The Problems with Woodstoves

10 December 2011

What are the problems with woodstoves?

  1. They send a lot of heat up the chimney
  2. They only heat while they’re burning. Because they only heat while they’re burning, users attempt to get longer-lasting heat by restricting air and slowing down the fire. But when you restrict air, you get smoky, polluting, and inefficient burning.

The answer to number 2 is to add thermal mass. If you have adequate thermal mass, you can build small, hot, brief fires. You don’t restrict air, so the fire burns cleanly and efficiently. The thermal mass continues to provide heat after the fire goes out. The more thermal mass you have, and the hotter it gets, the better it works.

Problem number 1 is not addressed directly, but it’s mitigated by not having a fire burning all the time. The less time you have a fire burning, the less heat will be going out the chimney.

So…why doesn’t everyone have huge thermal mass surrounding their woodstoves?

First, lack of knowledge. Most people haven’t gone through this process of figuring out what the problems are with their woodstove.

Second, thermal mass is massive. To have a serious amount of mass in a typical house, you have to reinforce the floor.

Third, unless you make and install your thermal mass with care and skill, it might not look so good. For most people, woodstoves are for ambiance as much as anything. Having their stove surrounded by used cinder blocks would not be appealing to most people.

And finally, in America there’s traditionally been little or no thermal mass besides the stove itself.

Posted in Burning wood | Leave a Comment »

According to the Forecast, Winter’s Here

4 December 2011

Looks like we’ll have our first days of the season with the high temp below freezing this week.

M and I got half of the garage cleaned out so we could get one of our cars in there. That’s a sure sign that winter weather is here.

I put a ring of straw bales around the kale and collards this afternoon, then draped a sheet of clear plastic over the whole thing. I weighed it down with some big, heavy logs on the west side, and more logs on the other sides. I think it’s almost impossible to fight off that wind when it’s whipping out of the west northwest, but we’ll do our best. I hope to get a few more weeks out of it.

I cut quite a bit of kale, cooked some of it, and put the rest in a bag in the fridge. I don’t pick or cook ahead in the summer, but seems like the right way to deal with it this time of year.

Also, the compost was at 137°F this afternoon.

Posted in Food, Gardening, Weather | Leave a Comment »

It’s That Time of Year Again

2 December 2011

I drained the 3 outside rainbarrels yesterday. They weren’t frozen, but they probably will freeze soon. I left one outside and in position with the valve open last winter, and it seemed to come through just fine, so I’m going to do that with all of them this winter. It would be good to get a few more of those 55-gallon plastic barrels just to have on hand.

Dealing with the coffee grounds for composting becomes more complicated without them, but doing it inside the greenhouse is still a very good alternative.

I have to say that those rain barrels haven’t been terribly useful, mostly because we’ve had few prolonged stretches of dry weather. But they’re still good to have on hand, because those dry spells (along with sudden collapse of the electrical grid) aren’t predictable.

I ordered a 6-gallon bucket of buckwheat groats from Pleasant Hill Grain in Nebraska yesterday (Honeyville didn’t have any bw in stock and hasn’t for some time). I feel a little crazy still stocking up on staples…but the world situation is more dire than most people realize.

On the one hand, as Sharon Astyk used to say, you can’t buy your way into preparedness…but it’s not going to hurt, either.

I covered my kale a few days ago, and haven’t had it uncovered since, because it hasn’t been above freezing very much since then. That’s not ideal, but it does get a bit of dim light through the tarp, and it will be okay for a few days like that. I’ll get it some sun this weekend, and also hope to get a transparent cover made. I might as well keep it going as long as possible.

Posted in Food, Gardening, TEOTWAWKI, Water | Leave a Comment »

Cold Night

30 November 2011

I checked the temperature of the active compost pile around sunset yesterday, and it was 136°F!

I also covered the Kale last night, as it was predicted to get cold. It did, and was about 18°F this morning. That was after two nights of predicted temps in the low 20s and actual lows around 30.

Which was lucky, since I had done some exterior concrete work 3 days ago, and it would not have been good for it to freeze.

I’m pretty disgusted with our wood stove. I don’t think the cat converter is working at all — when you try to force the smoke through it, nothing happens except you can smell smoke in the house.

That may be my fault — I did not open the damper before I swept the chimney last time around, so all that gunk fell down onto the cat converter. I did try to vacuum it out of there afterwards, but I don’t know how successful I was. I need to take it out of there and clean it.

I was looking at a Vogelzang Durango woodstove as a possible replacement. It’s EPA-certified, will take 26" long logs, is non-catalytic, and Menards has them on sale for $600. But then I read that the steel plate they use is only 3/16" thick, not the more common 1/4", and that’s probably why it’s inexpensive. I don’t know if I should be concerned about that or not — they do line it with firebrick.

Posted in Burning wood, Composting, Gardening | Leave a Comment »

The Formal Economy

28 November 2011

If all your transactions are part of the formal economy, you’re going to have difficulties when the SHTF. After that, everything will be under the table and informal. If you’re not doing any of that now, you need to change some habits and learn how to do it while it’s not the only game in town.

Posted in Financial Meltdown, TEOTWAWKI | Leave a Comment »

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