Wood Heat

[Tom Reed]

Beautiful heater Mike. Question, how are the labyrinth passages cleaned when the eventually fill up with soot? And is that a bread oven in the back?

[mobile_bob]

Dang Mike, that thing is gorgeous!  i love it!

thanks for posting the link.

i too have questions about cleaning out the labyrinth passages, from reading the fire is small and very hot
so that there really is no creosote issues?  just some ash that is removed via small cleanout ports?

thanks
bob g

[mike90045]

yes, it's got a bake oven in the back, and just above that, is a SS water loop, that thermosiphons to a 120gal SS tank on the 2nd floor.  That, in the winter, gives me about 80 - 100°F preheated water to the tankless water heater.  (summer time, it's preheated by a rooftop solar heater, gets up to 140F, and mixed down to 110F)
I added a pic of the schematic to the heater picture album, I'll try to put the image here too  { FB fails to allow a single, simple photo link but it is clickable }

https://www.facebook.com/plugins/post.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fpermalink.php%3Fstory_fbid%3D1213410365399081%26id%3D120212794718849%26substory_index%3D0&width=500

There is a cleanout plug in the base of the ash pit. which gives access to vacuuming soot out.   Most of the heavy soot, settles in the oven chamber, and what gets past that is so light, it gets blown around and settles at the base of the final triple wall, 8" flue that goes out the roof.  There is a 2nd cleanout port at the exterior (small black door at floor level) that has a 2nd, insulated hatch, that leads to the base of the flue, which gives access to the rest of the passages.   It's mostly just an annual 1 hour vacuum job, I put a HEPA filter on the shop vac, use a 25' pool cleaner vacuum hose and run it around and brush out stuff.  (this is weeks after the last fire)
When both draft doors are open, AND the exterior air feed is active, the heater interior refractory is nearly glowing from the heat, and almost sounds like a blast furnace for about 45 minutes,  I assume that carries a lot of the fine ash up and out to fall elsewhere.


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Link to half-dozen photos of the install of our masonry heater:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.383468711726588.86888.120212794718849&type=1&l=c762d10b5f

[mike90045]

Here's my bucket of cooling water.  Please do some research about respiratory problems associated with wood heated habitats .......

So the new style is called Top Down Burn (google it)
paper on top of the logs, and a handful of kindling on top of that
I usually build this in between 2 logs, kindling burns and radiant heats the
logs which often start burning before the kindling collapses in-between the logs
and really gets them going.  No smoky starts and when you are down to the end, the
glowing coals are not smoking.
For the main burn, it's so hot the soot burns of the white refractory liner:

[SteveU.]

Wonderful warming-heart picture Mike.
Many asking me, will not believe when I tell them that I get at least 40% of the in-house heat from the charcoal radiant glow out the glass front doors.
That heat that you can feel across the room from 15 feet away. The energy release that heat things, not just the air.
I keep my HOT, coals glowing too. I do continous burns when I am home and grump some when I have to add raw wood in 2-3 new splits and cover up my charcoal glow. Can't loose too much HOT-heat momentum though to keep firing clean.
Yep. Yep. Keeps the glass fully clean and the refractory brick liners soot free.
IF all of the new wood volatilizes released are flame combusted there will be no creosote build ups. Flash light inspected annual I am still 26' chimney free, not needing brushing after 20 years now. Ha! Father-in-law next door I'd have to top to bottom brush out his chimney at lase twice a season due to soots build-up  flow clogging.
After he passed, then burning/operating my way his same SS chimney, cast iron hearth stove went three years just soot free fine.
Renters then had it again all air-choked down, too cool "to save the wood" sooting clogging up again. Old, cast plates warped and NLA it was really children unsafe anymore to annually keep cementing it back up to air-tight. We changed it out for a modern certified jacketed Quadrafire brand  insert type. With a protruding three sided all glass panels front.
Same. Same. They would soot up the glass continually with their air-choked down, too-cool "wood saving" smoky fires.
They moved on, and out.
Now I go over twice a day into this the wife's designated guest house and build a small HOT top-down burn fire. All of the 1959 masonry mass lets that thermal-glide for at least 8 hours always keeping that house warmed enough to be sweet smelling, occupy-able ready.
Only takes me 20 pounds of wood a day to do this.
I pester the wife on every snowy day show and tell, able to showing her that if she would ever let me down to the ceiling level this old heat wicking out monolith exchanged for an insulated SS chimney topper we could "quit heating the crows".

Point is 2/3rd of success in ALL "machines" and  "processes" is the actual user/operator. Not the core base design. This gets re-proven, time, and time again.

Ha! Ha! Carefully man you will be tagged like me as wooden-headed, old-school, too-conventional, not jumping onto the the latest craze rocket-stove be-all-nots.

So far as using-wood-is-bad criticisms; most those when I've dug are knowingly/unknowingly into power-control-from-the-top-down as always the better suppied energy for personal, "for All".
They have to do this preaching.. They must keep plumping to drive up the results on their retirement accounts investments.

Keep burning hot and clean man, using your own-wood-sweating, keep you moving FREEDOM providing.

J-I-C Steve Unruh

[LowGear]

It's always a pleasure to watch a man person operate a machine device properly.  Unfortunately you are the exception in this world.  I used smaller wood burning boxes myself for years and never had to clean the chimney.  My wife finally got concerned after an enlightening TV news show and demanded a "proper" chimney sweep come out and clean the chimney so we didn't burn the house down while we were asleep.  $50 roof fee (this was 30 years ago when a $50 bag of groceries was actually pretty heavy) and came down to announce that we should call him back in five years just as a precautionary move.  She wanted a second opinion.  Actually she still does.  Yes!  Wood stoves can be used without a great deal of risk if done with knowledge and discipline.  And then there are folks that burn houses down with baseboard heat.

Once a community can hear or smell what the neighbors are having for dinner the rules get more complicated and some freedom is lost.  Remember that we're broadcasting to a rather select group here at Microcogen.

Casey

[Ronmar]

If I was going to use wood in a tiny house, I think I would try and incorporate it as a mass floor heater(like a russian heater, just built into the floor).  As mentioned woodstoves have space requirements that would eat up a lot of valuable floorspace in a tiny house/cabin.  I thnk this is an Asian thing, forget the name though but the fire box(and the mess) is located outside with the hotgas passing thru passageway in a masonary floor with tile on top.  have seen something similar used in Roman Baths to provide heated floors.  Small downdraft batch gasifier to get it up to temp qucker and a pellet feeder or propane for longer burns to maintain heat for longer durations without needing direct attention.  That is one of the cool things about pellets, you can taylor the fire size to suit while still maintaining very clean/complete combustion.  I think I would have to do something to make it so I could see the fire though, I like that part also:)

The low mass/light weight alternative would be a small wood or pellet boiler(or gas, or heatpump) feeding a radiant floor water system, but this type would require power to circulate the water, where the masonary type even running on pellets could be done without power.   But there are a lot of ways to make hot water:) 

[mike90045]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kang_bed-stove   for the Asian version

Had a long (long for my setup) 3 hour run today charging batteries, the water tank hit about 180F at the top and the return was about 140F   The air blown from the ST head seems to be effective to cool the tank to a stable temp when it's 50F outside.  But a couple more days of rain, forecast for sun on Saturday, then I'll fill the water tanks and do laundry

[Ronmar]

One of the associated links in that link you posted is for the Roman version called a "Hypocaust".

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypocaust

[Derb]

http://www.google.co.nz/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwi_w4j2tK7VAhUClJQKHRvZDqYQFggoMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wagenerstoves.co.nz%2Fsparky-multi-fuel-burners&usg=AFQjCNF4Dq8KqyYx9QWZEAskPhf6MlSQYw

Hi Fellas. A nice little fire which people over here are using for boats, caravans and motorhomes.