.

--martial principle of the Samurai

Reply to
Larry Jaques

Larry Jaques fired this volley in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Sounds like _someone_ needs some lessons in using a wood stove!

None of what you wrote is true of a well-made, well _used_ wood burning stove.

About as close as it comes is that the room in which the stove is located will be the warmest one.

LLoyd

Reply to
Lloyd E. Sponenburgh

Agreed, but I needed several years, remote thermocouple readouts, a draft vacuum gauge, and a mirror outside that shows the chimney top while I adjust the air inlet to learn how to use it well. The best air setting varies with outdoor temperature (draft vacuum) so I need a full winter to see the entire effect of any other change like chimney height or sealing leaks.

When everything is right it will hold a steady temperature with no visible smoke from the chimney for about an hour on three very dry 16" oak pieces roughly the size of my palm, my splitting gauge.

I still can't quite keep its temperature stable at the higher feed rate cooking requires, so one channel of the readout shows the temperature of the pot lid to show when it reaches boiling. The display jumps quickly from 60C to 90C.

jsw

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

Au contraire, mon ami. I even taught my ex-BIL how not to smoke up a room while adding wood. He'd hover over the damned fire for half an hour, smoke filling the damned house every time. I finally cured him of that.

I'd love to find a wood-stove-heated house which did NOT have smoke smell, but I haven't yet, and lots of folks here have the damned things. And I've rented books from the library which reeked of woodsmoke, too.

Unless you use fans in every room, they'll be badly stratified, PERIOD. (The laws of physics aren't easily denied.)

And for those of you who think you're being eco-smart, wood stoves pollute 20-100 times more than other forms of heating. During a day of inversion, I drove through Merlin, OR fog/smoke only to find a single badly-managed woodstove the cause of the entire area's distress. It must have been wet piss oak, too, because it reeked to high heavens. I've never been so amazed at the source of a pollution as that one. I saw it later in the town, too, so it's a common problem there when the winds stop. Horrible!

My next-door neighbor has an extremely efficient pellet stove, and it reeks downwind, too. His house doesn't smell like smoke because he's very careful not to open it when running. This type of stove is much less offensive, but they still suffer from stratification of air.

Nope, I'm no fan of woodsmoking stoves.

-- Win first, Fight later.

--martial principle of the Samurai

Reply to
Larry Jaques

I heated my whole house in (admittedly mild Florida) winter for six years with one. I can honestly say that other than the creosote odor that came out while the doors were open, I never had so much as a wisp of smoke or smoke odor in the house.

I did have an external combustion air supply, in order not to suck good heated air back out the stack, and it was a good-quality gasketed stove.

It was placed in a room that had no door headers exiting to the rest of the house, and we had "passive returns" across all doors to bedrooms, etc, so that may have been the reason the heat did not "stratify", as he says.

If we wanted to warm up a room quickly, we'd use a fan on the floor to exhaust cold air back from that room into the great room. Otherwise, no.

We loved it. Now I live in a "hermetically sealed" house, and don't really like the odors that accumulate in it during window-shut seasons.

Lloyd

Reply to
Lloyd E. Sponenburgh

Sounds like time to drill a hole, or two?

Christopher A. Young Learn more about Jesus

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We loved it. Now I live in a "hermetically sealed" house, and don't really like the odors that accumulate in it during window-shut seasons.

Lloyd

Reply to
Stormin Mormon

I tightened up the doors and windows and attic hatch in the main first-floor living space but not so much in the basement where the woodstove is. When the stove is hot it heats some of the floor-level cold air drawn in by the chimney flow, enough to clear out fried onion smell in 3-4 hours. When it's cold the air exchange nearly stops, the basement slowly cools as it trades residual warmth with upstairs.

jsw

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

From 1982 till '94 I worked monday till thursday in a building that was advertise, when it was built in '77, to be the most energy efficient office building in Canada. The only place I ever worked where I could break wind thursday afternoon and still smell it monday morning!

Reply to
grmiller

You needed to change your diet so that you didn't break wind.

Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

Amazing! Americans heated their houses with wood burning devices since the country was settled. The Franklin Stove was invented in 1741 and today's generation has to "learn" how to use a wood stove.

Funny, my grandmothers cooked for years on wood stoves (my maternal grandmother until she died, during in the winter months). I doubt that they ever had formal training in stove management or a digital thermometer.

Ah! The wisdom of the ancients. Cheers, John B.

Reply to
John B.

700 University?

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Reply to
Spehro Pefhany

But she probably served at least a twelve year apprenticeship, and as far as digital thermometers, my Gran would lick her finger and judge the temperature by the sound when she tapped the hot object - digital or what?

Reply to
grmiller

Twelve years in that ZOO and I took a retirement package - best move I ever made - went out with less than 50% pension and started to enjoy life at 55! Of course I still haven't figured out how I ever had time to go to work!

Reply to
grmiller

4900 Yonge St.
Reply to
grmiller

The differences are a tight modern house, concern for the smoke, and not being near the stove all the time. I grew up in an 1830 house with fireplaces and a coal furnace and my sister still cooked on a woodstove until a few years ago.

jsw

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

"Jim Wilkins" fired this volley in news:ju65sh$2vh $ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:

Now, the houses that really stank were those regularly lighted by kerosene lanterns.

When I was growing up in rural Florida, we still had a few "old folks" in the communiity living in houses without power, and without any intent to ever get power. They had hand-pumped wells, out-houses, wood heating and cookstoves, and kerosene lamps for nighttime lighting.

And boy, you could really SMELL the kerosene in the walls, rugs, clothing, EVERYTHING, when you went to visit one of them! You'd smell it for hours after you left.

LLoyd

Reply to
Lloyd E. Sponenburgh

Having thicker, calloused male skin I put my fingers where the food will be and count. Two to three is about right, eight is too cool. That's a Boy Scout "digital" thermometer.

My sister used to get upset every Thanksgiving when the men passed the hot dishes with our mechanic's hands after she warned us they were too hot. She stopped after I showed her a deep cut that hadn't bled. Then she realized that our hands are like her feet.

On a wood stove, a good cooking heat is when water droplets ball up and bounce instead of wetting the surface.

I can be very high tech or very low, aerospace and axes.

jsw

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

"Jim Wilkins" fired this volley in news:ju67r2$d89$1 @dont-email.me:

I remember an old saying from a black cook -- "If it sizzles when you spit, it ain't hot enough!"

LLoyd

Reply to
Lloyd E. Sponenburgh

My grandparents in rural Alabama lived like that when I was little, but I don't remember much kerosine smell over the barnyard odor, which I quickly got used to. Anyway they went to bed and got up pretty much with the sun.

jsw

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

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