Outdoor Wood Furnace Info
All-Purpose OWF Discussions => General Outdoor Furnace Discussion => Topic started by: mw10737 on December 11, 2012, 04:09:11 PM
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Ok so last night i cleaned ashes out of stove and loaded up like normal. It was 15 degrees out last night , I left house thermostat at 75 and garage at 70. Just like I normally do, went out this morning and i could only get one small 3 inch round in stove, I was very suprised. I have seen post about pulling the coals forward when loading.... do you guys think due to the fact i had no coals under the wood that it likely burned feom the top down rather than bottom up?
.. and purtting one big log to one side or the other
I would like to see what others stories how they load there stoves and how much wood each of you put in at night. Still learning everyday with the stove.. but this morning i was very impressed with the little wood it burned with it being so cold out. Let me know your thoughts :)
Also looking for a Stihl MS880 Guys..... anyone got one for sale... Love my MS660 but want more power..... and yes i have some HUGE logs im cutting...
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I load my hardy up like that and get 24+ hours out of it burning pine the weather here hasn't been too bad cold yet some days in the teens but it really doesn't make much difference in temp it burns about the same I have a ash box but rarely take ash out I am new to this also but so far very pleased with wood usage.
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I don't quite understand, was the firebox full of ash or coals? Is that the reason you could only get one 3 inch round in?
If the firebox was full of hot red coals I would say your draft never shut down.
I have a question for you, why in the world would you want your house at 75? :o If my house was that warm I would never get anything done, I would be like a zombie.
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Very comfortable at 75, very large older renovated farm home. Its comfortable at us for this temp. If your moving around and doing stuff we turn it down, ,
No i cleaned all the ash out last evening, it was still full of partial burned wood. Not coals,, only very little white ash. I dont ever fill stove up either, if you fill it completely up you are wasting wood. Only put in wood it takes to keep stove going, otherwise your heating up excess wood and drying it out and burning it for nothing.
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So i guess I assuming that what your said you didn't burn that much wood and only could fit a 3 inch round piece of wood in the morning....Your fire burned from the bottom.. Sounds like to me your burning some nice hardwood....Far as wood consumption.. It varies. Every situation is different. LIke me I live in the north I get a 12 hr burn out of pine but the the guy in the south gets a 24 hr burn out of pine for example..My house is set at 74 :thumbup: If i was burning oil it would be set at 60..Burn wood >:D
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My house is set at 74 :thumbup: If i was burning oil it would be set at 60..Burn wood >:D
AMEN
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Not quite sure I understand either. You are heating a older, large house and a garage and it is 15 degrees outside and you only had room to put in a 3 inch piece of wood in it after a 10 or so hour burn?
I must be doing something wrong! :bash:
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usually it takes more than that. but after cleaning ashes out last evening and went 12 hrs and only could add one log. really suprised me too!!! moved all my coals to the front by the door tonight and loaded normal again,, have to see what it look like in the morning.. If i was to guess it will be close to full again.. Burning a mix of harwoods and some soft maple,, ash,,etc, but some walnut mixed in and hackberry. Who knows guys just looking for opinions,, i have a ton of wood more than i could ever burn in 20-25 yrs.. but stove is burning too efficient now..LOL 8)
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That's nothing. My OWF is so efficient, when I get home from work I take wood out of my furnace and sell it to my neighbor :)
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Boilerman...LOL @ Matty, people ask all the time,How long do you think it will take to recoup the cost of the boiler. The house is 74, if burning fuel oil at 74 it wouldn`t take long at all...
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Yeah the weather here in ohio has been warm . But sure is cold this morning. I am looking forward to some cold weather just to see how it all works this is my first season with it so take my opinion with a grain of salt lol.. I really enjoy this whole process and enjoy learning angry talking about it. All by the way I keep my house at 73. The temp outside right now is 24 so not really that cold but after christmas it will get there. One thing I gave learned is lots if variables
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For me to recoup my investment, it would have cost me over $5,000.00/yr to for heating oil. The final tally for the OWB install was around $11,000.00. Using my simple mathematical formula, that's a bit over 2 years to recoup my cost. Not too shabby. My fire wood for last year cost me $600.00. It's a no brainer for me. I keep my house at 70 degrees 24/7 with exception of my bedroom, it's at 65. I would have to keep the house at 65 degrees using fuel oil - brrrrrr. Roger
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I 2 keep my house @ 74 24/7.It took me only 1 year for me to pay for mine I also heated my pool till oct so we got our money back with the pool to I load my wb once a day some days it uses more than others!
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I've been thinking about this all day. Are you sure your "Home furnace" is not running? This is almost unreal
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Nope my furnace is shut off, havent fired the gas furnace since last october...
Last night pulled all the hot coals forward and used same amount again,, well... maybe a 5 inch log this time..LOL.. but seriously, it is burning real well,, it was 18 out this morning.. IM HAPPY... What will i do with all this wood I got.........Been cutting logs in 8 ft pcs for the last 2 weeks and putting inside a building to keep out of weather... im nly a 1/3 done... Must have 30 semi loads left to move yet... and already have 165 pickup loads cut and stacked.... gotta go cut wood later guys :)
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As someone said earlier, it sounds like you have some good dry hardwoods. Congrats! :thumbup:
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I've been thinking about this all day. Are you sure your "Home furnace" is not running? This is almost unreal
Its this a joke post? or are you for real?..
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Probably cutting all 30 semi loads of wood with a ax too. :P
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MW- Boy I wish I had your problems.
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My Hardy goes through wood pretty fast. Every now and then ill go out in the morning after a cold night and I'm surprised at the small amount of wood that it used through the night. Usually the case for me is that there was hardly any wind during the night. That wind makes my furnace run non stop!
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Matty... this is for real... what is your issue thinking im making this up. My god look back through all my previous post over the last year ...... Where do you get off calling me a fake.. my god im on here asking for technical info and all you wanna do is make a joke out of this. Please do me a favor and never reply to my post in the future.
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I can see it if you only load full rounds, they tend to burn but still keep their shape so they still :photo: take up a lot of space until they fall apart into coals. But just because there is little room to add more wood doesn't mean it didn't burn much. Split wood doesn't last as long but it usually burns hotter as it seasons better so recovery is faster. I've been experimenting.... 8)
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MW, in your first post above your stated "let me know your thoughts". Well Matty let you know his thoughts. Should be nothing wrong with that.
I've been burning wood for over17 years, with an indoor stove and OWF...No rookie here either.
You've stated that over a 12 hour overnight burn period with an outside temp of 15 degrees, you heated a house at 75 degrees and a garage at 70 degrees all on "one small 3 inch round" of wood...sorry I am in Matty's camp on this one. I have some land in Minnesota with great Atlantic Ocean views if anyone is interested in purchasing.
Sorry, those are my thoughts.
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a good guesstimate for heat loss of a home is this
1/R x delta = heat loss per square foot x area = heat loss in btu per hour
so lets say your home is 1800 square feet with 8 foot ceiling the walls around this house would be 60 x2 x 8 feet high = 960 + 30 x2 x 8 =480 480+960=1440 square feet of wall
lets say wall is r 20 (good insulation) 1/r x delta(60) 1/r x 60/1 = 60/20 = 3= 3 btu per square foot of heat loss = 4320 btu loss per hour x 12 hours = 51,849 btu lost through the walls in the 12 hour time period
ceiling is 1800 square feet and we will say well insulated at r30 = 1/30 x 60/1 = 60/30 = 2 btu per square foot of heat loss = 3600 per hour x 12 hour period = 43200
add the two together is 95,049 btu lost in the 12 hour time frame
1 pound of "dry" wood has about 8000 btu in it "dry" wood is 20 percent moisture, to boil out this moisture to get the wood to burn takes about 2000 btu leaving us 6000 "usable" btu...now we also know that a non gasser OWB is about 50 to 60 percent efficent so we will say 50 percent so our btu getting to the hosue is 3000 "usable btu per pound of wood ...so, 95,049 btu devided by 3000 = (about) 31 pounds of wood for a 12 hour period. i am not here to doubt anyone, and i get these formulas from the net (accuracy is not confirmed) but if these figures are correct, that is one long 3 inch round.
on another note i read is a post that the writer claimed when no heat was being used in the house the delta was 0 and the water was just ciculating from the boiler to the home and back...there is always a delta! your lines are five feet below the ground at about 55 degrees and your water in the lines is 180 so you have a delta of 125.. also from logstors information (one of the leading underground piping specialests) thier 1 inch double pex lines lose (at 5 gpm) about 1 degree in 100 feet. you say you are about 100 feet from your OWB to your home and i think i read a while back you think you are moving 12 gpm. you will be losing the exact same amount of btu to the earth as you would at 5 gpm but by moving it faster you will see a much smaller loss due to the weight of water you are moving. it is likley so small you can't measure it. 5 gpm is about 40 pounds so Logstor says you lose 1 degree (according to specs) that is 40 btu or 1 btu per pound..at 12 gpm you are moving almost 100 pounds of water per min. that would be about .3333 degrees per pound (still 40 btu), likely non measurable by any thermometer you have.
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Matty... this is for real... what is your issue thinking im making this up. My god look back through all my previous post over the last year ...... Where do you get off calling me a fake.. my god im on here asking for technical info and all you wanna do is make a joke out of this. Please do me a favor and never reply to my post in the future.
Hey mw the the post I made wasnt even directed to you if you were to look.. It was towards jerkash..Calm down mw.
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My back would be delirious with joy, if I only used a 3" stick in twelve hours....
We keep our house on 75 almost all the time. If my wife gets chilled I might come in to find it at 80 once in a while.
As long as I can burn wood for free she can keep it as hot as she wants.
80 is pushing my tolerance though.
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Sorry Matty, I was in the wrong blowing up with thew post I put on last night. All the wood cutting got me angry... Sorry again.
Wille, WOW that is some serious info. Thank you so much.. I have upgraded and put my wireless gauges in the lines now. I have a 1.5 degree drop and when house furnace is running i have a 12 degree diffirence, and when showers.. dishwasher..etc are running it will run about 18-20 degree drop .
Since i have stacked my two pumps it has made a huge diffirence, before when shower was running and furnace both at same time, my ducts would blow cold air. I inserted a thermo probe into duct with a digital readout ( a extra one I had purchased for my paint booth) and it shows when furnace running the duct will reach 132 degrees, thats checking at the register. With the shower and furnce running it reaches 121. But furnace dont run very long at all.
Im very happy with how its working. I was a bit worried after i moved the boiler into a building, it added another 110ft , So right now water travels 140ft before it comes into house. But seems to work great
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in my area 140 feet is about normal (one way) for the underground lines
those numbers i posted were just round about numbers and not meant to be a 100 percent accurate heat loss as their were no doors or windows figured in (depending on the types) windows and doors can be up to 20 percent of a houses heat loss
the heat loss from your underground lines will remain constant (or very close) no matter how fast you pump water. the only thing that will change the heat loss to the ground from yoru lines is if the delta changes (your boiler water changes) as the ground at 5 feet will not change (normally)
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what are your thoughts with the heat that does gwet loss from underground pex? dont you think that it almost acts as the same as a geo thermal lines would? Once that surrounding soil is "warm" above ambient grond temp. Wouldnt it alsmost be a advantage? I have my lines very well insulated and wrapped and in solid tile,, compltete sealed. Snow never melts or frost is in soil above trench. Just wondering once that soil is warmed up at 5-6 ft. I would think it would almost hep. But i know that geo lines are usually at the 17-22ft deep,
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I loaded stove with all Walnut last night at 6pm. I just went out to fill for the night and 1/2 of the wood logs were still in there and alot of nice coals. Im happy with the burn times im getting
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my geo lines run horizontal...3 trenches 5 feet wide and 500 feet long pipe goes out in the trench on one side and returns on teh other then into a header about 3050 feet of pipe at 5 feet deep
with no insulation your heat loss would reach a maximum point and never change.
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I dont split any of my wood either. I dont have a splitter, so any logs over 20" rounds I just "noodle" them in half. I feel that like the post above, split wood burns faster. Plus dont have a splitter; just a MS660 and a MS880 soon... found a used one with 20 hrs on it today. Gonna pick it up next week.
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i split very very little either..if it goes in the door..thats how it goes in
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I dont split any of my wood either. I dont have a splitter, so any logs over 20" rounds I just "noodle" them in half. I feel that like the post above, split wood burns faster. Plus dont have a splitter; just a MS660 and a MS880 soon... found a used one with 20 hrs on it today. Gonna pick it up next week.
What temp are you running on your stove?
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175 degrees with a 10 degree diffirential..