Thinking about getting a wood stove for the house. I would love the outdoor boiler but don’t have that kind of change laying around. I see some of these new stoves have a “fresh air intake”…what is that all about?? Does that mean you don’t have to run your chimney as high or what?? What brands to stay away from and so on. Thanks for any and all advice.
Joe:
Get a Lopi, lots of things to think about regarding, perhaps a call might work for a talk about it… I usually have some time on my 45 minute drive to and from work…
All the fresh air intake does is give you air from an outside source to assist in getting air directly to the firebox. Chimney height is going to depend on where you want to put the stove… IMHO stay away from cast iron unless the wall and top thickness tolerances on the brand are real good…
Mark
Nothing to do with chimney, it draws combustion air from outside to feed fire. It means you are not stealing inside air which you’ve already heated to supply the fire. Look for cast iron or porcelain construction. Unless you have a free supply of firewood, the cheapest way to augment heat is to get a high efficiency gas stove or fireplace insert. Pellets are also easier than wood but don’t give the ambiance. Corn is the same and can get a gummy tar.
35 years ago when I decided to burn wood, both an uncle and a father-in-law commented. The gist of it was “Have you got rocks in your head? Why would you burn wood? We did it because we had to. You have a gas furnace”. They were right.
I traded out my small gas stove for a small wood burner. Nothing beats the ambiance imo. My quality of life in the winter depends on it. Mine is so small that it probably doesn’t save me much money but than again, I only burn an arm load or two every evening. Just enough to warm the bones.
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What kind of homeowners insurance considerations are there with a wood stove? Just curious.
Also when using inside air and that air going up the chimney, it has to draft from somewhere and that air comes from outside air. It pulls the cold outside air through all the cracks etc. in your house and bringing with it the cold temps.
I’m going to move my stove this spring and put in an outside air intake so it doesn’t pull that cold air through the cracks etc. in the house, it just pulls from the outside air very close to the woodstove fire.
How it works is the inside air going into the stove, heating up because of the fire and then going up the chimney creates a vacuum in the house. That vacuum then pulls cold outside air through the cracks even down the water heater and furnace exhaust pipes at the top of both units when their not running. When you have an outside air intake located close too or right in the woodstove, the fire then pulls directly from that source thus keeping the cold outside air that came in with the drafts, outside. It will heat more efficiently and there will be less cold spots in the house.
Places where the cold draft can come in is through seals and cracks around windows and doors, down through the exhaust pipes of the water heater and the existing furnace when their not running, down the exhaust pipe of the vent fan above the cook stove, the vent pipe of the cloths dryer and even through the electrical boxes that hold the switches and plugin receptacles, that’s why they have insulating pads that you can put behind the cover plates. This is why its more efficient to pull air in from the outside through a source very close or in the woodstove, so it doesn’t come from these other places.
If you have a good source of wood that will be there every year a woodstove will save you money, especially if your on propane with its price, even with natural gas. Its work making your wood for the winter but it gives a guy something to do and I think its enjoyable splitting wood. I like making wood for the winter and so do my friends that burn wood. If you live by a tree service that has to get rid of their trees some how, like here in town where I live, they will bring you their trees they cut just so they don’t have to pay the dump fee, its a tonnage fee here.
Ideally hard wood makes the best fires but any dry wood burns and when it comes to heating your house and you have a limited supply, any wood is good, you’ll just have to clean the exhaust pipe more often. I like a little dry softwood around so if I wake up in the morning it catches fire fast and creates fast heat. Then I put hard wood over the top of the softwood to get that going, works great.
A word of advice is try to get atleast a couple cords of dry wood ready to go before the cold sets in, because something more important may come up where you can’t make stove wood, and then their isn’t enough hours in the day because you have to do both.
Another hint is if you have to buy it and if you can wait, then buy it later in the season from a guy who has a lot of it. The reason being is I have a friend who has a tree service and he makes a lot of firewood that’s ready to go in the late fall. He says he sells the most of it before its gets cold but later in the season he has some left that’s hard to sell, right now he’s not selling any and has about 30 to 40 cords stacked, dry and ready to go and would like to move it, but can’t. They will sell it at a discount just to recoup their money it took to make it and break even. He has to move it to make room for new trees he brings in. You can never have enough dry wood ready to go, especially for a long cold hard winter and keep it covered…
Good luck and have fun burning wood, it gives a guy something to do all winter when cabin fever would set in.
Insurance company’s hate woodstoves Ralph, make sure to get the installation inspected and make sure its done right or even over and above. Then if something happens your covered. The savings will be there even if your insurance goes up some.
Randy Weiland and (Mark Bensen who sells woodstoves and a great place to get info from) will know more about that. When making my own wood I have about $15.00 bucks in each cord because of the supply I have, gas for the chainsaw and splitter and truck to get it home, my labors free.
The previous owner of my house added a fireplace himself as he was a “do it yourself” kind of guy. From what I’ve learned in 4 years of owning my house is that the guy was a “do it yourself wrong” kind of guy more than anything. Pretty much everything he did himself has required me to do it over. The fireplace he put in the wall, surrounded by concrete board, was an insert that was meant to go in a masonry fireplace. It got incredibly hot on the outside, and when I had a fireplace guy inspect it, he told me it wasn’t a case of if it would burn my house down, but when. Didn’t make sense to have a fireplace I couldn’t use so had to replace it.
I now have an Enerzone wood burning fireplace and love it. My furnace took a dump last year when it was -20 and I went 4 days just burning wood for heat. Kept a two story house at 67 upstairs and about 75 downstairs. I burn it when I’m home and go through about 1.5 to 2 cords of wood a winter. I have property with an infinite amount of wood so makes sense for me.
I see some of these new stoves have a “fresh air intake”…what is that all about??
Besides what’s been covered above, the fresh air intake is required for mobile homes and by code for certain other installations. Find out before you buy a stove.
What kind of homeowners insurance considerations are there with a wood stove? Just curious.
This was the reason my parents finally got rid of theirs. They discovered that their insurance premiums were jacked up so high because of the wood stove, that they were cancelling out most of what they thought their savings were for their use as supplemental heat. They got an electric heater instead.
Grouse
Joe:
Get a Lopi, lots of things to think about regarding, perhaps a call might work for a talk about it… I usually have some time on my 45 minute drive to and from work…
All the fresh air intake does is give you air from an outside source to assist in getting air directly to the firebox. Chimney height is going to depend on where you want to put the stove… IMHO stay away from cast iron unless the wall and top thickness tolerances on the brand are real good…
Mark
I have an old vintage 1984 Vermont Castings Vigilant, still going strong after all these years. Like most things, it’s not what it’s made out of, it’s how it’s made out of what???
Mark, What material are the Lopi made of?? And can you get one for less than $800 and be able to heat 2000 sq ft. with a model of that caliber?
I read this thread earlier and thought of it again today as I was hauling in armloads of firewood for my basement wood burner. The wind’s blowing like crazy, snow’s falling and blowing around and here I am trudging back and forth from the wood pile. My hands are cold, nose is running and the dog’s underfoot every time I open the slider to come in. My thoughts trail off to gathering, splitting, stacking, burning, hauling out the ashes and then cleaning up the ash that invariably poofs up as I clean out the stove, not to mention the snow/slush that gets tracked in while filling the wood box. After 30-35 years, you’ll get used to the mess and the bride will finally give up chewing you out about the fine layer of ash dust that settles on everything- – -jerr
afterthought- -and- -I forgot about the campfire smell in the house all winter. No matter how careful, once in a while you’ll get a puff of smoke that will linger till spring when you can once again open the house to air it out. Again, after a few years, she’ll get over it 
Fresh air intake is CRITICAL! You need to have a HVAC contractor calculate the CFM’s (cubic feet per minute) of all items that vent to the exterior i.e. existing furnaces, water heaters, bath/kitchen fans, fireplaces, air exchangers, etc. Then design a balanced system. Equal cfm,s in equal cfm’s out.
It gets technical but that’s the jest of it.
P.S. I love my fireplace even with the mess.
Lopi’s are 5/16″ steel, not cast iron, but my Lopi Liberty is around 500 pounds and is similar to other cast iron stoves as far as mass. In my opinion, you won’t find one new for $800 that will heat that footage. With the liberty’s 3 cubic foot firebox, I am heating only 1800 square feet at best and the basement, where it’s located, is around 70, back bedrooms are 62 if I’m lucky during weather like this. Jerry put it eloquently, but something to think about: I have baseboard hot water heat from a boiler fired by fuel oil. It’s cheap now, but wasn’t and won’t be in the near future; and the chimney was here just had to pay $3000 for the stove. Make sure the chimney was up to code and then there’s the wood source you have to take into account. We live on 8 acres of hickory and oak so the cost is only in sweat equity. You haven’t stated that you have all that, just looking for a stove. If you’re heating with propane or natural gas, I see no need unless you like to have a fire just to have a fire.
Oh, and while the stove in basement couldn’t have worked out better, I had a HVAC guy do the numbers and still said it was a crap shoot that he couldn’t say for certain that it wouldn’t work as well as it does nor could he say that we should really move it. We have enough fresh air coming in that we didn’t need an intake nor do we have any smoke issues. That’s the big concern with where you place it is that in some areas with certain variables and designs of homes you’ll get a vacuum unless you give it fresh air.
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