Eric Hammond

How long did the fire burn before taking the measurements?  The initial observations of mine, seems like it takes forever for the firebricks to warm up, and then once they are hot, the ducting temps start to climb.  Those IR temp guns don't work well on shiny surfaces like HVAC ducting.  For about the first twenty minutes I can hold my hand on any section of my ducting.  After that, most sections are too hot to touch. The pipe that leads up and out the roof, I can hold my hand on that one for almost an hour, after about an hour of a rip roaring fire, then the chimney pipe gets too hot to touch.  I attribute it to the fire bricks reaching temperature.  I lit a fire yesterday and when I went to start a fire today almost 18 hours later, the bricks at the roof of the burn tunnel had just a touch a noticeable heat to them. 

I bet after a longer burn, your temps will come up a quite a bit.....and the smaller the diameter the wood, the greater the surface area, and the hotter it will burn.


Less then 20 minutes ago I just smoked my house out with mine!  I had put some green osage orange  cut less then 3 weeks ago, that had been rained on for 2 days in the stove......I know, I'm a moron, not sure what I was thinking but I wanted to test the limits/potential. Well most of it went ahead and burnt as long as I had other decent wood in there.  I ended up with a piece left in the wood feed that was just kind of smoldering.  I wanted to go to bed so I placed two fire bricks over the opening and closed it off.  That was a second major mistake.  Within 5 minutes the stove was now running backwards smoking up my house!!  I removed the bricks and it became and even worse situation.  In a panic I ended up shoving newpaper in it and lighting it and then it started to burn in the correct direction but not super great, I then had to fill the wood feed up with known good fuel and build another hot fire to correct the concern.  It's running good again, but it will be some time before I feel good about going to bed!

Staci Kopcha wrote:

Eric Hammond wrote:[quote=Eric Hammond
Plus

$733 for the insulated pipe.....I did get a 58 dollar rebate on the insulated pipe to bring the amount down to $675 for the insulated pipe.


Today I will go purchase the sand for building the bench.  I think by the time this is all said and done, I'm going to be close to $1500

Hi Eric,
  Holy smokes! What was the insulated pipe for? (sorry to be dense)

  My running tab keeps ticking as well.  I lucked out with free sand (though heavy on labor!) , but have no clay, so am now 6 bags of fire clay in (probably more to go).
Chimney pipes and kit cost a bit, and then had to get a different one (too long to return the first).
  So far for mine roughly:

(free : barrel, sand, full fire brick, red brick, chicken wire, avocado oil)

Cost: fire clay @ $8.00 = 48.00
       barrel lid:  $10
       gasket: $15
split fire brick: (can't remember... $4.20 each)...$100?
  ceramic tile (heat shield)= $20
  heavy tile mortar= $20
Chimney kit (not used mostly) = $175
triple wall class A Chimney = ~$80
Supplemental chimney pieces = $100 +
rock wool blanket = ~ $100
ducting, t's, caps, elbows =  (honestly can't remember)... ~$100?
straw = (over bought) 4 bales= $20
guide book = $30
video rental= $20
roof tar = $10
silicone= $3
diamond blade = $30
angle grinder= $30
face mask= $10

(Help from Permies...priceless!)

________________________________________  $821

   

Sorry so late in getting back to you.  I went with double insulated pipe because I want the most reliable stove I can possibly make.  It's going to be the primary heatsource for my home and I will not be the only person to use it.  I didn't want the risk of a finicky stove that may be troublesome for my wife to use.  Apparently single was stove pipe out the roof getting cold can cause issues.

The past two days here it's gotten colder, around 41-50 degrees, I've been burning my stove even though the mass isn't built yet, I must say, I love it!!! This is the best wood stove I've ever had!  Today I've had a fire for about 4 hours, It's flat out awesome!

I saw you lit yours up!  Isn't the feeling of all that hard work actually coming together a great thing?

Hey Staci, If draft is too strong, there is a solution. Its called a barometric draft control.   It's basically a weighted door that gets installed in the flue pipe going to the chimney.  If the draft gets too strong, the door pulls open and lets cool air in, slowing the fire.
Example draft control

I've seen them installed on waste oil furnaces so if the draft can't pull too much oil into the furnace and cause a runaway condition

I just got through installing some stainless double insulated pipe, it was Supervent/Selkirk brand....as usual I read every square inch of the manual.  It specifically says NOT to do what you are attempting.  It states to cut a hole and go through the soffit, and to never use an offset kit to go around the soffit.....so I would have to go with do not attempt it

Add another 53 dollars to the bill......I just trucked in 2 tons of sand.  I got the coarsest concrete sand I could buy.  This was kind of a multipurpose purchase.  I needed sand for the rocket mass heater, but I also needed sand for a mist propagation bed for trees and to use as a bedding for ducks.

4000 Lbs on an 18 ft trailer



My propagation bed I built is 7 inches tall, 4 ft wide and 10 foot long.......   I've got alot of sand now.... I intend to use clay from the driveway/pond to mix with the sand to build my cob for the bench.

Eric Hammond wrote:Its about time I update the money involved in this project so far. 

Initially I spent $138.52 on firebrick at ACME brick.
I went back and spent another $49.22 on more bricks and at 15 lb bucket of refractory cement
The cost of the fireclay $9.89
The mortar from lowes $4.28
The perlite from MFA  $20.00
The 2 55 gallon barrels $40.00
One section of black flue pipe $10.00
All the flue pipe from lowes $195.55
Wood stove gaskets  $33.58
Ceramic Fiber blanket  $99
Tie Wire  $4.59

Total so far roughly:  $ 604.63 dollars........that's rough to see.

Items I had on hand but would assign a value to

Chicken wire  $5 dollars worth
Fuel costs for torches and welding equipment, probably close to $30
Cutting discs/grinding wheels $7
Beer total $30

Misc $72 dollars

So realistically I'm in this around $675 ish so far.   It does hurt, but I bet I spent $800 on propane last year and it was a very mild winter and my propane heater was $900 dollars itself.  I have ten acres myself, but 30 combined with my neighbors that I could harvest from for wood and have been considering my options for establishing coppice wood.  This is a project that potentially could pay for itself the first year, but definitely by the second.

and to be honest, I was going to drink the beer anyway....

To get a total so far, everything from above

Plus

$733 for the insulated pipe.....I did get a 58 dollar rebate on the insulated pipe to bring the amount down to $675 for the insulated pipe.


I'm really sitting about $1350.40 so far..........which now seems like an incredible amount of money!  I always have to justify spending money to myself.   I keep telling myself that a good wood stove would be $1000 dollars plus, and would still need the double insulated pipe.  Also, this stove should last forever, all the double insulated pipe is lifetime warranty.....it's just a tough pill to swallow in the immediate.

As you can tell, I really don't go cheap on things and really just want the best most reliable I can get, so I'm not sure how much more I could have shaved off costs.

Today I will go purchase the sand for building the bench.  I think by the time this is all said and done, I'm going to be close to $1500

I said what the hell and loaded a lot more fuel into it!  It rips!  She came to life and started roaring.....all my coconut oil on my barrel started burning off and filled the house with smoke lol.   It became dark so it was hard to tell what was coming out the chimney outside, but it appeared to be all steam.  I have a successful stove!

I wanted to make sure that everything was good before starting on the bench.  I wanted to burn a test fire.  Today was 85 degrees.....not ideal for building a fire indoors.  I used just a handful of wood.



Wadded up some newspaper and burnt the wood.





It seemed to run best with the intake closed about half off.

There was some visible smoke out the chimney.



Some initial impressions....I had zero smokeback issues.  Was not a super strong draft.  You could start to hear the rockety sound, but it wasn't quite there.   I feel like it really needs a full load of wood to get the stove rippin and roaring, I could still touch all of the flue pipe and even the barrel wasn't that hot.  I assume the dense firebricks pull a lot of heat out of the fire until the warm up.

What do you guys think of my sort of lame initial test?  I know it wasn't a great one.... but it was far from failure.  I just didn't want a major fire when its so hot in here.  Proceed to build the bench?

Any updates for a finished product? I'm curious how it turned out.

To each their own research, I tend to research everything I possibly can and over do everything.  I wanted a very reliable stove and found that all your external piping should be double walled, not to prevent fires, but to keep a good draft.  That's what I did.