Cold here! How's your fire?

[mannytheseacow]

[4seasons]

I still am using the old smoke dragon this year. I had every intention of building a RMH this year but I changed jobs and just ran out of time to build. I did get an upgrade done on the old stove. The old grate had broken in several pieces and I had filled the gaps with firebrick to get us thru last winter. I took it to my dad (who has better tools and welding skills than I do) for some repairs. He took the grates out of another stove and rebuild my stove. This is the old smoke dragon:

We have already had snow a couple of time this year. It is currently 35 outside and 73 in the house.
Just thru a log on the fire which was down to a smolder:

After a couple of minutes it took off:

This morning I woke up to 20 outside and 66 inside. I am also burning some odd shaped stuff and short cut offs. By the time winter gets here I will be into prime wood that should hold the fire overnight much better. But I also have great insulation here. My walls are 16 inches thick with brick, block, and studs with a couple of different types of insulation in there. I also have 13 inches of insulation overhead (R-31 on top of R-11) and good windows and doors. It is on a concrete pad so no insulation below. While there may be houses that are better insulated, I am also build into a hillside so part of the house is underground for even more insulation.

One thing I am curious about is where everyone is reading their temperatures at. While it is 73 on my thermostat (10 feet from the stove) it is only 65 in the bedrooms in the back of the house. I can limit the temperature difference to about 12 degrees on the coldest days with some fans placed to move the cold air back to the stove. When you guys say you are waking up to 60 degrees is that in the whole house or do you have a big temp difference from the living room (with the stove) to the bed rooms?

[TruGrit]

.. wow 4, I got that same stove stored down in the barn, plan on using it in the shop I'm building next year .. oh, and I also have burnt grates from coal .. stuff is hot ..

.. as far as temp readings, we got a clock/thermo about 1/2 way between the stove and back beds, high on the wall, that is where I was reading from .. so prolly a bit warmer toward the stove and cooler toward the back .. we prefer the cool for sleeping .. under lots of big warm blankets ..

[matt walker]

I'm reading at the cold end of the living room/kitchen that the stove is in, almost 20' from the stove and in a corner of two big windows. I have a large difference in temps from this room to my bedroom when it's this cold out, due to my poor insulation. I've been waking up to 53 or so in the bedroom. Now that I think of it, that's only about 10° difference from the stove room. Still, it's a bit cool. When it's 10° warmer outside, which is normal, it's not that big a difference.

[Oddmar]

Sounds like i need to come up/ over there and build you a new house.

[ByronC]

Matt, no insulation at all in your attic? Or is there just a single layer of R19 up there?

My place is fairly modest at 26'x40', plus a scab on 450 sq. ft. shop addition. Windows throughout are low end insulated vinyl double pane. The attic originally had just a single layer of R19, and a few few winters ago I added another layer of R19. Walls are still R11, but man did that extra layer of R19 do the trick. The place stays warmer and I'm burning a lot less wood. There's an incentive to insulate right there.., you won't burn as much wood so there'll be a whole lot less work gathering and processing firewood.

It's a bit of work doing it yourself. What I did was to start at the far end of the attic (from its access door) and just put in a little insulation per week. The more insulation installed the more I could tell a difference, and by late winter I had the whole attic done.

[TruGrit]

... last Spring we did the blown in stuff .. about $300 in bags of cellulose - .. the machine was free .. took one day with two people and made a huge difference at the house .. 25 X 50 .. we put in around 12" over an existing 4" over the house and 14" over the extension that had nothing ... if the machine worked right, it would have taken a lot less time ..

.. it was a nasty job, but glad I did it in the Spring .. in the heat of Summer, it would have been unbearable ..

[mannytheseacow]

The blow-in stuff is great. My place is 24 x 30 and I blew in about 3 feet for just a couple hundred dollars years ago. Not sure if the price has gone up much. Of course, years later, that 3 feet has settled to more like 16" but well worth the investment. I have one skylight and that's kind of an insulation problem area, but worth it in the way it brightens my kitchen.

Back to 4 Seasons question, I measure my temps in about the center of the house in the upstairs and downstairs. My place is pretty much just a wide open space with bedrooms and bathrooms to the outside of the house from the center, so measuring in the center is probably warmest with exterior spaces cooler.

As far as staying warm, I have to say, we had our coldest night yet (6*) last night. Last week I took the mattress and blankets off the bench and have been running that thing wide open with just a modular cushion or pillow for people to sit on when/if someone is sitting there. What a difference! My bench surface has been running at over 200* and my downstairs was 78* yesterday. I woke up to a (too hot) 70* and the upstairs was even warmer than ever (66*). That's a huge difference. The mattress and blankets were providing insulation in a negative way to the bench.

[matt walker]

Yeah, I've been running the bench "naked" (not me, I mean no cushions) this last week as well. Big difference for sure. I can store more heat in there with the cushions, but they need to come off to get it out at a higher rate.

I have basically no insulation in the attic. There is some horsehair type stuff, I suppose it may be old fiberglass? I don't know, it's some black hairy stuff about 1" deep everywhere. But yeah, basically no insulation in the attic, none in the living room walls. The wings of the house are newer, and they have old school R13 fiberglass from the 60's. I'm hoping to blow in cellulose in the attic at some point in the near future.

[freedomlives]

I had a disaster last Friday! There was more burn-back up the feed tunnel than any rocketing burn at all, it even set off the CO alarm in the room. I had found before some pieces of the clay-perlite mixture that had cracked off inside the burn tunnel when cleaning out ashes. So I suspected that the heat riser was somehow blocked by pieces of clay/perlite flaking off and being held together by the fiberglass reinforcement netting. I bent some heavy wire and lead it up the heat riser, which resulted in a fairly big "flake" of perlite-clay-fiberglass falling down. I thought I had unclogged it, I lit another fire, no real difference.

Therefore I decided that there was still blockage in the heat riser, so on Sunday wife and kids went to the in-laws and I removed the barrel (not a totally easy task at all) to find-- no blockage at-all, just some cracked places here or there. Then I remembered that I had put chicken wire in the path of the smoke behind the last clean-out before the chimney to prevent rats from being able to get in during the summer. I removed that cleanout. The 3/4" chicken wire was 95% blocked! The ash catches on the wire and builds up until a paper-thin, but continous layer is covering all the chicken wire. The vacuum resolved this, and then an hour of re-cobbing and putting the barrel back on, and everything was back in shape.

Tuesday I put perlite about the two front rooms (before this there was no insulation) to a depth of about 5 or 6 inches, giving, I think, R15 insulation-- for better than the absolutely nothing the house had for its first 60 years.

Last night I was sweating, and the two front rooms (we close off from the rest of the house) had to be in the 80s. Of course my wife thinks this is comfortable!

So now the combination of RMH and insulation is working too well for my comfort!