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[MD20/20]

I had always wondered what exactly to do if I needed to leave the stove unattended while away during the heating season. Well, for the past four days I have been away in Florida (70's, by the way!) and I hadn't gathered enough small wood for my wife to load, so I thought I'd see if I could maintain the temps above freezing without having a fire while someone was home to monitor.
 
My indoor system is an oil fired boiler that I connect to my owb via a 80 plate heat exchanger. I closed the valves at the exchanger so heat was not exchanged and turned on the money-burning oil furnace.  The stove temperature bottomed out at 50F after 5 days of no heat with near 5F temps in the evening and 20's during the day. I now feel liberated knowing I don't need to have the stove babysat if I want to go out of town in the winter.

After seeing how much oil I used during those 5 days, I'm thankful to have the owb.

[MD20/20]

sorry for the subject line mistake!

[buckgrunt]

I had a similar experience this past weekend when I was away.  My OWB has a blower/fan, so I let the fire die down and turned power off to the OWB prior to leaving, but connected the water circulator to a separate outlet.  My theory is why let the blower/fan blow cold air all weekend cooling down the water.   I came home Sunday and water temp was at 119 degrees.  We had single digit nights and 20s during the day....

[CountryBoyJohn]

I left on a Friday at noon and returned at 6 p.m. on Sunday. Before I left, I crammed it full of oak and mulberry and turned the house down to 60 and the hot tub down a few degrees. Outside temps averaged 30 or so. When I got home water temp was normal and I still had done wood left!

[Scott7m]

I left on a Friday at noon and returned at 6 p.m. on Sunday. Before I left, I crammed it full of oak and mulberry and turned the house down to 60 and the hot tub down a few degrees. Outside temps averaged 30 or so. When I got home water temp was normal and I still had done wood left!

Cant beat that

[Jack72]

I had always wondered what exactly to do if I needed to leave the stove unattended while away during the heating season. Well, for the past four days I have been away in Florida (70's, by the way!) and I hadn't gathered enough small wood for my wife to load, so I thought I'd see if I could maintain the temps above freezing without having a fire while someone was home to monitor.
 
My indoor system is an oil fired boiler that I connect to my owb via a 80 plate heat exchanger. I closed the valves at the exchanger so heat was not exchanged and turned on the money-burning oil furnace.  The stove temperature bottomed out at 50F after 5 days of no heat with near 5F temps in the evening and 20's during the day. I now feel liberated knowing I don't need to have the stove babysat if I want to go out of town in the winter.

After seeing how much oil I used during those 5 days, I'm thankful to have the owb.

By me in Illinois.    During thanksgiving week we were in SC Hilton Head.    It was below zero at night For piece of mind I put two thermostatic electric heaters in mine one in the firebox and one in the reaction chamber I shut down the day before I left and it was keeping the water at 120 so I felt a lot better about leaving.  When I got back it was still at that temp.


Jack

[mlappin]

Its a good habit to try to get into, but if you have any neighbors with OWB offer to feed theirs if they'll return the favor. Normally my Dad can keep mine loaded when he does cattle chores for me while I'm gone. I have another neighbor that I feed his when he's on holiday, he's offered to do the same for mine.

[Speed]

Mlappin, that's what we do here. I even run the neighbor's when he's at work. Normal days no need, but when its as cold as its been lately and the wind starts blowing, I just run next door around 1 and throw some in to make sure he's good til supper time. He helps me out too. Nice to have good neighbors. From what I hear, that's not easy to find, so I guess I lucked out big time.