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Lots of people don't realize it, but when you use a heating appliance that is vented to the outside, every cubic foot of air that goes up and out the stack has to be replaced in the room. With the regular old fireplaces and pot belly stoves we know and love, that replacement air is going to be many, many cubic feet per minute and is going to be in the form of cold air seeping in through cracks, under doors, around windows... any way it can get in. Otherwise there would be a vacuum formed in the house, your ears would pop, the canary would die and eventually your house would implode.
Well, okay, I got a little carried away... actually, if your house is that tightly sealed, your wood burning device would burn slowly and it would be difficult to get a good draft going up the chimney. A lousy draft = a smoky wood burner or fireplace with a lot of the smoke ending up indoors.
My old house is nowhere close to being tightly sealed. When I had a good fire going in the wood burner, I could put the back of my hand up to the crack in the front door jamb and feel the cold air being pulled in. A lot of the work of the heater was going toward heating that cold air! I finally decided to do something about it. But what? The air intake on the front of my stove was a round design with a built-in adjustable damper and it swung open with the door when it was opened to add wood.
Lots of people don't realize it, but when you use a heating appliance that is vented to the outside, every cubic foot of air that goes up and out the stack has to be replaced in the room. With the regular old fireplaces and pot belly stoves we know and love, that replacement air is going to be many, many cubic feet per minute and is going to be in the form of cold air seeping in through cracks, under doors, around windows... any way it can get in. Otherwise there would be a vacuum formed in the house, your ears would pop, the canary would die and eventually your house would implode.
Well, okay, I got a little carried away... actually, if your house is that tightly sealed, your wood burning device would burn slowly and it would be difficult to get a good draft going up the chimney. A lousy draft = a smoky wood burner or fireplace with a lot of the smoke ending up indoors.
My old house is nowhere close to being tightly sealed. When I had a good fire going in the wood burner, I could put the back of my hand up to the crack in the front door jamb and feel the cold air being pulled in. A lot of the work of the heater was going toward heating that cold air! I finally decided to do something about it. But what? The air intake on the front of my stove was a round design with a built-in adjustable damper and it swung open with the door when it was opened to add wood.
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After tossing around many, many ideas that eventually got dismissed because of complexity or cost or being a pain to remove every time I wanted to add wood, I thunk this one up. It went together so easily that I was kicking myself for not thinking of it sooner.
While replacing old rusty flue pipe, I noticed that a 6" 90 degree elbow perfectly fit over the round air intake on this stove. All it needed to secure it was a small angle bracket, pop rivited to the elbow and held to the stove door with sheet metal screws.
I had just bought some dryer vent hose for another purpose, and my quick-as-a-snail brain put the two together.
Yes, I've got rocks on my stove. They serve as a small thermal mass that slowly releases heat into the room after the fire has gone out. The smooth rock on top of the granite block is my bedtime foot warmer on really cold nights. Behind the chunk of granite is a pile of aluminum ingots from my backyard foundry. Sometimes the granite gets replaced by a big pot of lima beans or corn on the cob!
On top is a small amethyst "cathedral" that I put there just because I think it looks purdy.
After tossing around many, many ideas that eventually got dismissed because of complexity or cost or being a pain to remove every time I wanted to add wood, I thunk this one up. It went together so easily that I was kicking myself for not thinking of it sooner.
While replacing old rusty flue pipe, I noticed that a 6" 90 degree elbow perfectly fit over the round air intake on this stove. All it needed to secure it was a small angle bracket, pop rivited to the elbow and held to the stove door with sheet metal screws.
I had just bought some dryer vent hose for another purpose, and my quick-as-a-snail brain put the two together.
Yes, I've got rocks on my stove. They serve as a small thermal mass that slowly releases heat into the room after the fire has gone out. The smooth rock on top of the granite block is my bedtime foot warmer on really cold nights. Behind the chunk of granite is a pile of aluminum ingots from my backyard foundry. Sometimes the granite gets replaced by a big pot of lima beans or corn on the cob!
On top is a small amethyst "cathedral" that I put there just because I think it looks purdy.
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Our family has an old vacation property in upstate NY that was FREEZING cold during the winter that we stayed there, and it was because of the negative pressure and air leaks that you mentioned. I think that this would go a long way towards a remedy. Thanks!
Please correct me if I am wrong, but I do believe a lot of the exhaust is coming from the wood being converted to a gas. As an example, the average weight of air is 0.0807 lbs. per cubic foot. So a 10 pound log when burned will produce 123.92 cubic feet of exhaust gasses. More if you consider that hot air takes up more space than room temperature air. The wood doesn't just disappear. I think the amount of mass that is lost is almost immeasurable.
Have a good week
L
Here is another contraption my father made a long time ago. It worked perfectly (cannot show any pictures or drawings as he passed away over 10 years ago).
Here is the idea : a small low rev fan forces fresh from the outside of the house into a pipe that runs through the stove WITH NO CONNECTION WITH THE FIRE (ie. at this point fresh air does not feed oxygen to the fire) then the pipe runs along a wall and ends where the room is coldest. So the outtake lets in FRESH WARM AIR.
And the process of feeding oxygen to the fire goes on as usual. But the result is quite different :
1) Incoming fresh air is quite warm, and this heats the room as well ;
2) the room is slightly over pressured by this incoming hot air forced in by the fan and this prevents small cracks in doors, around windows, small holes letting fresh but COLD air seep in. In fact I remember having tested the room for leaks and see a piece of cigarette paper being slightly sucked out !… (a teen ager never believe his pa ! …).
This has worked for more than 40 years and was still in operation when we had to sell the house.
If this experience can help I'll be glad !…
I do think that a carbon monoxide detector is vital for any stove burning fuel. If snow,ice or a fallen branch blocked an air intake or even a possum trying to keep warm it could create a deadly condition inside the home.
---The chemical reaction of the burning releases far more heat than what's required to heat the air an extra 30-60 degreesF which is relatively trivial. And likely, the denser cold air should compensate for some of the added heating.
---The main reason for having a dedicated air-inlet is to control WHERE the combustion air comes into the house. Without it, the combustion air comes from the heated interior, and this creates a negative pressure throughout the whole house, drawing in cold drafts wherever they can get in. This means that little trickles of cold air have to come in from all the leaky windows all over the house, cooling the air throughout the house. In a tight house, the lower infiltration rate can interfere with the chimney draft, making it tough to get a good fire going. So either way, this kind of system helps. This last factor makes the biggest difference in making this kind of system more efficient.