I been sitting here tonight watching the various temperature readings at the cold weather command center and catching up on blogs. Since I got back from the wood run this afternoon I have steadily watched the outside temperatures climb into the mid to upper teens. We are also getting another dusting of snow but temps are suppose to continue to rise to 20 by dawn.
What I have noticed is that after we hit approximately 12 degrees everything seemed to visibly improve. The blower did not go out on the furnace, even when I put only a few logs in it continued to purr like a kitten. The inside temperatures rose quickly into the 80's and I had to go out and close the air vents to get a slower and cooler burn which still did not shut the blower off.
The basement temperature stabilized at 36 degrees so no backup heat was needed for the pipes and in general everything seemed to function much better.
At this point it is telling me that I need to keep the internal thermostat on the wood furnace from kicking off in the single digit and sub-zero temps. I don't remember it having an issue with the lows like this before but they have never stretched this long either. It could also be that the thermostat is going bad as I have seen that happen with these units before. Enclosing the entire unit might help a lot or maybe I can get by with just some foam insulation around the actual blower box. It seemed the real issues started whenever I began to see constant ice staying on the furnace where typically it would melt off.
If I can keep the blower going on the wood furnace the reduction in cutting and splitting times almost makes up for the higher wood consumption when I compare it to running a standard wood stove. Almost... I am still not 100% sure about that and I am also not sure how much hauling time would increase in a grid down situation. I can also keep the burn and the blower going for a good six hours before needing to resupply the box thereby continuing to cut the fuel use way down.
The entire process hinges on that thermostat that activates the blower. If it is a matter of them going bad over time I either need to stock a couple of them or figure that weak link just makes the entire thing unreasonable. The up side to the furnace is I can heat the entire house comfortably with no need to close off rooms or run multiple units.
Now that I am seeing somewhat more reasonable temps I may have to recalculate the numbers.
Keep Prepping Everyone!!!
what kind of stove do u have ? Outdoor burner was my plan 4 our new home.
ReplyDeleteAnon - I use a Bryan Model 1210 with the commercial blower. I don't even know if the company is still in business but they were located in Texas which may be part of the blower problem. I had an earlier Bryan furnace that was a bit smaller and didn't have the under ash tray for years and towards the end of it's life it too began having some blower switch issues.
DeleteI love these furnaces when the temps are int he 20's or higher as you can really heat an entire house with them but trying to get the air flow mixture and keep the blower going when the temps are near zero or lower for long stretches becomes rather tough. At the air mixture level I needed I was shoveling in wood faster than I could cut it.
It's good to hear that you've worked most of the kinks out of the system - will come in handy in a grid-down situation.
ReplyDeleteRP - Not sure if I fixed anything just ID'd I think where the problem may lie. Not sure if I can really fix it or just learn to adapt if I decide to stay with the furnace. It's a bit too expensive of an item to just mothball though.
DeleteI was having issues with our backup propane furnace not igniting in the extreme cold so I figured out that they had a pipe dumping fresh air right into the furnace so I blocked that off and the fresh air comes from the far end of the cellar now and it works perfectly. What I am leading up to is can you reroute your air intake to preheat somehow. It may not be possible but if your fresh air wasn't as cold, it may help, I don't know how air is routed in those, it may make no difference and just be cold period. A few degrees does make a difference not to mention the wind.
ReplyDeleteSf - I am not sure if I can. The air intake on this model is in the door and designed to pull from outside air. They claim it is better but I am thinking under these conditions it may not be. However the intake for the blower is a separate compartment that draws the air out of the house. The burn box is suppose to heat up the blower chamber to 160 degrees to kick in. They claim it is insulated behind 10 gauge galvanized but I am seriously starting to think it just isn't enough under these long term cold conditions.
DeleteThere is probably a way to put an adjustable thermostat on it. For equipment that isn't designed for it, it can be a pain to retrofit one, but it is generally worth it. Your preset control's are generally set to work for a large swath of the country without regards to local conditions or the specific application where the equipment is employed. For instance this summer I had our maintenance crew replace a bunch of TXV valves with adjustable ones and fine tune the HVAC units superheat. The first results came sooner than expected. On a building with 7 five ton units we were able to lock three of them out; a dramatic improvement.
ReplyDeleteBest,
Dan
P.s. I'm not assuming you have no attic insulation; just inadequate insulation. Up to about R60 more attic insulation makes good sense. After that cost continues to rise linearly while benefit starts tapering off. Same can be said for the walls up to around R40.
Dan - Sorry if you thought I was being snippy with you. I certainly didn't want to come off that way to a genius such as yourself. You have solved a number of my little problems over the years so I know you know what you are talking about.
DeleteThe attic actually had some old blown/shredded newspaper up there. Some of the scraps had a 1902 date on them I put a layer of R-45 up there about 3 years ago on top of the other but as I said I could put a lot more. Sure anyone who claims they can;t update their insulation is fibbing in my opinion but honestly as long as the blower is going on that wood furnace the house being cold is not the issue.
Too many people kept responding with advice that was irrelevant. The house holds heat just fine. In fact better than fine many times I have to open a window it gets so warm. The problem is keeping the damned blower going.
I did have some issues with the basement because I have never heated the basement before. Never needed to as the residual heat from the upstairs always kept it warm enough down there and I added some hay bales around the exposed part of the foundation.
All comes to naught if the blower will not kick in though, and it becomes unsustainable when I literally have to feed the firebox like an old fashioned steam engine to keep the blower going.
Supposedly the thermostat is inside the back casing. I may have to look into seeing if I can adjust it's setting or something. When that blower shuts off I waste a lot of fuel.
I have to go back and read your posts about your ability to monitor temperatures from one spot in your house. I would dearly love to be able to track the tempertures in the apartment, the shop, the laundry room and outside from one location. Right now all I have is one of those sensors you put outside and read inside. I can't put one of those in each location because of frequency interference.
ReplyDeleteWe are burning wood again to save propane. It's a lot of work. Especially since even damping down the stove at night I have to restock it several times. One of the few good things about insomnia is that I have no trouble doing it. I just don't like to.
Harry - It's a meade long range readout unit with five channels to connect upto five sensors to it. I am only using three one for the barn, one outside and one in the basement.
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