chuckwood
Addicted to ArboristSite
- Joined
- Jan 26, 2008
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- Location
- near the Great Smoky Mtns. Tennessee
Heating with wood again and with this recent southern cold snap and being at home all the time I'm trying something I've never done before. I'm using one of those Ashley heaters with the firebox enclosed in a sheet metal cabinet. My house is small on the outside but has a basement and finished attic. I had been having problems with the living room that has the brick chimney being way too hot and the basement too cold. My basement is a shop area and I use it a lot. The old brick fireplace has an ash dump opening that enables dumping fireplace ashes into a chamber at the base of the chimney in the basement. This was in use when it was a conventional fireplace, you'd clean it out only once every few years. With an air hammer I enlarged the opening from the fireplace to the basement ash chamber below to make an opening large enough to insert an 8 inch flexible aluminum duct pipe in there that goes down and out into the basement area. I installed a duct booster fan at the end of the aluminum flex pipe and now the basement is comfortable enough to work in. The excess heat I don't need behind the wood heater now gets sucked down into the basement for more even heat distribution. A very inexpensive fix. I solved the heat distribution problem upstairs by opening a door to the living room and setting up a six foot step ladder with a portable box fan sitting mounted on top of it to blow the hot air next to the living room ceiling into the next room. Looks crazy but it works well and I've got a reasonably warm kitchen.
This season I decided to start using the cooktop which is a feature on my stove, you raise the vented sheet metal lid on the stove and place cookpots or frying pans on the top of the firebox. The metal there is rather thin and it gets hot enough to heat a couple of very large pots of water up to as high as 190 degrees F. I did this at first to serve as a humidifier and then thought - why not use all this abundant hot water for washing dishes, clothing, and bathing? I discovered that you can bathe yourself just fine by filling a 5 gallon plastic bucket half full of scalding hot water, take it to the bathroom, fill the remainder of the bucket with cold water, soak a large towel with very the warm water in the bucket, and sponge bath oneself in the shower stall. It's just the same as taking a shower. Next, I tried using the hot water from the wood heater in my washing machine, using the same 5 gallon bucket. Works great. So now I really don't need a water heater anymore, at least not in winter. And I've got a great wood heater powered humidifier running all the time that keeps things humid to the point I see condensation sometimes on the inside surfaces of my windows.
A few weeks ago I placed a big piece of sheet metal on top of the wood heater lid so that heat could only escape out of the side vents of the sheet metal cabinet around the heater. The air temp would build up to around 350 to 400 degrees under the now solid lid. I'm now baking cornbread, potatoes, cakes etc. in there just as I do in my electric range. At the moment, my heater is doing the work of many major appliances. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, I don't need a clothes dryer right now either. Clothing dries very fast on racks in the hot living room, even with the high humidity. I've found a way to sorta live off grid here just using my Ashley heater.
This season I decided to start using the cooktop which is a feature on my stove, you raise the vented sheet metal lid on the stove and place cookpots or frying pans on the top of the firebox. The metal there is rather thin and it gets hot enough to heat a couple of very large pots of water up to as high as 190 degrees F. I did this at first to serve as a humidifier and then thought - why not use all this abundant hot water for washing dishes, clothing, and bathing? I discovered that you can bathe yourself just fine by filling a 5 gallon plastic bucket half full of scalding hot water, take it to the bathroom, fill the remainder of the bucket with cold water, soak a large towel with very the warm water in the bucket, and sponge bath oneself in the shower stall. It's just the same as taking a shower. Next, I tried using the hot water from the wood heater in my washing machine, using the same 5 gallon bucket. Works great. So now I really don't need a water heater anymore, at least not in winter. And I've got a great wood heater powered humidifier running all the time that keeps things humid to the point I see condensation sometimes on the inside surfaces of my windows.
A few weeks ago I placed a big piece of sheet metal on top of the wood heater lid so that heat could only escape out of the side vents of the sheet metal cabinet around the heater. The air temp would build up to around 350 to 400 degrees under the now solid lid. I'm now baking cornbread, potatoes, cakes etc. in there just as I do in my electric range. At the moment, my heater is doing the work of many major appliances. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, I don't need a clothes dryer right now either. Clothing dries very fast on racks in the hot living room, even with the high humidity. I've found a way to sorta live off grid here just using my Ashley heater.
