Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1999 09:42:44 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: mheat@mha-net.org From: cam36@cornell.edu (Kate Mink) Subject: it works! Cc: cam36@postoffice.mail.cornell.edu, rff@wdcc.com, esmith4745@aol.com X-UIDL: 70cbd61ead2062baf31c53a90b761c3a Hi Norbert, I thought I'd report back now that we've actually logged some time using our stove. To refresh your memory, this is the system in the concrete, semi-underground house, with hydronic loops through the stove that let it parallel a hot-water baseboard heating system run from a propane boiler. Basically, we love it. It requires very little fussing, the big firebox is a big win. A couple of the things I thought were surely too good to be true have indeed worked as advertised: - the stones do not get dangerously hot anywhere (even though we run it more than one or two loads a day), and - it does provide enough heat for a 3,000 square foot house! When we're using it, the thermostat for the propane burner does not turn on, and not only is the living room (where the stove is) toasty (70 to 72 degrees F), the back rooms, 35 feet away down the hall, stay at 65 F. Some of this is no doubt because we don't have doors on the rooms yet, so there's free air flow; some is the effect of the huge thermal mass of a concrete house. And some is that we've noticed that when the stove is running it induces a small but real convective flow in the baseboard-heating pipes. Granted, the house is very well-insulated; I still didn't think that the stove would be able to keep it all warm. We tried hooking up a high-temp thermostat to the hydronic pipes just outside the stove, to turn the main circulating pump on when the pipes heated up. The idea was to better distribute the stove heat through the house. Turns out that when there's as much flow as the pump provides, the fluid just doesn't pick up any heat to speak of while it's in the stove. Also, if we put the thermostat on the pipe going into the stove, it never gets hot enough to turn on, and if we put it on the outlet, it goes on but then goes off again after less than a minute of flow. We wonder if a larger heat absorber - something like a radiator? or the heat absorbers they use in propane or oil boilers? - would work. We also wonder how we'd install such a thing in place of the 2 simple pipes. Any ideas? Overall, my conclusion is that the stove is optimized for distributing heat through the stone and we might as well stick with that. I've used the bake oven twice now, once for custard at low temp and once for bread. Sure enough, it works. It seems to get noticeably hotter at the back than the frone, so I should turn bread once during baking; that's OK. I've never seen it get hotter than 450 degrees F, but then again I've been observing it only sporadically. I found that when I did one or 2 distinct fires a day I went through a LOT of kindling and a lot of fussing. We enjoy being around the fire, and like the radiant heat so much that we've tended to let each fire go down to a good pile of coals, then add more wood - usually just 3 to 4 logs, but at least once a day filling it up (6 to 8). If you know any reason we shouldn't do this, let me know, because it surely is easy and pleasant. Even fairly green wood will catch when the stove is hot and there are good coals going. Every couple of days we let it go way out and do a thorough cleaning. We recently did a 2-day test of the propane heating system - didn't use the stove at all. The thermometers throughout the house registered the same temperatures as they had before, but the rooms which had been getting the radiant heat from the stove (living room, kitchen, dining area, bedroom) felt a lot cooler and less comfortable. We've gone through about a cord and a third of wood since October. It's been a mild year, and we only started occupying the house full-time at the end of November, but still, I'm pretty pleased with that. This month it's much colder, and as I said we're really running the stove a lot. I still think we'll get through the winter on 3 full cords, maybe a little more. Because the stone never gets really hot to the touch, we can stack wood right next to the stove. This is very convenient and dries the wood out wonderfully. I did once try drying a few pieces out by leaving them in the oven. Bad move - next morning they were ash. Like all fireplaces, it does produce dust and ash and mess. Even though the bench catches a lot, I don't recommend running carpeting right up to the stove. The lower cleanouts aren't as bad to use as I thought they would be. We do have to get into them every couple of weeks (at least to keep them as clean as Roy thinks we should). Overall, I must say that Roy has gone from skeptical about the value of the stove to a real partisan. We have noticed some cracking in the mortar in a few places, notably around the main doors (which obviously expand and contract a lot with temp. changes). Is this normal? Should I have the mason come in and look at it? Thanks for any ideas you can pass along. I hope you're doing well. It's probably no surprise by now to hear from people who like their stoves; still, i thought you'd like to know. Take care Kate Multimedia Courseware Studio, Cornell Engineering cam36@cornell.edu 208 Hollister Hall (607) 255-6083