joe fish

I want to point out though that I think your House as designed will work really well!   I was in such a rush when I built my last one (in the video) I didn't have time consult the hivemind.   I just started from my budget (pretty low!) and worked backward trying to follow old-school best practices.   What I came up with exceeded my expectations.   Because your house is smaller you can really go crazy with being innovative.   I am not against the buried air tubes,  or any of the heat retention methods.  It just all boiled down to a pretty brutal cost vs benefit analysis for me.  

"Is,  saving 1 month of build time plus 8,000$  A worthwhile trade off to loose 1 whole growing zone of performance?"
If Yes then
         Lets take cheap/free fill material and make a 20" thick thermal battery ontop of R10 recycled insulation.  Etc etc

My fall back if performance was poor, was to simply to add a additional layer of plastic to the inside of the house on the bottom, of the bottom chord of the trusses.    It would take a few hours but I was confident that would put me back up above freezing worst case.   Surprisingly though even with many Sub 0F (even -15 once) nights, 33F was the coldest recorded air temp I ever had.   You can see the passion fruit, That is three years growth.  It never had any light frost damage.

I love this stuff please keep us informed!

Larry,    Hey! I built the greenhouse/conservatory in this video.   My zone was 5A.   Without even properly air-sealing this structure I achieved a Zone 9b/10a with zero heat inputs.   *Very* minimal input to achieve zone 11.   (though I suspect simply properly air-sealing and draft hunting may have done it.   This is without adding any additional layers.  Which also would have probably gotten to zone 11.

I am hoping to build a even better version of this, this year in zone 5a New hampshire.

I'll try to answer any questions!



My immediate thoughts about your setup,  I think some type of 'foundation' insulation for those baskets is a good idea.  It will protect your day-time gains.  You can just clad over the insulation with wood, etc, (or use strawbales?)

Also, Could you reduce heat loss by reducing your total amount of glazing?   You'll see in my setup, I was afraid of over heating in summer.  But also, with lower winter sun angles, I think there maybe dimishing returns (net heat loss) from too much glazing in winter.

**Edit after second watch

I would drop the top most window on roof and all the lower windows on the knee wall possibly.   I question if you would notice any loss of growth/sun input to the plants, But you will prevent, tremendous heat loss.  Just a suggestion!

Looks great though,  very clean!

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:I think it's glorious that wood stove people continue to share their experiences and hard-earned knowledge on this thread. And their passion for wood heat! Keep it coming, folks. What a wonderful archive of practical wisdom!

I am hoping this thread now becomes the kind of resource I WISH I could have stumbled across!

Lesa NeSmith wrote:

Roger Bradley wrote:

joe fish wrote:Longtime lurker,
You can see it looks windy in the outside picture,  Its always like this,  not terribly windy, but a gentle flow,  that often changes directions.  Is this it???

I'm no expert, but have installed a few ...

~~~~~
I WOULD LOVE to know more about your bath set up. We have a cold windy challenging winter for a couple months where I am. I have gravity fed water, which freezes up in the winter...I have an rustic 3 season shower toilet set up that I want to upgrade. I'm allergic to propane so truly want to use wood for heat as well as the water.... (I do not, however, want to highjack this thread - which has helped me tremendously with my backdraft issues up on my hill - perhaps Moosage Me?)

Hey Lesa,   So you are trying to use wood heat to prevent a water line from freezing?   Do you have pictures?   Even more details?

John Weiland wrote:Alas, my wishes went unfulfilled.  We are now under a blizzard warning and the winds currently from the north are a sustained 33 mph and gusting to 40.  So I'm noticing a bit of smoke smell in the air.....not enough to be considered 'smoky', but not welcomed all the same.   Current temperature is 9F (-13C) and it will be below 0 F in the morning.  It appears Murphy's Law is at work here as I have the first scheduled appointment in town for several months in the morning and am supposed to be at said appointment by 10 am.  If they post-pone, it will be a great relief,.....otherwise it will be a cold dark morning on the tractor pushing the snowdrift out of the drive in that 'brisk' northern breeze! :-/

Run the stove a little hotter/harder?  Can you add another section of pipe?

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:

joe fish wrote:... I am excited to see how well the cheapo-o cap performs in high wind conditions.

My experience is that the caps designed to go with the insulated stack system generally do okay in windy conditions. I think I've only seen a blowback once or twice in 20 years.

Yeah I am curious to see how this goes!

You really in zone 3b?  What does that growing season look like!?

Overnight update.

Basically flawless operation.   I am going to report back in a week or so.  I wouldn't mind trying out the vacu-stack however I am excited to see how well the cheapo-o cap performs in high wind conditions.

Pete Arthur wrote:Took  tooo long to read all the replys.

So, you light the stove    in the basement.

you throw some towels in the dryer     in the basement.

and go upstairs to start the fish fry, and turn on the vent hood.

and go to the john/head and turn on the bath exhaust fan.

and look at the nice night thru your wonderful skylights.

I have had to explain to numerous costomers the "power" of exhaust fans, about ten times that of stovepipe draft.

The only thing that beats an exhaust fan for vacu sucking air out of a house, is a leaking gasket on a skylight.

The tighter the house the worse the effect.

If you have smoke coming out of the joints of the pipe, you have a mechanical vacuum being drawn on the
whole house air system. The stove is fine.

These are the big offenders of sucking your air:

clothes dryer
furnace   (combustion air drawn from inside)
vent hood of stove
bath fan
leaky skylight gasket,   because roofers only care if the water gets in, not if the air gets out. Especially in multi story homes.

You are absolutely correct, interestingly this wasn't in my case,  the house is very tight but my trouble was with zero vents/fans running and even a door wide open.  I believe what happened was the flue-spark arrestor was so gunked up and I didn't notice, that the stove was over powering the ability for the stack to dump the exhaust to atmosphere.

It is now working, Very well, with just that taken care of.  I will be updating regularly!

BIG update.

"It's a'Blazin!"

So it looks Like my problems are 95% solved.  The outdoor wind has died down, but it is still a bit gusty outside.   I did not get a single puff of smoke inside during a overly long lighting procedure.  I got impatient and didn't take the time to make a good kindling start.

I will update as I really tweak it, but so far that blockage was the majority of the problem it seems!

Another update!

This is when I begin to feel like a *real* idiot.   I have a Vacu-Stack cap I am ready to put on.   I checked the flue with a flash light to see no obstructions several times before making this post.  I took me a couple days to rig up a safe way to get back onto the roof (9/12 pitch, covered in snow)  And when I finally got up there and removed the old cap I found part of the problem.  After getting back on the the ground and inspecting the cap, I noticed,  Perhaps this a new saftey thing, but the cap had what looks like a inner spark arrestor and outter bird screen/shield.  So from the ground the cap looked fine,  no obstructions, but after getting it up close and personal, the inner spark arrestor, which looks to be 1/2" squares was VERY clogged.  The only way to see this was to be right up on it and I didn't notice it when I was fussing with it in the late summer.   My guess is the cold winds that blow through the cap allowed the perfect environment for the moisture/creosote to stick and layer up.   All this build up, occurred in only a partial burning season!  Roughly 2 months of use!  However the flue pipe has a very small amount of build up,  nothing to even really be concerned about it yet.   The only way to discover this was to be on the roof and dissemble the cap!

I have removed the offending screens, and put the old cap back on.

I will fire tonight after the house starts to cool off and I install a 3" cold air intake port into a sidewall very close to the stove.  I don't plan on plumbing to the stove directly as I want to be abel to stack wood up against the wall, but it will work just the same.  Thinking about the air/flow dynamics/draft/leak dynamics I think I am going to put the intake at roughly 5-6' off the ground.  My goal is to use it as a bit of a 'passive' damper, It lets the stove intake air, and vent fans intake air,  But its not near the roof, or the floor encouraging a natural convection draft.

Its a wind advisory evening tonight, gusts to 30mph+  This is the perfect test to see if my existing FLUE length is adequate to use a cheap chimney cap in a strong wind enviroment.

This is now turning into a cheap $50 cap, vs VacuStack in windy/hillside conditions test