I love it - it's obvious that we are all kindred souls here! There is no question that the older you get the more tolerance you get for the way things are.
Back in the late 60's I lived with my family in an L shaped ranch house on a river with 68 acres of hardwood around it.
To heat the house I built a wood burning furnace from a steel dumpster which was 3' X 4' X ' 5' . I poured a floor & partial sides into the dumpster with refractory material, welded the top closed and mounted a Glenwood range door, with temperature guage, in the end with an asbestos lined channel to make it air tight. There was no grate in the fire box.
I had studied the European stoves and admired the Jotul front flue principle so - with the help of some lengths of 4" X 4" 1/2" thick channel (bent to a U shape) scavenged from a nearby firm - new material which they had formerly used to build backhoe arms, I welded up a 5' length of 4" " 8" flue and suspended it by 2" angle iron from the top of the dumpster with 1' sticking out the rear and the front ending about 1' from the front - above the door.
I fabricated the primary air inlet system from 2" driveshaft tubing - running down the inside of the front and across the bottom with a line of 1/2" holes
in the bottom section for outlets. The inlets protruded from the front near the top with sliding caps for control of air intake. There was no damper in the flue and I later added a heat exchanged from an old wood burning furnace I found in the cellar of an abandoned farm house.
I backed the furnace up to the concrete block fireplace base at one end of the house, still on its wheels well off the floor and connected into the flue from the oil hot air furnace which was on the other side of it. I then walled the furnace in with concrete block walls about a foot from the sides of the dumpster and connected its upper section into the existing hot air ductwork. I had intended to fill the gap between the sides of the furnace and the block walls with softball size river stones - to hold the heat - but never got around to it
When I first started this monster up I was surprised to see that I had inadvertently improved on the Jotul design. By suspending the flue below the top of the firebox, the flame route was up the back of the firebox, forward between the flue and the top of the box and down into the top of the flue and out the back - in effect a triple pass before exiting the rear into the heat exchanger.
The bottom line here is that I heated this house for over 10 years with this furnace with the only alternative a Glenwood C Kitchen Range. There was no blower in the ducts - strictly circulation by convection with benefit of the humidifier used by the oil furnace - which I had disabled.
I was in the garage business at the time and gone for 12 hrs a day - but only needed to load this furnace twice daily with 4" logs - some up to 12" in diameter that I slid in whole onto deep base of coals. It took over 10 cords the get through the winter - but we were always warm.
The entire winters wood supply ended up being less than one garbage can of ash in the spring - like talcum powder. I lost that house in a divorce over 25 years ago and do no have any photos of the furnace - but suspect that it must still be there - though I had to resurrect the oil burner before I left. I have always thought that I would stop in and take a photo of that furnace.
The worse part of this whole deal was the loss of a beautiful, one of a kind, fence that took me a whole summer to build. I had surrounded the house and a horse coral with over 100 running feet of split rail (3) fence - 10' lengths of quartered white ash between dual split Locust posts with oak pins - which ended up being used as fuel by a lowlife who rented the house from my ex-wife.
Now I heat my present home with a Jotul 550 insert - which works very well - but needs to be tended every 4 hours to run efficiently. I use mostly 12" chunks red & white oak inserted endwise into the fire box.
As someone previously pointed out - I have to get up to Pee anyway so - so it doesn't bother me.
That's life as we age!
Ed
I am in my infancy when it comes to using solely wood heat, this is my second winter.
Right now the stove I have is a Blaze King steel stove.
