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Post by satamax on Sept 3, 2014 9:29:03 GMT -8
Ok JRL, thanks a lot. Sorry i didn't pay atention to the multi channel chimney part. If ever you go up there for a reason or another. Take your tape measure, to see if the section dedicated to the fireplace is big enough for a bell. or something. By the looks of it, if all flues are equal, you must have something like 12"x12" If that's the case, you have 144sqin which is more than four times your 6 inch CSA of 28.27sqin Which would make a bell possible. But that's just me going crazy. I would try it myself. Remove the chimney cap, stuff a tube in there, long enough. Push some glass wool around, tightly packed to hold the tube, and see what happens. May be push the insulation a bit down, so the chimney part above the apex doesn't get hot, heating the birds And fire away, to see what it does.
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Post by satamax on Sept 9, 2014 10:08:20 GMT -8
So, is it getting colder yet?
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Post by satamax on Sept 16, 2014 10:38:26 GMT -8
I am begging for results!
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jrl
Junior Member
Posts: 101
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Post by jrl on Sept 16, 2014 12:33:34 GMT -8
On the subject of performance... I fired the stove last night with two batches of wood. The wood was probably 2-3 inch diameter. Smaller splits will probably give better/faster combustion. The stove rocketed quite well, with much more ferocity than before. I noticed startup was much faster and it didn't take much to get it going compared to before. It's also some 10 degrees cooler outside than before so more draft/stack effect. The surface temperature of the stove remained largely unchanged staying around 200-250. The heat retention in the brick seems better though.
The second batch went out around 10pm. At that time I turned the fan on and went to bed. The living room was up to 77 deg F with the fan off at that time! It was a low of around 50 deg F last night. This morning around 7am, the stove and masonry was still hot to the touch and the fan was still kicking out warm air (I didn't measure the temp exactly). And... the living room was 74.5 deg F. So it maintained the room through the night and only dropped 3 degrees. If you extrapolate and think about a fall night where it dips to around 35-40 degrees, it seems (gut feel) that stove will keep the room comfortable through the night. Time will tell though.
Frankly I'm amazed just how much heat the masonry absorbs and how long I can continue to extract heat from it after the fire goes out. + 1 for thermal battery effect. At 12pm today, the stove and masonry were still warm, almost hot. You could still feel the stove's presence in the room compared to other rooms in the house.
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Post by satamax on Oct 14, 2014 10:45:06 GMT -8
So JRL, one month later, how do you like it?
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jrl
Junior Member
Posts: 101
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Post by jrl on Oct 16, 2014 5:26:44 GMT -8
So JRL, one month later, how do you like it? I had the opportunity a week or so ago to run the stove every day for 4 days in a row. The nightly lows were in the upper 30's for 3 days straight. It took a few loads the first night to get the stove up to temp. It still smokes back a little the first time you run it from a dead cold start. It quickly reverses from positive to negative pressure, but the smoke back is still annoying. Every day after cold starting, the stove remains warm all day. With highs in the low to mid 50's the stove would coast all day and keep the living room toasty. Every night it would take less and less wood to get'er going and so the efficiency seems to increase every day. Once warm from the night before, it rockets like crazy almost instantly. I've split about a cord of wood this summer that I cut from from some fallen trees on my property, split'em down finely to 2-3" diameter and stacked it on a wood rack. It appears from the rate of consumption, one cord will go a long, long way. So far I'm happy with its performance. The fan and heat exchanger seem helpful not when the stove is running, but when it's out for the night and I go to bed. Turning the fan on at the end of the night seems to draw on the thermal battery of all the masonry and ensures the room is comfortable when I get up in the morning. If I had a big ol' hearth with a bigger bell and more of the surface area of that mass exposed to the room (like what mrgregcrawford has to work with), I would be in a posiition to heat with the stove all winter long. But for my limited application, I'm still happy with the design. It's doing what I intended it to do (heating in the fringe months of late fall and early spring). So far so good.
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Post by ericvw on Oct 16, 2014 18:31:12 GMT -8
Hey there, jrl, Has anyone suggested building your entire fireplace OUT onto the hearth? Just wondering about the effects of that added area, both internal and external? Any thoughts? But, your setup looks great as is, too! Eric VW
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jrl
Junior Member
Posts: 101
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Post by jrl on Oct 17, 2014 8:07:31 GMT -8
Hey there, jrl, Has anyone suggested building your entire fireplace OUT onto the hearth? Just wondering about the effects of that added area, both internal and external? Any thoughts? But, your setup looks great as is, too! Eric VW I actually have a bigger hearth downstairs, but I'm not willing to give up my trusty anthracite coal stove and commit to all the hassles of keeping 4+ cords of wood to heat my house through the winter. Upstairs I can't build out the hearth any due to space constraints, and the physics of suspending mass on my floor joists. If I could find a way to make a dual fuel masonry heater downstairs I'd be all set with plenty of mass exposed out into the room. But, coal and wood are two completely different combustion techniques. With coal there is little heat in the exhaust gases, the gases aren't re-combustible (secondary combustion), and the objective is to allow the heat to easily radiate and convect away from the coal with a steel stove. Also, building out on the existing hearth upstairs would probably violate building code with clearance to combustibles. I'd have hardwood floors butting up against the hearth.
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Post by satamax on Nov 27, 2014 17:05:50 GMT -8
So JRL.
It's nearly december.
Are you still using it? Or you have switched to coal?
Has it worked good for you?
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Post by satamax on Mar 12, 2015 9:53:06 GMT -8
JRL, any news?
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jrl
Junior Member
Posts: 101
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Post by jrl on Dec 5, 2016 12:56:17 GMT -8
Sorry, been off this forum for a while...long while. In the words of Bender, I'm back baby! The mini batch box is still in the fireplace, and I still use it from time to time. I haven't used it as much as I'd like to have, but that's largely because of its smokey design (difficult startup form cold hearth) and the limitations of upstairs hearth space make it a novelty, not an every day fire. I started a new thread talking about using the bigger downstairs hearth for a more serious build. I'm willing to give up the coal burner if someone can convince me it's worth it. Heating oil is mad cheap right now, so it costs me more to run coal than turning on the furnace. This leaves room in my mind for experimenting with a new batch box build.
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Post by drooster on Dec 5, 2016 15:13:08 GMT -8
I just read this whole thread for the first time, and lo' and behold the OP returns 2 hours before I finish. Coincidence? (Probably, yes) This thread was a valuable lesson in listening and not fudging things up by doing it wrong again and again, or maybe the opposite, but it was good!
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