Advice on using an EPA stove?

[Mustang71]

Sounds like you’re getting it. You’ve arrived at what I do For long burns from a cold stove. Start it about an hour before leaving or going to bed and get it good and hot 5-600 then right before I leave/go to bed I put in another piece or more and close the draft down most of he way. That’s how you get decent heat for a long period. It really takes two loads. The first one heats everything up and the second one provides for the slow burn.

Yea I figured out that I was cooking half my wood on start up. 90 percent of my burns are cold start. Where this is different than the daka so far is that I can throw one log on and keep it ripping instead of loading the fire box again.

Last night before bed I could have put a few logs on but it was warm in here so I didnt and I'm still a bit new to this routine.

 

[U&A]

I dont know about furnaces but its not a good practice to throw wood in while in the middle of a burn cycle. Somtimes..... sure. But You may notice a buildup of coals faster doing that.

And there is always the possibility of dealing with more heat than you expect when doing that.

JMO,
Not telling you what to do sir.

On your frequent cold starts do you use “top down” method?

It works wonderfully! Tie newspaper into loose knots as well.... nantucket knot’s

If you are chasing heat fast...After that burns down to large but still active coals load it to the TOP.


QUESTION.

How many “steps” do you take in closing the air control to you “set it and forget it” spot?

And are you trying to hold a temp as you slowly close the air off?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Mustang71]

Well I'm talking about chucking a log in log in near the end of the cycle. Seems that I'm having a hard time getting the air to the back of the stove. I'm working at creating a tunnel in front of the dog house jet thing.

Last night I was holding 500 with the air closed a good amount. It seemed like after 450 I could close it gradually and it would rise. I'm still working on finding that stopping spot. But when the primary air is closed enough and the secondary fires off it seems to warm up. 500 may seem cold but I am blowing a good amount of air past the fire box. The feel out of the registers is like night and day above and below 500.

 

[Mustang71]

Stopping point.

 

[Del_]

Looks good!

 

[Mustang71]

Threw one log on before bed as it was dieing down. And it jumped right back up in temp. I only supplement heat so if I'm not home no one is going to heat with the wood furnace. Every day is a cold start hopefully the weekends won't be. As for making big heat fast that's what the daka did which also means losing heat fast. This stove takes longer to heat the house but I'm not sweating then cold I'm comfortable the whole time. I'd rather heat slower and longer than fast and burn a ton of wood.

 

[Deleted member 150358]

Be fun to see if you get to the point burn times last overnight ECT..

 

[Mustang71]

At the moment if I had more experience with this stove I'd load it up now and try for all night heat since I'll be loading it in the morning regardless. But I do know I'll be able to throw wood on hot coals in the morning since I still have coals 24 hours after starting a fire.

It would be nice to get to the point where I'm comfortable loading the stove and walking away. Then I'd load it before work and when I got home. Once it's hot I have noticed that I can put wood on and not touch the primary air and continue the burn.

I do not have any large splits in the wood shed since the daka would not burn them so experimenting is hard.

 

[moresnow]

Its hooked in but I'm using my lp furnace to circulate the air which I dont want to do. That uses a lot of electricity and puts more wear on the furnace and living in the country the power likes to go out a few times a year. My generator wont run my lp furnace and I'm going to need heat.

Soooo? I bet the LP furnace fan almost makes the air feel cool at the register? Does the stove fan not move enough?

 

[Mustang71]

Soooo? I bet the LP furnace fan almost makes the air feel cool at the register? Does the stove fan not move enough?

Correct because my lp furnace is at one end of the house so the duct work starts out large and goes 57 feet. That was y I had the dual blowers and plenum on the daka and it would take the air from the house past the daka and out the vents and it was very hot.

I ordered an 8 inch booster fan and am going to tie that in to the supply and return for circulation hoping that helps a bit. But when the I'm making 500 or so degrees the vents feel warm, in most of the house, like when the lp furnace is on. It still heats the same but doesn't feel warm right away.

My problem is I'm an hvac installer so unlike most people this stuff bothers me and I keep messing with it until I'm happy.

 

[JRHAWK9]

Correct because my lp furnace is at one end of the house so the duct work starts out large and goes 57 feet.

My LP and wood furnace are also at the one end of the house. It's 42' from end to end and 32' across, so the two furthest registers have ~55' of duct or so.

 

[Mustang71]

Put the furnace at one end and you are running at least 24x8 ductwork. That's 1100cfm+ based on a determined friction. Put the furnace in the middle and you could run 12x8 both ways. Same cfm but way easier to pressurize the ductwork because you decrease size as you lose heat runs. I have 2.5 tons of cooling in my house which is 1000cfm so heating should be less. The 850cfm would work great if it could pressurize the ductwork. You have to be able to meet the cfm of the first piece of ductwork to pressurize it or else it trickles out. I also question the actual cfm of the blower at 1/5hp.

After a week I am pretty what happy with the furnace. After the initial burn, which eats wood, I can put minimal wood on and maintain heat. It seems safer and is a more even heat. It may be slower heating but its slower losing heat in the house. My cat likes it too he sleeps in the rocking chair in front of the furnace. My Hope's of 75 in here are limited by my lack of wanting to burn a ton of wood. The lp furnace is set at 64 during the day and 62 at night so 68 to 70 when using wood is very comfortable.

 

[JRHAWK9]

I actually replaced my 1/3hp sleeve bearing PSC motor with a ball bearing motor so I could use my head pressure controller to slow it down. I'm using the head pressure controller to speed control my blower motor based on plenum temps and use a 5Kohm 10 turn pot in series of the thermistor to be able to skew the blower speed to whatever I want. I don't know why, but this house heats better with very slow blower speeds. It likes the low volume of warmer air. I have a 20x10 main duct. Just went down and checked my supply duct SP with the furnace on low and the blower motor receiving ~65V true-RMS from the head pressure controller. Duct is seeing +0.065" W.C.

 

[brenndatomu]

Put the furnace at one end and you are running at least 24x8 ductwork. That's 1100cfm+ based on a determined friction. Put the furnace in the middle and you could run 12x8 both ways. Same cfm but way easier to pressurize the ductwork because you decrease size as you lose heat runs. I have 2.5 tons of cooling in my house which is 1000cfm so heating should be less. The 850cfm would work great if it could pressurize the ductwork. You have to be able to meet the cfm of the first piece of ductwork to pressurize it or else it trickles out. I also question the actual cfm of the blower at 1/5hp.

After a week I am pretty what happy with the furnace. After the initial burn, which eats wood, I can put minimal wood on and maintain heat. It seems safer and is a more even heat. It may be slower heating but its slower losing heat in the house. My cat likes it too he sleeps in the rocking chair in front of the furnace. My Hope's of 75 in here are limited by my lack of wanting to burn a ton of wood. The lp furnace is set at 64 during the day and 62 at night so 68 to 70 when using wood is very comfortable.

You need to forget about everything you know when it comes to "setting static pressures" with a wood furnace...measuring temp rise will serve you better.
As I mentioned to you before...Kuuma runs a ~500 CFM blower on their VF200 furnace...meant to be used as an add-on to the main furnace...but many people use them with no additional blower...as long as your ducts are sealed, and don't run through unheated spaces...that heat will get to your house. (the VF200 runs much higher "plenum" temps than the VF100 does)
The Kuuma VF100 uses a larger blower...so more CFM, but the plenum temp rarely exceeds 120*…and even that is a peak temp...for me, my average plenum temp is probably more like 105-110* over the course of a whole load...heats all 3000 sq ft of our "average insulated" 1940 built brick cape cod just fine.

 

[Mustang71]

Seems like I'm getting the same people chime in here and the hearth site. Why wouldn't it let me use my screen name on the hearth. Lame

 

[brenndatomu]

Seems like I'm getting the same people chime in here and the hearth site. Why wouldn't it let me use my screen name on the hearth. Lame

It was probably already used there.

 

[Mustang71]

I understand the air flow thing but it doesn't come out the registers. Obviously it does but not noticable and the ones at the end of the ductwork dont get anything. Initially I tied it in in the middle of the ductwork hoping for the best but it didnt help. The daka would put out low velocity hot heat with the twin blowers. Nothing like the lp furnace but it heated way better and more even than the lp furnace. I also had the return hooked up to my return ductwork. I did that with this one too. I built a nice filter box out of sheet metal and it restricted the flow of the blower a lot so I took it off. All I have for return is the cat hole in the basement door. Being a raised ranch with half my basement being my garage it sucks drawing the air from the basement/garage. Might as well pull it from outside. This furnace has taken everything I have learned in the last 10 years of installing hvac and thrown it out the window. So now I have it set up by the manual.

 

[brenndatomu]

Yeah with the lower cfm blowers you have to throttle the close by registers to get it to the far end of the house...I did that too even with the furnace being pretty central. And having the ducts sealed well helps a lot too.
If there is anyway to pull return air from the fossil furnace return ducts, do it, that will help a lot too.

This furnace has taken everything I have learned in the last 10 years of installing hvac and thrown it out the window.

Yup...welcome to wood furnaces. Probably one of the reasons it is hard to find anyone that wants to install or work on a wood furnace...unless they are a dealer and sold it new. Be a good lil side gig for an HVAC guy that was well versed in wood forced air furnaces...

 

[Mustang71]

I have been installing furnaces, boilers, a/c, and mini splits for 10 years now and I can count on 1 hand the amount of propane furnaces I have done and I have never done an oil any thing. I work in the suburbs because thats where the work is and live way out in the country because I like my space and freedom. 90 percent of everything I deal with is suburban. It's hard to find stuff for stoves and wood furnaces is unheard of. Owb are more common it seems but idk where they are sold lol.

 

[brenndatomu]

It's hard to find stuff for stoves and wood furnaces is unheard of.

Oh, you can buy 'em, but good luck getting an install if it didn't come from somewhere that actually does installs...and as for working on an existing unit...HA!
This is not uncommon either...you see people posting questions about FA wood furnaces on these forums all the time...because they can't find anyone local to do it...or maybe a stove shop did come out for a look, but they know nothing about FA wood furnace, so they give it a WAG, a bill, and out...