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[j845125]

I keep thinking of the ways to make this OWB more efficient. What has everyone else thought of? Maybe an electric damper, hooked to the aquastat that opens when it's blowing and keeps the hot in when it's not, with just enough opening to let the smoke out when it's off. I look a the heat blowing out the chimney when the blower is on and think of a heat exchanger to heat the air around the stove to make it more burn less often. How about one of those controls to turn the aquastat temp. up and down according to the outside tempature? Has anyone tried any of these ideas??? 

[willieG]

I keep thinking of the ways to make this OWB more efficient. What has everyone else thought of? Maybe an electric damper, hooked to the aquastat that opens when it's blowing and keeps the hot in when it's not, with just enough opening to let the smoke out when it's off. I look a the heat blowing out the chimney when the blower is on and think of a heat exchanger to heat the air around the stove to make it more burn less often. How about one of those controls to turn the aquastat temp. up and down according to the outside tempature? Has anyone tried any of these ideas??? 

i have made (but never got around to installing yet, will have to wait till next year) a short section of 8 inch pipe about 4 feet long (same size as my chimney on my home made stove) with a 6 inch inside it that will be a 1 inch thick water jacket that will accept my return water and then go back into the main water jacket. i am hoping to gather a lot of the heat that goes up the chimney without cooling so much that it hampers the chimney's draw or causes it to creosete too much

[Scratch]

I saw that same idea somewhere on the web, somebody sells a kit to do that.  Sounds like a good idea.  Don't have any other ideas.  Is your stove inside a building?  There's one idea if you haven't already thought of it.

[willieG]

yes my stove is in a building but not insulated just a shed covering the stove and  my wood pile

[bruey]

have thought about same thing also, a few problems, i reduced the water temp when its warmer out, i think that helps alot, but to keep the water in the stove when its not firing, i think ou would start to have higher demand for heat in the house, better stated an inbalance in the heat output, the water would cool quickly in the house , maybe , i think the forced air furnace would run alot more frequently. but it would create a longer burn time and longer periods between. i would be afraid to damper down the chimney , gets cloged to fast as it is, if you could have a 500 or 1000 gallon thermos inside the house, you could just about circulate out of it and build a fire when you need to. i think a secondary burn chamber is the way to go in the future, i just don't like what they have done in the design and wood requirements (so dry) as of yet. plus the burn chamber is so small. man, i need a drink after all that.