Wednesday, October 29, 2014

That Time of Year Again





Looks as if the wood burning season is finally going to start off for the Small-Hold once again this year. Suppose to see a low in the 20's by Friday and my guess is there is no way I am going to able to ignore the wife's fire demands any longer.

For the last couple of years I have heated the house exclusively with wood using a commercial model 350 Bryan outside furnace. I also have an inside wood cookstove I can use as well that doesn't require an electrical input to run safely like the furnace does but so far I haven't had to switch to the backup yet.




While the furnace will do it's job, often times too well to be honest, it also has some limitations I am not completely happy with.

For one thing I have never been able to achieve the burn times per load the manufacturer claims is possible. I have gotten close but it requires a very specific mix of  ideally cured hardwoods with the proper bed of coals going in.  The system boasted 12 hour burn times per load and I usually only manage to hit about half that.

I would blame operator error on this fault if there was in fact some way I could actually adjust how I did things but the system is designed so that there is really nothing the operator does except lay the fire out and start it up. Manually adjusting the air flow and all that jazz is taken away by the automatic controls. When I try and over ride the systems automatic controls it just resets itself and tells me to go to hell.

Another limitation is the fact that the unit must have an active electrical line running to it or it will shut itself down. This is a safety measure designed to keep the system from burning itself up in case of a power outage so I guess it isn't a flaw but it does mean I have to have a backup system for it to be useable in a grid down situation. Currently I can run the system off my solar battery bank for four days before needing to fully recharge the batteries.

The most annoying drawback to this furnace however is it's internal thermostat control. Whether you have the system connected to a remote inside thermostat or not does not effect the blower coming on unless the thermostat inside the furnace registers as hot enough. Most of the time this isn't a problem until it gets down into the low teens or less outside with high winds. When that happens this furnace becomes almost useless.

Under those brutal circumstances I can fill the burn chamber and start a fire directly on top of the unit as well and the blower will not kick on automatically for nothing. The air intake control wants to shut the air flow off from the box temperature long before the blower thermostat thinks it is hot enough to kick the blower on. The only thing you can do under those conditions is switch the blower to manual and keep feeding it wood. The wind hitting the side of the unit cools the inside air down before it can enter the blower chamber.

I suppose I shouldn't complain because this little problem never showed itself until last Winter when the temps were so bad. Normally our prevailing winds here are out of the West and I have the unit placed on the East side of the house but last Winter all the bad cold came almost directly out of the North which only aggravated the problem. I easily tripled my wood use last Winter if not more.

Still I guess it was better than being on a waiting list and paying four times the amount for propane some of my neighbors were dealing with last Winter. I used all my wood reserves I had been accumulating for years in one season though and was really stressing the fact it looked as if I was going to run out a couple of times. Had the snow or wet ground kept me out of the fields I easily could have run out of firewood last year by late January or February. At this point last year I easily had what I considered a two and half years supply and by late January I was almost out completely.

I hope this year is a bit more on the mild side.

Keep Prepping Everyone!!!!


11 comments:

  1. Keep on hoping for those milder temps.

    the magic 8 ball says "all signs point to no"

    Most forecasts agree with my magic 8 ball.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Anon - Well I can't speak for the :Magic Eight Ball" Forecasting method but mostly you are correct I have seen by far more reports of it being another cold Winter as apposed to the other way around. However lately I have been seeing some forecasts predicting it might not be as bad as they first thought.

      Hope for the best and plan for the worst I guess.

      Delete
  2. You wanted us to keep the cold weather up here in Alaska, and - so far - it seems to be working. We've had several lows in the low teens in the last week, and it never got above freezing yesterday. Might hit 35 today, and more snow next week ... or so they guess.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. RP - Yep so far so good. We haven't even had a freeze here yet really although some did say there was a bit of frost a week or so ago. I expect a couple of arctic blasts each year, it is the Midwest which is known for it's hot Summers and cold Winters but last Winter was just especially bad.

      Delete
  3. Can you build a wind break/fence around the furnace? I know nothing about them as my furnace is really a large wood stove with blower built in. I can get about a 4 hour burn out of a load which consists of 4 18 inch logs. I have issues with the internal thermostat that starts the blower, sometimes it works fine and some times the stove is hot as hell and it won't come on. I think that there might be a setting that turns it off if the stove is too hot to keep super heated air from going through the duct system. I wonder if your unit has a heat range.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sf - I thought about a wind break. I might still do it actually if this Winter starts to look as harsh as last year. Like you I have the same issues. The internal thermostat is just quirky at best. When I start seeing the snow and ice accumulate on the top of the unit I know I am going to have issues. It seems like when it gets cold enough that the unit cannot heat it's outside shell sufficiently to melt the snow there the thermostat will stop working properly.

      Delete
    2. That is so strange, I never really thought about the outside temperature messing with them. I don't think we get that intense cold here or I would have heard about them screwing up from some of the people who have them. You might want to put the thing in a good size shed of some kind even though they are outside furnaces. I am just thinking up more work for you!

      Delete
  4. We have used our heat a few times but the next few nights the temps are in the middle 20's. It was 30 by 7pm tonight. I hope this is not how the winter will be, cold.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Rob - We have switched on the little space heater a couple of mornings but so far I haven't fired up the furnace. Once I start I rarely let it go out except to clean it.

      Suppose to be 28 here tomorrow night.

      Delete
  5. PP,

    Low 30's this weekend, I will need to use the heat for the indoor critters and pipes.

    Is there a way to place a wind break next to the outside furnace to help?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sandy - Oh I could build a wind break. I might do so if this Winter is as bad as last year. I just don't think they tested this design in sub zero temps and that kind of wind.

      Delete

Leave a comment. We like comments. Sometimes we have even been known to feed Trolls.