Schrader wood stove

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Spotted Owl

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Can anyone tell me about these? I know they can throw the heat but thats all I know about them. Effeciency, burn time, thing to look for, common problems, that kind of stuff.

Thanks for any help


Owl
 
A friend of mine has been using one for a few years now; it came with the house when he bought it. It isn't terrible but it's not great, either-it does go through wood at a fairly decent clip. His has two round silver-colored air intakes on the front to regulate airflow, and you can burn it with either the doors closed or open with a "draw screen" (like a shower curtain). Like I said it's not terrible but not great-he's been talking about replacing it but has two little guys and things are tight for us all now. I hope that this helped you even a little....:)
 
I'm looking for info about them too. I've got an old one I've been using for fifteen years or so, and one of the doors is warped. I knew a guy who had one with un-warped doors and he could choke that thing down to extinguish his fire if he wanted. Mine wouldn't pass the "dollar bill" test, hell, it wouldn't pass the silver dollar test. I've got all kinds of stove rope (gasket material) glued to the doors, even got a couple pieces wired to the joint between the doors, and pieces of stove rope stacked on top of each other to fill the biggest gaps. Still when I get a good fire going and try to shut it down for the night, you can see a red glow from underneath the warped door.

The ones I've seen had aluminum doors, maybe that is part of the trouble.

On the positive side, it gets hotter than a pistol and throws a lot of heat into the house. It's been almost my only heat since as long as I've had it, warming a 2000 square foot, poorly insulated, poorly weather sealed home. But it rarely gets much below freezing where I live, and if you want to maintain heat you'd better have an ample supply of wood and prepare to tend the fire every four to six hours or so. I also use a manual damper on the pipe above the stove to increase burn times and slow the draw. Puts out a lot of smoke, but no neighbors to complain about it where I live now.
 
Have a Schrader wood stove installed in my fireplace and have been using it for 35 years...it heats a 2-story house in the winter and our upstairs bed rooms are very comfortable. We have a forced air gas furnace for central heating also. The stove is built using 3/16" & 5/16" thk. steel and has a firebrick lining half way up. Vent controls are on the cast gasketed doors and a simple damper on the flue exit. Cost was around $500 in 1980. It is not the most efficient design, I know... but it has served us well with no maintenance in all that time. I burn wood from Oct. thru April and go thru 2-3 cords of seasoned oak & black locust. Clean the chimney in Sept of each year with a 8 x 12 steel brush, downrigger weight and 6 fiberglass rods. We were without power for 3 1/2 days several years ago and the Schrader fireplace kept us warm while everyone around us froze.

Cheers, DPW [Everything has limitations...and I hate limitations.]

ps: I got to know my wife a lot better during this time.
 

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