Wood heat in a shop

I am getting ready to buy/build 55 wood stoves for my shop. I see the single stackers, the doubles, all kinds. The shop is roughly 15360. It is 40 x 32, 8' high, roof varies from 2' to 6' above that low slope.

I like it warm. I wouldn't mind having two stoves, and take them out and switch them with the swampers each year.

I see Wolfzang (sp?) stoves, and their ilk, which is just a pretty well sealed up 55 gal barrel. I see others, with what looks like varying degrees of craftsmanship, mass of metal in components, differences in vents, and a few things that makes one better than the other, as in thicker metal, more bolts, more vents, etc.

What makes a good wood burner, and what is good to look for? Are the more expensive ones inherently more efficient? And just what does the second barrel do, other than provide greater surface area? And would it be possible to mount the second top barrel somewhere other than directly over the lower one to take heat to another portion of the shop?

Just how airtight are these? Is it necessary to monitor them very closely with CO detectors, or is the inherent leakage of a hobbyiist built enclosure safe enough?

Would one single stove be enough? Two singles? Two doubles?

And just how often does one have to paint these? In my area, I can get pristine coconut oil barrels for $10 each with lids, so changing them over the years would be probably easier than keeping up with a swamp cooler.

Class?

Steve

Reply to
SteveB
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When I was a lad wood stoves were pretty common. Both grand parents houses, my Uncle's work shop, the first house my folks built... One of the biggest secrets was to run the stove pipe a long way down the room.. that hot stove pipe pours a lot of BTU's into the room.

Reply to
John B.

And how do you think this will play out ? Over half of the people we know up here heat with wood - and these same people are already pretty fed up with being told what we can't do . These same people also have guns and know how to use them ... I suspect the feral hog population around here will be well-fed if they try to take away our heat . There just aren't any affordable options out here in the woods . Electric isn't an option any more , with the increasing regulation on power generation making it too expensive , and LPG is being priced out of reach now too . Natural gas isn't available out here , it's just not profitable to run pipelines out here due to low population density . That leaves wood or solar , and very few of us can afford the equipment investment for solar , much less the cost of retrofitting . I see scary times ahead , this may just be that proverbial final straw . They've indoctrinated our children , they've adulterated our food supply and made health care unaffordable for most of us . Now they want to take away our source of heat ? I think that ain't gonna happen .

Reply to
Terry Coombs

I've been told the barrels don't hold up well, and it's no fun having one fail with a hot fire burning.

I have a CO detector with a digital readout and test it over hot charcoal in the ash bucket periodically.

Do you know how many BTUs you need now?

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

For the other extreme -- unchecked pollution -- check out what is going on in China. Go to youtube and type "china pollution".

Click here for a good summary of ongoing EPA regulations of wood stoves.

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I had a wood stove in the old house. It was nice, but hard to control, meaning that it would get the house very hot very quickly, or needed to be constantly tended to for slower burning. But, on balance, I loved it.

i
Reply to
Ignoramus13005

Do you think those barrel stoves would last longer if the burn area was lined with refractory or firebrick ? Our stove has bricks in the lower part , and the firebox is made of relatively light sheet metal . There are areas above the brick where it has gotten hot enough to deform the metal , we don't fill it up too much because of that . -- Snag

Reply to
Terry Coombs

That's the first smart thing the EPA has ever done. Stoves are up to

400x more polluting than any other form of heat. I thought Merlin was all fogged in until I got a mile in, where I smelled smoke. After I had driven the 6th mile, I found one single stove at the little market across from Hugo Road which had been causing all the smoke. Everything upwind was overcast but smoke and fog-free.

I'm sure that other stoves had combined to make that smoke, but the main source was one stove, a fact which still amazes me. I really dislike the damned things. The neighbor's pellet stove releases a chemical odor in the smoke which gnaws at my throat. What the hell is in those pellets, anyway? Glue? Pellet stoves produce considerably less smoke.

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(googled. not my usual stop, eek!)

Reply to
Larry Jaques

"Ignoramus13005" wrote in message news:a4SdnVvmoMUdZm3PnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@giganews.com...

I've fine-tuned my efficient 1970's airtight so it rarely emits any visible smoke, and have a night-vision camera watching the chimney top and a readout of the firebox temperature in the kitchen to monitor it. I needed several years of experimenting in various weather conditions and some instrumentation to eliminate the smoke and stack buildup.

That's the reason I use thermocouples instead of IC temperature sensors.

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

JEEZ Terry! Someone spouts off and you don't even check it out but start talking about guns and pig feed? Simmer down. The EPA is not going to ban the use of wood burning stoves in our life time. Furthermore, stoves already in place will not need to be removed. Washington State, where I live, has one of the most, if not the most, restrictive standards on wood stove pollution. And we have burn bans. But the burn bans do not apply if the stove is your only source of heat. And if you cannot afford the power, gas, or oil to heat your house then burning wood to heat your home is OK during a burn ban. I have a modern wood burning stove that meets the WA State regs and it doesn't have a catalytic converter. Partly because of the tighter regs the stove must be more efficient. This is great because not only does the stove pollute less but I am able to heat a 2200 square foot home burning alder, which I harvest myself from my land. And I mean heat it well, sometimes I get a little too enthusiastic filling the thing and the house gets too hot. Cheers, Eric

Reply to
etpm

I know only how my own stove works. Over many years its cast iron inner side baffles deteriorated and I patched them with first ~16 gauge steel which burned through, then scrap stainless which has held up well.

Except where the preheated secondary air enters the rest of the interior is starved of oxygen and even the original bolts that hold it together while partly assembled are still in good condition. I don't trust them and have stored my welding firebricks under the stove so if a leg fails it won't fall. jsw

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

Can you give me a basic rundown on how you eliminated smoke when on a slow burn ? Mine doesn't make a lot , but some . It's an airtight with an inlet damper .

Reply to
Terry Coombs

Bad night , got up to a fire that was nearly out and in a bad mood . Yeah , I did overreact , checked some more facts from a different source and realized it .

Reply to
Terry Coombs

Fat liberals have a lot of high btu lard on them. There's lots of them around. If one could just find a way to handle the smell.

steve

Reply to
SteveB

No idea on btu. I'd have digital CO detectors, and I was wondering about burnthrough, although the barrels are cheap. But no doubt about burnthrough incidents.

Steve

Reply to
SteveB

Now, there's an idea. I had actually thought of something like that, thinking that building on the barrel metal would not be a good idea. And a grate would probably accelerate deformation.

Steve

Reply to
SteveB

I installed a mirror outside so I could see the chimney top while sitting in front of the stove.

It would smoke badly if I followed the instructions for a slow "cigarette burn". Instead I leave a channel open down the center, in line with the air inlet, that lets the full length of the wood burn from the center outward, for about an hour at a steady temperature before it starts to cool. The display in the kitchen tells me when it needs feeding again.

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Mine is the 1970's Taiwanese copy. The happy draft disk setting is closed against a 3-4mm Allen wrench.

The long and tedious experimenting was to leak just enough additional preheated secondary air into the upper chamber to completely burn the smoke without cooling the flue and reducing the draft, or becoming unstable and running away. Those things can be hard to tame.

Reply to
Jim Wilkins

OK , yours is a totally different beast . Mine has no secondary burn , just a box with the bottom half lined with fire bricks . Seals up well , and is easily controlled by the inlet air setting . My biggest problem is actually excess heat ... my neighbor up the hill has the same stove , he heats about 1400 SF with it . Our room and camper combined are less than half that . I compensate by not feeding it too much during the day , then loading up just before I go to bed and setting the knob on "low" .

Reply to
Terry Coombs

Take a look at

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One of the professors at the University of Maine came up with this design o f a wood furnace. The basic idea is to burn the wood in a very hot area an d then collect the heat into water. You locate the furnace outside so no f ire hazard in the house and no mess carrying the wood inside.

Dan

Reply to
dcaster

And how do you think THIS will play out?

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Reply to
PrecisionmachinisT

The EPA ought to publish plans for an efficient wood stove that meets their standards. But they do not. They just publish a list of approved stoves that have been tested and has passed their standards. The list does not ev en show the actual test results. Just shows a figure that is the max limit for emisions. And of course if you install a stove that does not meet the ir standards , you are breaking the law.

So you have several options for stoves to install in your shop. One is to ignore the law and build your own. Another is to buy a used stove that mee ts the requirements. And of course you can buy a new stove.

But you can build a wood furnace and use it. It does not have to meet any standards. In addition it can be outside the shop so the wood does not hav e te be brought into the shop. And that also reduces the fire hazard.

My neighbor has a wood furnace located in a shed on his property. It is no t very efficient and put out a fair amount of smoke. So he burns it early in the morning. The furnace designed by Richard Hill is efficient. It hur ns the wood in a cast refractory chamber so it burns very hot. Then exhaus ts thru a fire tube boiler. So it produces very little smoke.

If you do build your own furnace or stove, you really want it to be as eff icient as possible. Wood stoves require a fair amount of work, so the more efficient is is, the less wood you have to cut and haul.

My solution was to buy a used wood stove. I bought it from a guy that had it in pieces. He was planning on refurbishing it before he installed it. But then found his town would not permit any wood stoves, regardless of the ir being on the EPA's list.

Dan

Reply to
dcaster

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