Advice on using an EPA stove?

[Mustang71]

I have smaller rounds that weren't split im the garage should I split one and check that?

 

[Ryan'smilling]

To get an accurate moisture reading you should bring a chunk of wood into the house to get to room temp. Then split it in half and check the freshly split face. Obviously the wood on the outside will be drier than the wood in the middle, so it's a bit of an average between them, but I think the wood in the middle represents the actual moisture content of much more of the total mass. Also, you should check a few pieces to eliminate an anomalous piece of wood.

 

[Mustang71]

Will do but I'm not sure what wood I'm going to get to burn better than 2 year old wood. That's better than the stuff you can buy. The humidity is never low around here.

 

[Ryan'smilling]

Will do but I'm not sure what wood I'm going to get to burn better than 2 year old wood. That's better than the stuff you can buy. The humidity is never low around here.

I almost edited to add some words to the same effect. I have a meter as well, and unless you're unsure which pile is better it doesn't do much good. Like you said, it's unlikely you can buy wood better than what you're talking about. Ash is a good drying wood.

 

[Del_]

I've never used a moisture meter.

Who makes a good one for the money?

 

[ChoppyChoppy]

Don't worry about the outside air stuff. There is a good bit of evidence that says it's just not needed.

Never heard that one before. I'm not a rocket surgeon, but why would someone want to make negative pressure in the house and draw air from leaks instead of feeding the stove the air it needs?

 

[Del_]

Never heard that one before. I'm not a rocket surgeon, but why would someone want to make negative pressure in the house and draw air from leaks instead of feeding the stove the air it needs?

Because the amount of air a wood stove requires is less than the amount of air exchange a healthy house should have.

 

[Mustang71]

The air intake is right next to the blower so I am going to separate them. I'm still not sure if I'll go as far as bringing in outside air or just put some pipe on it to get it away from the blower. I dont see the advantage of the outdoor air other than not removing air from the house which I have been doing for 6 years now.

 

[Mustang71]

I almost edited to add some words to the same effect. I have a meter as well, and unless you're unsure which pile is better it doesn't do much good. Like you said, it's unlikely you can buy wood better than what you're talking about. Ash is a good drying wood.

I had no intention of using a moisture meter but it came with one so I thought I'd try it out and see what was up.

 

[Ryan'smilling]

Never heard that one before. I'm not a rocket surgeon, but why would someone want to make negative pressure in the house and draw air from leaks instead of feeding the stove the air it needs?

Because the stove would rather have combustion air coming in at room temp than at 0 degrees or whatever it is outside.

 

[JRHAWK9]

Perhaps people get tired of Lamppa owners saying this stuff, but reading this thread really makes me appreciate how my furnace runs. I've lived with all sorts of stoves, Lopi, Jotuls, boxwood, Fisher, been around a couple of Ashley's, and so on. We also had a Yukon Klondike furnace. The EPA stoves are a huge step forward compared to the fishers etc. They won't throw BTUs the same way, but as far as making even heat for many hours and burning efficiently, they're great. But seriously, I know the Lamppa is a lot of coin, and more than many people want to spend, but I can literally fill the firebox, set the computer to match the weather and walk away for 8-14 hours depending on the setting. No thinking about dampers, looking at what's coming out of the chimney, or checking to see if the secondaries are lighting.

I put 5 pieces of wood and 1 incredibly annoying children's book in my furnace at 7 am. Set the dial on low because it was in the 20s and sunny today. Loaded it halfway at 4:00 with slabwood and bumped the dial up a little. That'll keep me until 10 when I load it before bed and I can start the cycle again tomorrow. 2-4 times per day I mess with it so far. No making kindling since it doesn't go out. And it provides 100% of our heat. The weather station a few miles from here showed -39F one morning this winter.

right on! I know the feeling, the more threads I read on other furnaces make me appreciate my Kuuma even more.

 

[JRHAWK9]

I did the math one of those kuuma furnaces would take me about 8 years of no propane to break even. I'd probably have to cut and store a lot more wood too.

Cost me $10K for everything. In addition to the Kuuma VF100 we also had to have a new 35' chimney installed to the tune of $4000. It's an ICC/Excel Canadian spec one.

I'm on my 5th year of burning and I have re-cooped $8,950 based on my spreadsheet of burned wood. The house is also WAY warmer than it was with using LP and the basement is also being heated.

Screen shot of this heating season's totals/results so far. Total hours LP ran includes the time we are away from home AND supplemental. Supplemental just includes the time the LP furnace kicked in during a few mornings of cold temps when the house LP thermostat called for heat. It's set at 68°. We are heating ~32,000CF. It's a log cabin style house with 25' ridgebeam with loft. Not a very efficient house. It loses a ton of heat out of the ridgebeam/roof area. Snow does not last long at all on the peak of the roof.

 

[Ryan'smilling]

Cost me $10K for everything. In addition to the Kuuma VF100 we also had to have a new 35' chimney installed to the tune of $4000. It's an ICC/Excel Canadian spec one.

I'm on my 5th year of burning and I have re-cooped $8,950 based on my spreadsheet of burned wood. The house is also WAY warmer than it was with using LP and the basement is also being heated.

Screen shot of this heating season's totals/results so far. Total hours LP ran includes the time we are away from home AND supplemental. Supplemental just includes the time the LP furnace kicked in during a few mornings of cold temps when the house LP thermostat called for heat. It's set at 68°. We are heating ~32,000CF. It's a log cabin style house with 25' ridgebeam with loft. Not a very efficient house. It loses a ton of heat out of the ridgebeam/roof area. Snow does not last long at all on the peak of the roof.

View attachment 718889

I love your record keeping. I have to ask though, in your formula, what "cost" or "value" are you assigning to the wood you're burning? Around here, red oak is worth between $250-350/cord delivered, more if you sell it as face cords. If I didn't burn a cord of wood, I'd sell it, so it's not exactly free when I burn it. There's also the cost to produce it, even if the wood is free, I have fuel, chains, saws, splitter time, tractor time, etc not to mention the opportunity cost of spending time cutting wood versus something that pays money. Don't get me wrong, I know there's many great reasons to heat with and cut wood, just wondering if you've got a value for it in that math.

 

[JRHAWK9]

I love your record keeping. I have to ask though, in your formula, what "cost" or "value" are you assigning to the wood you're burning? Around here, red oak is worth between $250-350/cord delivered, more if you sell it as face cords. If I didn't burn a cord of wood, I'd sell it, so it's not exactly free when I burn it. There's also the cost to produce it, even if the wood is free, I have fuel, chains, saws, splitter time, tractor time, etc not to mention the opportunity cost of spending time cutting wood versus something that pays money. Don't get me wrong, I know there's many great reasons to heat with and cut wood, just wondering if you've got a value for it in that math.

I simply look at it in terms of how much LP I'm saving. I had chainsaws before I started burning, so I consider them just a normal tool.
I'm converting the lbs of wood I burn to BTU's. Adjusting to efficiency and then converting those BTU's to gallons of LP and adjusting based on LP furnace efficiency. Once I have gallons of LP I can convert to $$$ based on current LP prices. I have about 5-6 years of LP records of keeping the house at 68° and NOT heating the basement, so I have a baseline to compare my numbers to.

 

[Mustang71]

I love your record keeping. I have to ask though, in your formula, what "cost" or "value" are you assigning to the wood you're burning? Around here, red oak is worth between $250-350/cord delivered, more if you sell it as face cords. If I didn't burn a cord of wood, I'd sell it, so it's not exactly free when I burn it. There's also the cost to produce it, even if the wood is free, I have fuel, chains, saws, splitter time, tractor time, etc not to mention the opportunity cost of spending time cutting wood versus something that pays money. Don't get me wrong, I know there's many great reasons to heat with and cut wood, just wondering if you've got a value for it in that math.

And this is y I went with the cheaper furnace because my "savings" is using less propane if I factored in tools, time, and all that stuff, it would take me a real long time to recover that money. Now you could say all these ash trees that I have need to come down anyways and the wood is a byproduct but I still split it and store it and cut it to log length.

So if I start over today with a new furnace and 2 years of wood stacked and all the tools maybe I'm saving money after a couple years. Lol.

 

[Mustang71]

I'm trying to figure out burn temps before I install this furnace and I bought a rutland magnetic thermometer today and had the chimneyguard one for a year in a half. Well they dont agree. I have them on the front of my furnace and the rutland says 400 the chimneyguard says 650, they didn't agree on the stove pipe either. And as I recall I was told the nc30 runs good at 500 and someone else said 650 lol. This is annoying.

They had 2 rutlands at the hardware store one read on the low end of the 100 and the other read like 40, so I took the one that read near 100 because it was probably 70 in there.

 

[MJM268]

Plus or minus 150 degrees on those is normal. Use a simple IR or hand held red dot temp unit instead. I removed all my magnet units and just watch the fire pattern to determine temp and proper air setting.

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

 

[JRHAWK9]

Those magnetic things are not accurate. Stove pipe surface temps are WAY lower than internal temps. I use -THIS-. One probe in my stove pipe ~12" from the furnace collar and one in the plenum.

 

[Del_]

You can try using an IR temp meter to calibrate the bi-metal type or at least fool around with it. Get them both reading the same and then see if they track each other over temperature changes.

The bi-metal are adjustable, or at least my three 30 year old ones are.

 

[ChoppyChoppy]

Because the amount of air a wood stove requires is less than the amount of air exchange a healthy house should have.

HRV

Not to mention not sucking in -30* air through all the cracks is certainly helpful in keeping the house warm. Much different in South Georgia. Does it even normally get under freezing there?!

I have not seen any info in the building trades or stove installers that point toward not installing OAK. In fact when I had an energy audit on my house last spring it was something that they had to check off on - it was required here to comply with a 5-star plus energy rating.