Wood Heat Thread ~ post pics

I very much enjoy my pellet stove for shoulder season heating. It's nice to wake up on a cool morning and flip the thermostat for it to 'run' and then go do whatever, and to have it automatically shut off when the upstairs is up to temp. Much better than running the cookstove, where it takes a while to heat up, then you're comfortable for an hour or so and then you start opening windows.

On the other hand, it's also really nice to have the woodstove since it's silent heat. And it'll go all night without a reload; I can fill it before I go to bed and still have plenty of coals left in the morning before I go to work. And it's the same scenario when I get home after work; house is still warm and there's still coals to relight it with. Our first winter in the house we were trying to use the wood/coal combo stove that came with the house, and it was miserable. It'd heat the house fine with coal but didn't have a big enough firebox for wood. You could either burn it hot enough to keep the house warm and refill it every 4 hours, or you could throttle it back and get 8 hours out of a burn but it wasn't keeping the house up to temp. So that stove went down the road and I installed our current soapstone beast. It's amazing what a difference the right stove will make.

 

Never seen this thread before. Bought this house last year and it’s the first time I have ever had a wood stove of any type. Still lots to learn about using it correctly but it’s a Jøtul F500

 

Congrats! Can't beat wood heat.
Step one is to clean the chimney. You never know how long it's been since the PO had it done, and it'll give you a baseline going forward.

 

I was advised with my stainless steel pipes to use plastic bristles on my 'pipe cleaner'. It is said that they have a coating that the wire bristles remove.

 

We used it last year but not routinely as we didn’t have much wood to begin with and we moved in December. I have someone coming out in two weeks though to clean the chimney and inspect it to make sure it’s good to go for the winter. I’m planning to burn about two cords through it this winter. Hopefully it cuts down on my oil bill because oil really hit the pockets last winter

 

I've never been a fan of steel bristles anyway; I've got a clay liner in my chimney and I use a nylon brush. Don't know about any coating for the metalbestos but I'm sure it's a possibility.

 

Wire brushes are harder than the stainless and will impart scratches potentially causing corrosion.

 

We haven't started burning yet but I'm moving my firewood from my seasoning woodshed in the back 40 into the one by the house this weekend

 

Pellets are made of wood. Just thought you should know.
Sounds like you're planning on going through the roof with your pellet chimney. Pellet stoves that are efficient have a (relatively) cool exhaust, with a long run you'll need to power draw fresh combustion air from outside, this will also help with efficiency. I run mine directly out side to a 5' "candy cane" on the side of the house. Short run, easy cleaning, good draft. I draw my combustion air in around the exhaust pipe going out.

Ours is rated at 42K BTU/Hr IIRC One bag a day when it gets really cold (sub-zero). We heat the whole house with it. From what I've seen pellet stoves are much cleaner than wood stoves.

 

Got all my firewood moved to my house woodshed from my back 40 seasoning shed today

Real dog's breakfast this year , got some spruce , fir , cedar , maple , alder , madrone , cascara and plum in there haha

 

Does anyone else get critters living in their woodpile? I had to deal with a snake last week. HATE dealing with snakes.

 

Sometimes I find a mouse house in there

 

Snakes, yes. We have small brown snakes and big black (rat) snakes.
When we have black snakes we have very few mice. We like the snakes.
I have heard that the black snake also keeps rattlers and copperheads away. We do not see them, so ....

Ken in NC

 

The split pile mostly just picks up mouse houses. The stacks of 4-footers and stove-length that hasn't been split yet occasionally picks up a garter snake, but not very often. And usually they blitz out of there as soon as I start pulling pieces out to cut up or split.

Oz-
Which PE stove model do you have, again? A buddy of mine is looking to install a woodstove and is looking at PE (one of the local stove shops just started carrying them) but I couldn't remember the name of yours when I was talking to him on Saturday.
He's looking primarily at either PE or Jotul, and I told him that he really can't go wrong with either brand but that he should be ready to drop some $$ on it.

 

I have the Alderlea T5

 

Ok. I think he was looking at a Vista? It's a smaller model; he's only looking to use it as a supplemental/emergency heat source for about 1000 square feet.

 

I have a Vista in my basement that we used to have in our old 900 sqft house , heated that area well , only drawback is the firebox is wide but not deep so you kinda have to stack the wood crossways which is a non issue with the Alderlea

 

Aha, good to know. I suppose you could always cut it shorter, too, and just stuff more pieces in. But where's the fun in that? Nobody wants to deal with 10 inch firewood...
I'll warn him about the East-West stack requirement. Thanks!

 

I actually was just on PE's website; it's sneaky how they list log size. They say you can put a 16" log in the stove, but don't mention that the entire stove is only 15" deep unless you look at the dimensions diagram