Anyone ever put a wood stove in?

[dennishoddy]

Have any of you ever stuck a wood burning stove inside your existing fireplace? I imagine it’s worth the money if you use it for heating your home. I like my fireplace and I like having a fire but to be honest it’s almost more for show and not really that much of a heat output.

We have a wood burning insert in our fireplace.
You need to understand how having a fireplace can help or hurt your heating efficiency within the home.
For every cubic foot of air that goes up the chimney, there needs to be a cubic foot of make-up air that comes from somewhere.
In older homes that comes from cracks around the windows and doors, etc.
Newer homes are sealed tight, and it will be hard to get the fireplace to draw which means it will put smoke into the home as it can't make up enough air to exhaust out the chimney. 1 CF in, 1CF air out is the rule.
That in turn creates cold areas in the back rooms of the home where the radiant heat can't get to from the fireplace even if there are local heat return fans around the fireplace. The living room will be a blast furnace with the bedrooms being cold.
If the home has central heat, one can turn on the central heat fan to recirc the hot air around the house but that is really inefficient if you're sucking in cold air in the back rooms. It just can't make the house evenly heated.
The Partial solution is to get a fireplace insert or fireplace that uses outside air for combustion air which eliminates the fireplace needing make up air from the backrooms. They make them and may require some modification to the fireplace.
The ultimate solution is to have the fireplace use a heat exchanger that ties into the central heat system.
If one has an ample supply of wood cheaply you can almost eliminate the heating bill.
A pellet stove tied into the CA system is also a great saver and much easier to maintain with little ash that has to be removed.
Do some real investigation with the knowledge that One cubic foot of air out needs one cubic foot of air in or your throwing money out the window, then figure out the cost of wood vs pellets. I suspect in Guymon, pellets are cheaper than wood.

 

[PanhandleGlocker]

Do some real investigation with the knowledge that One cubic foot of air out needs one cubic foot of air in or your throwing money out the window, then figure out the cost of wood vs pellets. I suspect in Guymon, pellets are cheaper than wood.

I’ll investigate.

As far as pellets versus firewood, yeah I think pellets may be cheaper.

I think I can drive to Cimarron, NM and get a cord of Piñon for $200 (I think). That doesn’t include my fuel to get there and back though. I can’t recall what I paid locally for a cord of piñon two years ago that a local had for sale that he cut and split from a property he owned out west. Other than piñon a few people have some other wood types for sale but they seem to all hover around the $200 mark and I’m unsure on how much they are actually selling a person in that price.

But like @swampratt said in another thread a few months ago you could burn just about whatever in a wood stove, that’s what my family did when I was younger and we were poor. I could probably even find a good source on extremely old cedar fence posts.

 

[dennishoddy]

I’ll investigate.

As far as pellets versus firewood, yeah I think pellets may be cheaper.

I think I can drive to Cimarron, NM and get a cord of Piñon for $200 (I think). That doesn’t include my fuel to get there and back though. I can’t recall what I paid locally for a cord of piñon two years ago that a local had for sale that he cut and split from a property he owned out west. Other than piñon a few people have some other wood types for sale but they seem to all hover around the $200 mark and I’m unsure on how much they are actually selling a person in that price.

But like @swampratt said in another thread a few months ago you could burn just about whatever in a wood stove, that’s what my family did when I was younger and we were poor. I could probably even find a good source on extremely old cedar fence posts.

To efficiently heat a home with wood to reduce heating bills it would take a lot more than some cedar posts and you're out the fuel and time to recover them.
Split oak here around Ponca City runs around $75-$80 as a comparison last year anyway. That is brought to the home and stacked.
We have a lot of downed wood around here this year so I'm running the shop two-barrel stove off it with a makeup air hose that runs outside. I can heat the 40x60 building with 10' walls from 40* to 70* in about 30 minutes.
You can't stand within 8ft when it gets burning and hot. Works much better than the central heat unit in there that runs propane. Haven't bought propane in two years now.

 

[SoonerP226]

Last Pellets I bought was $175 a ton, 50 - 40lbs bags. That was a lot of years ago. But we sure liked it. We had an insert Pellet in a home we built, it was thermostat controlled. It worked awesome!

My dad installed a pellet stove in my folks' house a few years ago. It has been about two years since I last bought pellets for them, but I want to say that they were $2 or $4 per 40lb bag, and cheaper (per bag) if you bought them by the 50 bag pallet. This was at Xylo, just east of Wayne.

I don't think it heats as well as the insert he built for my fireplace, but it's a heck of a lot easier to feed and run.

 

[cowadle]

Firewood BTU - Chart and Information

Do you want to know what species of wood creates the most heat? Check out our firewood BTU chart!

www.firewood-for-life.com

this article has a btu chart for different firewood types. also my wood stove has a catalytic converter in the top that reburns the gasses before they go up the flu. when the fire gets hot enough to ignite the catalytic the stove gets real hot and i heve to adjust the air down considerable to control. it burns about half the wood that any other stove uses. also the smoke that comes out the stack can just barely be seen or smelled.

 

[cowadle]

Page Not Found | Utah State University

forestry.usu.edu

 

[Bigdawg90]

does anyone have an idea on cost to install?

My wife and I went to the fireplace store yesterday. Our home is only electric and has no other means of heat. We asked for an install range and he said for a wood burning stove with a basic install and we take care of all masonry work ahead of time, 7k-9.5k. That’s everything included. He said it varies sos much because of the cost of the pipe and different pipes you have to use in different areas. Price can go up if you want a blower or other features.

We measured it out yesterday. Super pumped to have a fire going on cold winter nights.

 

[Okie4570]

We put in a Harmon a couple of years ago so far so good. We're total electric and can run the entire house on the pto generator if needed, the little gas generator if want the pellet stove, HWH and the water well only, or can use a car battery and inverter just to run the pellet stove if needed, and it will heat all 2200 Sq ft with 12' ceilings. $5k iirc for the stove, can't remember what the masonry work cost but it wasn't necessary to have the stove, just something the wife wanted lol.

 

[swampratt]

I have a Country Flame wood stove in my house and paid 400 for it and my rent house next door has one my first renter put in that his grandparents gave him.
I got a free one off craigslist a bigger country flame and I have loaned it to 3 friends and the first one never used it and second buddy i helped him slide it into the fireplace and he heated his home with it all last year.

Now the 3rd friend has it and I installed it the same way I did any of them.
Wire the original flue wide open and slide the wood insert into the fireplace.

Then put the fiberglass insulation and bolt the steel plate trim in place and push the insert in until steel plate sits flush against the bricks.

I never had any issues with the existing chimney.
If it works for an open fire it will work with an insert.

Each type has a learning curve as to how much heat is needed to get a good draw and not smoke up the room when you first light it.

If you open the doors to make a fire and cold air rushes down the chimney into the room
you will get smoke in the room if you try and light it.

That is my issue with my 2 story house and tall chimney.
The fix is i take a propane torch that I anneal with and place it in the fire box with flame pointing up and out of the chimney hole and this heats the air in the chimney and gets it to begin drawing up after 3 minutes or so.

Then I can make my fire.
Now another thing to be aware of is if your clothes dryer is on and venting air out of the house this can draw smoke from the initial starting of a fire in the wood insert.

Things to think about.

You can get glass shipped to your door from places that make glass for these inserts if you find a good one for cheap with busted or missing glass.

Now that BTU rating of firewood is misleading.
If I burn Oak or Hickory or Pecan I can't generate the heat that Pine or Cedar or Fir generates.

Unless I cut the hard woods smaller.
Hardwood burns longer and has more BTU but FLAME is needed to heat that steel box and I get more flame from the quick burning wood.

Mother-in-law had an insert and always burned oak and father-in-law bragged that he could burn 1 log all night.
He did not heat his entire house with his stove just that room and dining area.
Mother-in-law asked what I used to clean the glass in my stove.

I told her I just wipe it with a paper towel if it gets a little sooty.
Dry crumbles on mine.
She said NO I tried that and my glass is always black and is thick and gooey.

Yea you smoldered a log all night not burned it all night and you gooed up the entire chimney and fire box.

I went over to their house with a trash can full of cut dry cedar and told them I will make a fire in this stove and it will be hot and will clean all the goo from everything and it will smoke up the entire yard and down the street.

That cleaned it and they got a lesson in dry vs wet green wood for burning.

Get one you will not regret it.

 

[Forgalspop]

Swampratt Said: Now that BTU rating of firewood is misleading.
If I burn Oak or Hickory or Pecan I can't generate the heat that Pine or Cedar or Fir generates.

Unless I cut the hard woods smaller.
Hardwood burns longer and has more BTU but FLAME is needed to heat that steel box and I get more flame from the quick burning wood.

Yep! Been my experience also in our fireplace with a blower.