What's the future for wood furnaces and stoves?

[H-Ranch]

I have a years long "discussion" going on with one of my OWB buddies who swears he needs wet wood! Unbelievable. He purchases all his wood and wont take dry wood And he is a very successful man in life. Same guy is surrounded by all the free pine he could ever burn in a lifetime. Wont touch it! Even in a OWB of all things. Haaaaaaaaaa.

Purple haze is my description of his place!

Sadly the response will be to ban wood burning for all instead of dealing with problem users.

 

[Mustang71]

Give it a try. You might be surprised how many of us follow your attempts! All stove issues just need one thing to me. Resolution Are you running the 521 model? How about improving the ash pan seal somehow? It seemed questionable to me at best when I looked years ago. A sure way to zip through a load when fed extra fresh air from underneath the load like a coal stove. I looked at the 521 several years ago because they were simple and manufactured in Mn. Unfortunately Daka did not keep up with the new reg's to my knowledge. Sad for Mn employee's. Let us know if you gain any ground or try something.

Yes the 521 is what I have. It was cheap when I bought it and everything else was expensive. The firebox quality is great. I thought about changing the ash door seal I recently changed the door seal and that made a difference in over drafting.

It's well built just not efficent.

 

[moresnow]

Do you really need a complete grate floor to get ash to fall into the ash pan? I wonder if most of the grate could be covered to reduce air getting under the fuel? Just something that came to mind that may enhance your burn control? Maybe?
If the new door seal made a difference I would guess a new ash door seal may as well.

 

[Mustang71]

Do you really need a complete grate floor to get ash to fall into the ash pan? I wonder if most of the grate could be covered to reduce air getting under the fuel? Just something that came to mind that may enhance your burn control? Maybe?
If the new door seal made a difference I would guess a new ash door seal may as well.

I threw wood on the one day and the flue temp sky rocketed so I blamed it on the door seal letting it over draft and after I did that I got better firebox temps and lower flue temps.

The air intake brings the air in below the grate so you have to leave it open but probably only as much as the air inlet?

Idk where to get a new ash door seal it's a small thin rope not like the regular door seal.

I'm going to extend the baffle too I think because it's less than half the length of the firebox so I lose a lot of heat quick.

 

[moresnow]

I can source most sizes of door seal at my local Farm Fleet store. Rutland brand. They carry several sizes. Menards does as well. Guessing the other box stores do also? The 521 owner/operator manual may give you the correct rope size. Extending the baffle may do you some good or it may enhance your smoke spillage experience on reload
Believe I'd do the ash pan door seal first. Easy peasy. Are you running/utilizing a manual inline damper? Curious.

Ash pan gasket part # info if you decide to replace it with original equipment
https://www.manualslib.com/manual/905239/Daka-521fb.html?page=30#manual

 

[Mustang71]

I have a manual inline damper but I do not use it unless I have a problem. The baro damper I had didnt help the burn time much but it did create a lot of creosote in the chimney. Chimney temp would be like 200 degrees after the baro damper.

The latch handle for the ash door is wedge shaped on the inside so the tighter u close the handle the tighter the door seals.

I'll look at that link for the door seal.

 

[Mustang71]

Have you tried making a minimum burn setting?

Like placing a paper clip on the bi metal controlled flap so that when it closes up, it is still open just a little bit.

I did exactly that on my Riteway Model 37 years ago and it worked out well.

I put a piece of sheet metal in there tonight and I get about the same heat out of it on the thermometer and the chimney temp dropped about 50 degrees or more on the magnetic thermometer. It's only open about a half an inch now instead of a full 2x4 size hole letting air in. Dont know y I couldn't think of something so simple..lol
The inside of the furnace is not clean like it used to be before so I'll have have to watch that and make adjustments.

 

[moresnow]

How about a magnetic therm attached to the face of the firebox. Perhaps near the loading door? It would be interesting info. Results of your adjustments could then be seen. Maybe your latest adjustment is burning slower and keeping more heat inside the box instead of sending it up the pipe? Freestander guys use them all the time to adjust. Fill us in on your burn time with the restricted primary air setup. Very interested.

 

[Mustang71]

I did extend the baffle 5 inches and it didnt seem to hurt, dont know if it helped.
The daka has a metal plate in front of the loading door. I'm assuming its to work with the baffle to direct the smoke back into the fire. Without a glass door it's hard to see but when I opened the door I had some top flame in the back at the top which I'm thinking is secondary combustion and I have never seen that before. Currently I'm running 210 plenum temp which is pretty normal but 250 flue temp instead of 350 and the inside of the furnace is clean. As for wood consumption idk? But the lower flue temp would make me think less.

Either way these types of wood heating equipment should not be sold anymore because if I wasnt an hvac guy and a guy living way out in the country with a ton of tools I'd have no way of trying to get this thing to work like it was said to.

I think a EPA furnace will be in the budget in the next 5 years or so. I cut and split by hand from my 5 acres so wood consumption bothers me.

 

[Trapper_Pete]

not sure about wood but I was driving near the big natural gas power station , this was the answer to when they need more energy on short term than the coal , nuke or wind can produce they can fire up turbines with demand .

zero degrees nearly dead still for wind and I am seeing a huge steam plume from the power station visible form the interstate miles away on the clear morning.

got me thinking , yup that is the price of electric heat in all those apartments and such.

a zero degree morning should be a low power usage , enough to turn the blower on the furnace and run the refrigerator and coffee pot , so why is the backup station running what looks like full power generation? electric heat? you can burn it hear or burn it there but it still gets burned to make heat the level of loss in transmission is the question.

 

[Ryan'smilling]

not sure about wood but I was driving near the big natural gas power station , this was the answer to when they need more energy on short term than the coal , nuke or wind can produce they can fire up turbines with demand .

zero degrees nearly dead still for wind and I am seeing a huge steam plume from the power station visible form the interstate miles away on the clear morning.

got me thinking , yup that is the price of electric heat in all those apartments and such.

a zero degree morning should be a low power usage , enough to turn the blower on the furnace and run the refrigerator and coffee pot , so why is the backup station running what looks like full power generation? electric heat? you can burn it hear or burn it there but it still gets burned to make heat the level of loss in transmission is the question.

I read a crazy article about backup power generation for the huge datafarms that allow for the cloud storage and computing that we demand. There were a lot of interesting parts of the article, but the main story was about how IBM (I think, could have been another tech giant) was being fined for not meeting their usage quota. These facilities are all built where energy is super cheap, and also deal directly with the generation plants to discuss the amount of power they will consume. I'm this situation, IBM had been running they're backup power more than expected, something about maintaining the bank of 12cylinder diesel generators.

Anyway, their bill was several hundred thousand dollars short of the quota, so they were being fined somewhere around a million dollars. Rather than pay the fine, ibm pointed some huge heaters skyward and cranked them up. They were burning thousands of dollars an hour in energy. The energy company settled pretty quickly and dropped the amount of the fine to match the difference between the bill and the quota. Pretty crazy I thought.

Anyway, I just mentioned it because sometimes there's reasons for running backup generators that aren't always the normal SOP.

 

[tdiguy]

I read a crazy article about backup power generation for the huge datafarms that allow for the cloud storage and computing that we demand. There were a lot of interesting parts of the article, but the main story was about how IBM (I think, could have been another tech giant) was being fined for not meeting their usage quota. These facilities are all built where energy is super cheap, and also deal directly with the generation plants to discuss the amount of power they will consume. I'm this situation, IBM had been running they're backup power more than expected, something about maintaining the bank of 12cylinder diesel generators.

Anyway, their bill was several hundred thousand dollars short of the quota, so they were being fined somewhere around a million dollars. Rather than pay the fine, ibm pointed some huge heaters skyward and cranked them up. They were burning thousands of dollars an hour in energy. The energy company settled pretty quickly and dropped the amount of the fine to match the difference between the bill and the quota. Pretty crazy I thought.

Anyway, I just mentioned it because sometimes there's reasons for running backup generators that aren't always the normal SOP.

That's crazy, but somehow i can believe it. Do you think people will realize that efficiently burning wood is carbon neutral, or will they just look at the particulates and make it illegal?

 

[Mustang71]

I ended up removing the baffle extension because that 5 inches was holding heat in and the original baffle warped. This furnace is what it is it makes heat but that's it. Even with the baffle in and the air cut down it still burned just as long. The only thing I noticed is that with the baffle in place the coals held a lot more heat in the furnace.

 

[Trapper_Pete]

I read a crazy article about backup power generation for the huge datafarms that allow for the cloud storage and computing that we demand. There were a lot of interesting parts of the article, but the main story was about how IBM (I think, could have been another tech giant) was being fined for not meeting their usage quota. These facilities are all built where energy is super cheap, and also deal directly with the generation plants to discuss the amount of power they will consume. I'm this situation, IBM had been running they're backup power more than expected, something about maintaining the bank of 12cylinder diesel generators.

Anyway, their bill was several hundred thousand dollars short of the quota, so they were being fined somewhere around a million dollars. Rather than pay the fine, ibm pointed some huge heaters skyward and cranked them up. They were burning thousands of dollars an hour in energy. The energy company settled pretty quickly and dropped the amount of the fine to match the difference between the bill and the quota. Pretty crazy I thought.

Anyway, I just mentioned it because sometimes there's reasons for running backup generators that aren't always the normal SOP.

I was talking to a guy who retired from that power plant between Janesville and Beloit, it sounded like they run it at least in part 24/7 - 365 because ILL can't produce enough power much cheaper to make it on this side of the border and sell it south.
even if they got the generation plant on the principal that it was natural gas backup to the primary grid power plants. it isn't so backup any more.

 

[Mustang71]

Alright I'll chime in on the power plant thing. I live in a town with a coal plant and it was supposed to run once a month to make sure it still worked. When I moved here it ran every day. It runs some weeks and then will be idle again for a bit. I live about 30 miles from Niagara falls and they generate power from the niagara river and that power is sent to NYC and Canada. Obama shut down all the coal plants around here except for the one by me and it was used to supply all the power for this area. Now idk where the power comes from but they still fire up the old coal plant every now and again not just for testing. It's still functional and still used. There was a 10 year plan to close it down and I hope that doesn't happen because for living in NY I pay very little taxes.

Both of these plants are in my county and still my electric costs me a fortune so I burn wood for heat as does everyone else around me. This has been my complaint about electric heat and electric cars, yea sure they are emissions free but the coal plant making the extra power is not. And electric heat will cost a ton of money to use, like thousands a year. So back to cutting ash trees, that are dieing anyways, and burning propane, oil, and natural gas for heat because it's cheaper and produces the same emissions as the electric heat user.

 

[moresnow]

Oops on the warped baffle! Sooo? No gains made by metering the primary air? Anyway, this thread has really taken off! Interesting reading.

 

[Mustang71]

The chimney temp is lower and the heat output is the same. It still burns a whole fire box of wood in about 2 hours. My house went from 63 to 70 in 2 in a half hours last night so it does heat.

 

[moresnow]

Sooo? your beating a path back and forth to the stove every 2-3 hours? I had one of those stoves. After 2 seasons I pulled it and never looked back. Best money I ever spent was upgrading my stove. Different beast than your type but same problem/fix! At least your getting some exercise You will likely be amazed if you eventually upgrade.

 

[Mustang71]

I go down stairs every 20 minutes or so checking on it and moving the wood around if you dont it just burns wood and doesn't make heat. I told my wife yesterday I wanted to get a new one.

 

[moresnow]

Jeezus man, every 20 minutes? Whew. That's a PIA. Pull the trigger is my opinion! Beg her if need be There is no such thing as pride in marriage!