New to heating with wood furnace, have some questions

[ziggo_2]

my setup...

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...except i have the baro back on. the key damper just wasnt enough.

 

[cantoo]

I also have a Hotblast. Our blowers pretty much run 24/7 when it's cold out because we run a decent fire and have big square fottage to heat. Wore out the bearings on 1 fan and wasn't keen on paying $600 for 2 new ones so I bought a cheap furnace blower fan at a yard sale and installed it. Much more airflow and likely same energy use. It's a little nosier but way quieter than the worn bearing fan was. My furnace is in the basement in a central location. The 1st few years I never even hooked up the ducts, I cut a hole in the floor above the furnace and just relied on the heat raising and keeping the floor warm. This worked good and cut electric heat use way down. I finally took the time to run some ductwork to locations that we wanted warm and now it doesn't take long to get the house warm. We are using less wood now too. My neice just installed 1 in their house and are really happy with their's too. For the price I don't think they can be beat, just too bad they wouldn't run a better fan system. I posted some pics of the fan (it ain't pretty) on "my firewood tools" thread. FYI, I cleaned my pipes a few years ago and nothing in them so hasn't been done since. Only problem I have is with the chimney cap, it gets coated with crap and needs banged out a few times a year. I blame this on smothering the fire out on warmish days.

 

[NCHornet]

Thanks again for all the replies. Well now I know the thermo disc is working as it is suppose to. We will see how the electric bill looks with the fans running constantly, still gotta be cheaper than propane at almost $3 a gal. I was worried the thermo disc was bad because it wasn't turning off the blowers until such a low temp was reached. I did some research before buying and knew the biggest negative was the cheap blowers they use. If these do go out they will be replaced with quality blowers, or a single blower. As I said before, I read about so many people using theirs without the blowers and planned on doing the same. But now that I have run with and without I can say with the blowers is much better for my needs. The basement doesn't get nearly as hot and the heat is distributed much better throughout the entire house. I have a large plennum box built on top of the unit, both of the 8 inch ducts empty into this plennum box and then a single 12 inch line runs from there to the plennum box on top of my existing propane furnace. I have a manual dampner in the 12 inch line that I can shut off for when I run the AC in the summer. When I first installed the unit I ran a flex line from the plennum box on the stove to the 12" dampner that was attached to the A collar on the existing unit. After the first test fire with no blowers the plennum box on top of the stove got so hot I couldn't even touch it. I didn't feel comfortable using the insulated flex line. I removed it and ran solid metal ducting. Now that I have tried the blowers I know think I could have used the flex as with the blowers the heat isn't nearly as bad. I can place my hand on the plennum box and keep it there with no discomfort. I could never do that with the blowers unplugged. The 6" chimney line is of course all solid pipe going to the existing brick chimney and into a flue that is only used by the stove. I sealed all the joints with the chimney cement. But now I am wondering how I am going to clean the chimney pipe? I hate to have to disconnect it from the stove, clean the pipe, reinstall and then reseal it with the cement again. Is there a way to acess the chimey to clean it from the firebox? Thanks again for everyone's help, I am so glad I found this site.

 

[ziggo_2]

maybe instead of the elbow going into the chimney, you put a tee with a plug...or a tee at the furnace

 

[NCHornet]

That's all I can think of as well, especially if I can't access it from inside the stove, and I doubt that I can.