Wood stove heat

I wouldn't give up on the insert idea. Fireplaces are kinda useless. Very nice looking, but useless. An insert will give you 70% of the fireplace experience, and actually help heat your house. It doesn't have to be perfect to be worth it.
 
Someday I want to build my own house, no insurance, no codes inspections, just built with common sense and efficiency in mind. I imagine some areas would be overbuilt to far exceed codes while others would sacrifice compliance for extreme gains in efficiency.

Build it out in the country of course.
 
I would do the outside one right now, but honestly i don't wanna swing the glycol right now or honestly ever. I would even consider a coal stove for ease of use. I do wonder about doing a wood stove inside and adding a hot water coil to run in my furnace tho.
 
Construct insulated shed , firewall it , 1 55 gal drum , vogelzang barrel stove kit , heat exchanger inside barrel (can be a simple welded cylinder with npt threads on either end) , taco or other circulation pump , 18 wheeler radiator (fan forced can be added later ) 5 gal water tank with cover inside house and pump inside ..... Fire is outside contained in barrel - glycol or plain water is circulated via pump ... you DRAW Fluid from bottom of tank via pump thru piping ( underground is best ) thru heat exchanger then back into the home thru mounted radiator and finally back into tank ... should give up to 125,000 btu which will vary depending on amount of wood and temp of water ... 150-190 degrees is ideal ... It must be an OPEN system - If you use a closed system and that water / glycol turns to steam you have just built a helluva bomb 💣
 
Is anyone familiar with the natural gas heating stoves? Blasphemy i know, but apparently they have ones that are cheap, look kinda like a fire, are more efficient than a central furnace, and don't even need a vent? I've never even considered that before seeing it today, and would cut my bill to a third just by doing that.
 
You can get a wall mounted NG “ventless” heater but u have to pay for gas ⛽️
 
I actually was considering a steam system if i did the outdoor boiler, apparently I'm allowed to do quite a bit before i have to get inspected. I do that commercially for a living so honestly it would be cool, no pumps needed until after the heat exchanger, and it opens up other possibilities as well, such as heat storage via accumulators and likely domestic water heating and a hot tub, plus my garage, with heat loops in the driveway in time. Like i said i was rather ambitious once, now i want something cheap and functional lol
 
I'd also consider solar options. Not likely to be any good, but worth considering. Basically you want sunlight to heat something: water or a duct of air, even power solar panels for electric heating if you can find a good deal on that.

I'm liking some variation of Frankie's idea.
 
Can you build your own natural gas heater to stick in the fireplace? One based on efficiency more than looks: heating water, or heating metal screens to glow yellow and radiate heat. Stoves don't radiate heat to well, they are better at conduction through the air (convection?).
 
I happen to have a tank suitable for this purpose that I fabricated years ago ... I’ll take a pic tomorrow
 
Never met one of those inserts I liked , even if one could somehow make an airtight seal against the hearth they don't work anything near to a Stove. Added a thimble to an existing masonry chimney here which was actually pretty simple job.
 
Years ago in a place I rented I just put a stove in front of the fire place and ran a piece of flex pipe 4’ up chimney. Worked great . Read up about tulioki (sp) stoves. Super expensive but I love the concept. You being a welder I’m sure could whip something up but use water instead of soapstone as the thermal mass. When I get back from work I will expand
 
The problem lies in the fact that if i weld up a stove to use in the house, insurance won't cover me in a fire, no matter that i literally weld pressure piping all day. I could build anything i wanted, but not anything inside. So the more i think about it the more I'm thinking outdoor and then running hot water for the coil as i originally planned. It's a large job, but i do literally have piles of steel pipe of multiple sizes, assorted scrap including drums, more welding rod than i could ever burn, all sorts of fabrication tools, a backhoe, all hydronic parts except for the pump (i might have one) and pipes stubbed out just for this. I might get away from buying anything other than refractory, and i have a few recipes for that to make that almost free.
 
Tree09 said:
Is anyone familiar with the natural gas heating stoves? Blasphemy i know, but apparently they have ones that are cheap, look kinda like a fire, are more efficient than a central furnace, and don't even need a vent? I've never even considered that before seeing it today, and would cut my bill to a third just by doing that.
Click to expand...
natural gas is much cheaper than wood. at least around here.
 
I might have to look into those some more. The whole ventless thing really throws me for a loop tho, like that can't be a good thing, and reading more shows humidity and air quality issues.


I've had buddies build and setup very ambitious systems, I'm talking multiple heating buildings and zones with control valves synced to thermostats and cell phones, auger fed corn boiler that would run a week at a time before needing to be loaded. That would be cool, but honestly overkill for now, i just need functional.
 
I have an idea for a wood stove made out of medium duty split rims but I haven't worked in it in a while. I really should get cracking on it. No water just a pot belly type thing with a blower of some kind.
 
Seems the Insurance Carrier is the Fly in the Oatmeal ... adding a modern Woodstove to a good chimney and subtracting the Fireplace usage should be an easy upgrade. My guess is Fireplaces are a bigger liability than stoves to them.
 
If its only a one story the liner cost is not that bad. If you do it yourself that is. A stove (insert) you bought used and a liner wouldn't break the bank.

My bud that has the ventless gas fireplace has had zero issues with humidity or air quality and he sits in the room with it all the time. It kind of boggled my mind how that could work with no vent also. He has been running it for years.
 
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