My new heating system. Purchased at The Firehouse in Allen, Texas. It’s a Regency H2100 and has a combustion device that burns off the emissions.
Little by little, I am saying goodbye to that naughty, nasty natural gas.
Goodbye natural gas you dirty boy! It’s over between us! #1
We should be doing what this town is doing. German Village Produces 321% More Energy Than It Needs!
UPDATE: This stove made most of my home toasty warm and it was acceptably warm in my whole house. I might occasionally need a small electric heater in my bathroom (all my electricity comes from solar and wind). It was chilly when I woke up this morning so I threw a new log onto the still hot coals and it quickly warmed up.
Tips from experienced wood stove users welcome as are offers of free or cheap wood.
About Sharon Wilson
Sharon Wilson is considered a leading citizen expert on the impacts of shale oil and gas extraction. She is the go-to person whether it’s top EPA officials from D.C., national and international news networks, or residents facing the shock of eminent domain and the devastating environmental effects of natural gas development in their backyards.
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That is wow-ey nice!!!
Wow! That’s a wonderful stove.. almost 85% efficient. They don’t get much better than that! Try to burn hardwood instead of softwood which can be very tarry and will deliver 1/2 the heat for the same volume. Store your wood in a dry place and if you can get it close to room temp before loading it, you will move towards maximum efficiency. Your flue will only requre cleaning once every two years if you achieve and efficient burn. Do not let the ashpan get more than 1/2 full before emptying it. We have a 5 gallon metal can in the garage that has a lid. MUCH nicer to empty ashes into that than outside when it’s blowing a hooly! Wood ash is loaded with Potassium and other good stuff that is a handy top-dressing for fruit bushes such as blueberries and gooseberries.
By the way, we have a Dutch West that is rated at 79% and, with the fan, it provides core heat for the whole of the ground floor, using a ceiling fan upstairs to draw the heat up into the office/family room which wicks out to the bedrooms. Remember that in winter you want your ceiling fans going clockwise to pull the heat up and distribute the heat to all four corners of a room. You run it anti-clockwise for cooling in summer of course. Once we drop into the 20’s, we kick on an electric convector heater upstairs which gives a gentle boost to our upstairs working tempearture. This is run from the surplus electricity we have built up from our grid-tied 10 KW solar array. The propane furnace that we inherited three years ago is a last resort. At some stage we probably will replace it with a geothermal heat pump.. we have an acre of pond that is 20 feet deep in places so that may be preferable over ground source.
Wow, thanks for all the tips. I have my wood stored outside but I’ve been bringing in a large basketful to load the stove so it’s been room temp so far. One wood guy told me I should not store wood in the garage because it might have bugs in it that can get in the house. I’m going to look for a cover for my wood today.
I’m not clear on how to tell if I’m getting an efficient burn. Do I need to load it up with wood or is burning one log at a time okay? I have noticed that when I first start it, I can see smoke coming out of the chimney. After it’s going I don’t see any smoke at all. I ordered and paid for a blower but it hasn’t come in yet. I’ve been told the blower will help circulate the heat a lot.
I have quite a few south facing windows so I get some passive solar heat from those. My gas heater hasn’t turned on at all since I fired up the stove.
I want to make sure no one in the Gas Patch suffers because of my consumption.
Love those high efficienty wood stoves. The other day when it was cold, I had 3 going along with my outdoor BBQ pit for cooking. No use of natural gas or NGL’s except to light the pit.
Bugs? Always a possibility with most things brought in from outside. We’ve stored wood in sheds and garages both here and back in the UK for decades and have not been hit by outbreaks.. well, perhaps a few ladybugs and house spiders!
You will always have smoke on start-up. However, if this persists, you are burning inefficiently. The stove needs to be hot for secondary combustion to work effectively. If someone gets a stove that is too big for the space they need to heat, they will tens to run it “slowly” to reduce the heating effect, and you will see black patches of unburnt material (soot and tar) appear on the glass. This stuff also accumulates inside a stovepipe.. NOT good! If your glass is remaining mostly clear, you’re doing just fine! For most stoves, overloading with wood, particularly if the wood is cold, will rapidly driop the temperature of your stove and efficiency will plummet until the whole lot gets fully ignited, which can take a couple of hours. We tend to keep the stove about 1/2-full as a rule and don’t let it burn down too far to the grate before adding another load. couple of split logs. Shoving a large piece of wood into a stove is not a good idea either. We split our wood down (an old friend of mine told me that wood warms you three times.. first when you cut the tree and slice the logs.. THEN when you split it and then finally when you burn it! Burning smaller pieces increases the surface area available to burn and enables a flame that is consistent across the width and length of the stove’s interior.
Very helpful. Thanks. The glass was staying pretty clear until yesterday. That’s when I decided that I would just put in one small log here and there and only have a very small fire. There is a learning curve.
Check out using wood pellets instead of logs. They seem to be much more efficient and are close to zero emissions.
I did check those out. If I remember correctly the process of making the pellets harms the environment.