Thursday, July 31st, 2008
From what I have been reading, it takes about a “season” for firewood to dry (or season) enough to burn. That’s about nine months. There are a bunch of factors, including temperature, if the wood is covered or not, stacked in sunlight or not, air flow, wood type and a bunch of other things. It also depends on if the wood is split or not. Split wood takes less time to dry.
I read that there is also a debate on whether it’s better to cover a pile of wood or if it’s better to leave it uncovered. Some people say it’s better to cover the wood because the rain water won’t get to it. Others say that covering it will only trap the moisture in and rot the pile of wood. Who knows…I leave it uncovered, except if it’s going to snow. I think the best thing would be to cover the pile with plywood. That way, no rain water gets on the wood, yet the airflow is maintained.
The reason I am talking about this is because, as you already know, we are getting a pellet stove installed in the basement. This leaves the fireplace in the living room able to burn regular wood. I am considering putting a wood burning stove into the existing fireplace.
For the past few days, I have been nibbling away at the wooded lot on the side of the house. There is a lot of land there and I think it could look quite nice if it was cleaned out. There are many large Oaks and Hickory trees, but many smaller Maples and Birches as well. I am taking down the smaller trees to open up the area and let some filtered sun come in. My goal is to clean it up to look like a park. I am cutting all the trees into firewood length pieces and stacking it up in back. The photo you see above is the actual wood. I am pretty sure this will not be burnable this season, but next season for sure.
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Saturday, September 9th, 2006
Last year, in the middle of winter and after the second delivery of heating oil, I made a vow to myself. I said that I would get either a wood burning stove or a pellet stove. I said that I would get it over the summer as to avoid the rush. Well, August rolled around and I happen to remember my vow. I really tried to avoid it because I just didn’t want to drop a few grand for a stove, but I kept thinking about how it would feel in the middle of January as I enjoy the warm flame.
I had recently cut up about a cord of wood, so I was really trying to find a good woodstove. I found one at a local dealer and was about a day away from getting it delivered when I found out that I would need more chimney pipe than anticipated. I didn’t want the look of all that chimney pipe sticking out of my roof in the front of the house and there was no other suitable place to put the stove in the interior, due to all the clearances required by the local building code. I decided to purchase a Harman P38 Pellet Stove instead. The clearances are much tighter and the exhaust vent is much, much smaller, as I will show in a few photos below. Here is a great post Paul wrote on woodstoves vs. pellet stoves.
I had the stove delivered along with a ton of pellets so I wouldn’t have to worry about that for a while. I picked up a piece of Bluestone from a dealer up in Mt. Tremper, NY. The piece is 36″x36″, which would cover the clearance I needed. It also saved about $200. I cut a 6″ hole in the wall behind the stove for the exhaust pipe and installed the wall thimble. I attached the Duravent pipe to the wall thimble and ran the pipe through to the outside. One note: I could have installed this stove much closer to the corner (2″), but since both walls of the corner were outside walls, I was forced to have a 12″ pipe clearance from the inside corner and an 11″ clearance from the outside corner. After the pipe was installed, I put the stainless steel turbo vent cap on the outside end of the pipe (photo below).
After everything was installed properly I started up the first fire. What an amazing machine! The stove gets to a certain temperature and the fans kick in to blow warm air out into the room. Also, the exhaust is barely visible and not all that hot. I had the building inspector come over a few days later to give it a passing grade.
The stove manufacturer calls for an outside air vent if you have a smaller and especially well insulated home. We can actually feel the suction when we close the doors in the house, and being only 1150 square feet, I felt that an outside air vent would be a good idea. This takes the air from outside, burns it and sends it out the exhaust pipe, without using any air from inside the house. The kit for this is about $100. $100 I didn’t want to spend, plus, I enjoy making things myself.
I decided that a piece of automotive exhaust flex pipe with a 2 3/4 inside diameter pipe would fit perfectly on the intake adapter.
I cut a hole in the sheetrock so the pipe would just fit through. I then cut a similar hole outside through the vinyl siding and plywood.
Then, I secured the flex pipe to the intake adapter using a sheet metal screw.
After that was set, I went outside the cut off the excess pipe and to attach the custom cover I purchased (dryer vent cover). From the photos below, you can see the exhaust vent (top) as well as the intake vent (bottom). All I have to do now is caulk the sides of the intake vent on the outside and paint and caulk the pipe on the inside and I will be ready for nice cold winter air to be pulled into the stove for clean, efficient burning.
One last note, you can see that I planted a few Arborvitae and a nice little Lilac bush in front and on the side of the vents. In a few years, they will grow large enough to cover the corner of the house and the vent covers.
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