Wood Stoves.

[bunyip]

How many of you have a wood stove? (Either for heating, or cooking, or both?).

We have a slow combustion wood heater. For cooking we have an electric oven, and gas cook top (my thinking is that either piped natural gas OR electricity should be available should one go out). (We have lost gas an electricity for days at a time - not both at the same time though).

Lots of wood heaters on the market here.

We buy wood usually by the cubic metre (about AUD$170/m3) in this area.
(I used to get my own, have a couple of chain saws but usually buy it these days - old n lazy I guess).

I see on another thread patience says he made his own wood heater (onya patience - meaning good on you in Aussie slang) quite an achievement.

I know you can get kits to make 44/55 gallon drum heaters.

We have a local welder makes these;



So maybe you could share your experiences, and/or plans for using wood for cooking and heating, in real life or stories.

[Jerry D Young]

We burned wood at one point and coal at one point when I was growing up. Both worked fine, but were quite a bit of work. But I'd do it again if I was in a position to do so.

[buckshot]

Jerry,

I have been told a couple of times by old timers that there was a wood equivalent of the coal stoker, load it with cut and split wood and it would feed it while it had a supply.

Tried to figure this out several times, and I just can't, can't picture it in my mind such that it would work without leaving enough gaps to cause all kinds of problems should the wood pop and crack.

Have you ever seen anything like this? First hand or in a good book or article somewhere?

All I can come up with is a reflector/feeder for a camp fire on one end and pellet stoves on the other end, but nothing in the middle.

Heard it a couple of times years ago and can't ask for details now, those people have passed.

Have been told that a couple of times more recently, but the guy was a partial Alzheimer's patient and the lady just said "Honey, I couldn't tell you, my brother was the mechanical one but he passed 20 years ago!"

Thanks,

Buckshot

[patience]

I built our own wood stove last year, the latest of several I've made. This one is pretty much a simple box type with a "smoke shelf" plate that allows the exhaust to go out slower and extract more heat from it.

I added a second, small firebox that is removable for cooking use. It has its' own small door on the side of the box, with a separate draft control in that door. I lined the floor of the main box with 2" firebrick, and the cooking firebox with 1" thick firebrick. Working nicely, and heated the house with it last winter.

The stove box is made of 3/16" thick hot rolled steel plate, and the top is 1/4" thick. The door is cast iron, salvaged from an old wood furnace, and filed to fit airtight. I can close the draft controls and put the fire out. Smoke exhaust is out the vertical back wall of the box, made of 6" schedule 40 pipe, reduced in diameter to fit stovepipe slipped over it for the chimney connection. The cast iron door assembly is gasketted to the box with Fiberfrax sheet material and bolted on with stainless steel bolts.

The small firebox allows making a much smaller fire that is up close to the stovetop for cooking. That means less fuel used and less heat in the house in warm weather while cooking.

We placed the stove in our sunporch/greenhouse room that is all masonry and already had a good masonry chimney. With doors direct to the outside, this keeps all the wood mess out of the main part of the house. A pair of very small 12 volt fans do a fine job of circulating heat throughout the whole house.

There is a photo at the top of this page that is very similiar to ours, the "huge Timberline" stove in the first post: www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/forums/viewthread/13814/#152560

[Jerry D Young]

Buckshot, I haven't been able to find any information on a wood stove stoker, but I'll keep looking. If I find anything I'll post it.

[buckshot]

Jerry,

Thanks.

I have been looking, but did not find anything so far. I just can't really get it to work in my mind, so I won't be surprised if there is none.

Don't let it go to the point that it interferes with your writing or other stuff.

Not worth that.

Buckshot

[Jerry D Young]

Naw. I do research like that when I'm not up to writing.

[fastback08]

There is a stove that burns wood pellets that has an auto stoker.

[woofbarkenarf]

check out google for "rocket stove mass heater"

[papaof2]

My mental image for a wood stoker is a metal conveyor belt (motor driven) that drops the wood into the burn area (grate / firebox) via a spring-loaded door. When triggered by some type of sensor (flame height? temperature?) the motor drives the conveyor for X seconds or until a switch on the spring-loaded door indicates that enough pieces (whatever count you have set) have dropped in. This would require that the wood be a consistent size (Y inches long by Z inches thick at widest point) so it would feed evenly and so the spring-loaded door would always open when a piece of wood dropped on it. A more sophisticated system would have a motor-driven door to allow for smaller wood to be used (but likely requiring some adjustment for how long the conveyor runs to control the amount of wood added).

There would be a need for a "door open" alarm if the loading door did not close (indicating a problem with the door or a that a piece of wood is stuck).

Looks like a place to use a microprocessor - monitoring the flame, timing the motor run, sensing the door open/close, etc. My favorites are the PICAXE series (programmed in a version of BASIC, so easy to learn) from Revolution Education in the UK www.picaxe.co.uk There are also several US vendors that have the chips.

Some projects I've used these chips in are here: jecarter.us/picaxe/projects.html

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