Burn times in various OWB's

[Dan-o]

40 degree burn times

Last Sunday it was in the 40's and I put on 3- 6"round logs about 20" long on around 7 am and at 4pm they were still there and the water was up to 200* and then I didn't put anything else on till 10pm again 3 pieces, and the next morning the temps were dropping fast outisde it was in the high 20's and a good west wind blowing the logs were gone, the water temp was still 165*. So I can get alot longer hours with just a little bit warmer temps, but not 24 hour burn times. Maybe if my house had new windows and better insulation!

 

[farmking]

Twice a day fill for me when temps are at there coldest. Load heavy at 5pm then about half a load at 7am. Thats keeping my old 2 story farm house at 72to 78 degrees and also heating the DHW.

 

[ngzcaz]

This is basically to pipewelder.. well, you are right. They aren't for everyone. I like you am 62 closing in fast on 63 this month and there is a lot of work no doubt. Personally, the satisfaction I get from screwing some Arab out of another diamond studded vehicle is worth more to me than gold. As long as I have my health I'll continue the way I'm going. The feeling of independence sometimes cant be measured in dollars and cents. There will be a day I cant do it, and I reluctantly will turn to another heat source.

I also enjoy the woods.. always have, I like the exercise and fresh air. It gives me a chance to think, to ponder, and to chuckle a bit in thinking I and others are turning back the clocks 150 to 200 years...... well enough already. Hope you are able to get what you want and will be happy with it. Thats really what its all about.

:greenchainsaw:

 

[Tracker83]

The word HONEST probably wasn't the best choice of words. I truly meant no offense to anyone.

I talked to ALOT of people before building my OWB about theirs and what their opinions etc was on the OWB that they have. The longest burn time that anybody claimed and stuck to was 24 hours while heating their house and that was ONE guy out of I'd bet 20 that I talked to.
A few of the people I talked to admitted to not even knowing how much wood they burned due to tossing in wood every time they walked by it. Everyone else was 2 to 3 loadings a day. Most were "heavy load in morning/ a few pieces mid day/ heavy load at night". I had a few wanna tell me the 24 hour thing but after a little coaxing I got em admit that it was during 40 plus degree weather. colder than that and it was 2 to 3 a day.

Kinda like smoking. You don't even realize how many cigs in a day unless ya really sit down and count.

Well, I can't speak for everybody, but I certainly am not forgetting how often I am filling the stove. I have a routine. Every night at 9:00PM I bundle up and head outside to fill'r up. At no point during the rest of the day am I anywhere near the vicinity of the stove. That's right now, not 40 deg weather (yesterday's high was 20F). Seeing as I am further north than you maybe I am the exception to the rule. I dunno. Sounds like you have talked to many more OWB owners than I have. But the HONEST truth is that I easily burn 24 hours. In fact, this time of year I am gone almost every weekend deer hunting. I fill the stove chocked full of seasoned red oak at 7:00PM Friday night and I do not get back home until usually after 9 on Sunday evening. At that point the wood is pretty well gone, but the water is still hot and there are still glowing coals. That's 50+ hours.

 

[Thechap]

OWB burn times

I have a Crown OWB heating my 2000 and something square foot home as well as my domestic hot water. I burn nothing but oak and can only get 14-16 hour burn times. But, thats with the thermostat set at 80 for the wife, and of course half the windows are open.

 

[Tesen]

I have a Crown OWB heating my 2000 and something square foot home as well as my domestic hot water. I burn nothing but oak and can only get 14-16 hour burn times. But, thats with the thermostat set at 80 for the wife, and of course half the windows are open.

Windows open while heating the house during winter? Yup sounds like a woman

Tes

 

[beerman6]

To AIM you ask for honesty, I will try the best I can but first know that what you read on her is just someone's opinion and ever situation is different. There seems to be a lot of fans of the OWB here. Every time I say something negative about them somebody is offended. Well here it is from my point of view, first I am 62 years old so I am different than someone 30 years old, from my point it is a tree eating monster with an insatiable appetite. It works me to death trying to feed it and I feel like I have become a slave to the machine. This past week has been cold and windy but I swear I have burned an honest cord of wood and yes I know how to measure a cord. Never in my life have I spent so much money for an appliance that I have been so disgusted and disappointed with. There is no way in h**l I am going to go through another winter with this OWB. I have not tried coal in it yet but I am going to. I simply refuse to cut 3 times as much wood as should be needed. Am presently shopping for an inside wood coal boiler and I will sell the monster for whatever I can get.

:greenchainsaw: Why dont you tell us how you REALLY feel...

 

[JC31]

Been using my woodmaster 4400 since Oct. 1st. Im heating 2400 sf new house well insulated and dhw. I load the rear of the burner to the top with roughly 24 inch logs nothing but coals in the front half. I have only loaded once a day in the evening since installed with temps. now in the teens. I could easily load more wood if necessary. Cant see ever having to load more than once a day.I was burning poplar during warmer temps. and now am burning dead standing oak cut in Aug. I am very satisfied with my boiler.

 

[bowtechmadman]

I religiously fill (5 - 7 chunks) twice a day...once in the morning on the way out to go to work...and again in the evening when i get home from work. Loading a 5500 Woodmaster heating nearly 4000sq. ft home at 73 and DHW.
I can go nearly 48 hours in sub 20 degree weather when i have to (away for the weekend). Stack her tight as can be and drop all thermostats to 60 degrees.
Why would anyone have the need to BS burn times? Yep I use alot of wood...each to their own.
Many variables to determine burn times, age/type of stove, how well insulated is the house/windows etc., wind affects, climate, length of run to house from boiler, type/quality of PEX, what type of heat in the home (forced air/water), type of wood, seasoned wood the list just goes on.

 

[AIM]

Why would anyone have the need to BS burn times?

It's a mystery to me as well.

 

[pipe welder]

I don't get on here to bash the OWB or anybody that owns one. I to can get a 12 hr burn when its 40 out side, 7 or 8 hr when its below 20, but at WHAT COST, I can build big bonfire in my yard and still have hot coals after 8 hr all I have to do is dump a truck load of wood on it. I don't think people BS about the burn time on purpose, they just don,t tell the whole story. Prospective buyers read ads in magazines and go to the manufactures webb sites and believe they have found an end all for there heating problems. They spend 7000 to 13000 dollars only to find out they created a monster because they didn't know the hidden cost was a lot of work and time just to heat there home. I have the finances to buy something else and the ability to do the changes myself. Some do not. If I can keep just one person from buying something he or she will be forever sorry for then I have done a good thing.

 

[Scootermsp]

No two OWB are the same

First of all, there is work involved with all aspects of using an OWB. Many variables come into play so I've had 72 hr burn times and 10 hr burn times as well. With my CB 5036 running at set point of 180F and weather in the teens I get on average 12+ hours. I don't heat my basement, I don't heat the room over the 3 car garage unless the kids are home from school. My first floor T-stat kicks back to 50F at 630PM and back to 69F at 7AM. I go out in the morning to feed the "dog" before the first floor calls for heat. I rake the coals around 4pm when I get home, if it's real cold I may add a couple pieces. After dinner I load it for the night. It works for me....I don't mind the work and there is a helluva lot of personal satisfation that MY hard work heats my home. I have taken 1600 gallons a year of fuel oil out of my budget and deprived some anti-American country of my petrodollars.

 

[ngzcaz]

oneoldbanjo... like the sips. If I were to do it all over again thats the way to go. I remember during the oil embargo everyone was energy crazy and came up with all kinds of devices. One was to build a house out of rigid foam a foot or so thick. Supposedly able to heat a 9 by 12 room with the heat of a 100 watt light bulb. They put a car on the roof to show how strong it was... but then the oil companies allowed the ships to dock they had deliberately held offshore, oil was plentiful and everyone forgot about saving energy.

BTW.. I'm impressed you throw what seems to be 2 to 4 inch thick logs in there. Most guys would save them for the outdoor firepit. Can't beat that round firebox, puts the ashes where they belong. Just imagine some grates on the bottom and a flap door you could open and close at will to an ashbin underneath.

 

[oneoldbanjo]

I think if your house/garage is not well insulated and drafty and you have huge heat bills before installing an OWB....then the OWB is going to be just as inneficient at heating your house as any other heating system.

I also believe that the design of the OWB is not very efficient - especially when I occasionally see a foot of flame coming out of my stack when I burn small/dry wood inside the OWB. Maybe the OWB works best when you have large rounds of wood that burn more slowly - but right now I have a huge pile of small limbs to burn up and I often see fire coming out of my 5 foot tall stack.

I think the next generation of OWB's will provide improvements over the current design. There needs to be a better heat exchanger system so that more of the energy is collected from the burning wood and not just sent out the stack. Perhaps a heat exchanger system that is in operation when the unit is actively burning and is bypassed when the OWB is in the smolder mode (in an effort to keepthe creosote from gumming it up). Perhaps some form of gassification that burns the wood in a oxgen starved chamber with a secondary burn occuring in a different chamber combined with a better heat exchanger system. Whatever the new technology provides I am sure it will be here by the time my current OWB wears out.

If I were buying wood I am sure the OWB would not be a reasonable solution for heating my house and garage. If I had to scout around for free wood and haul it home and stack for my OWB - I still may not find it as a viable alternative for energy. Currently the wood that falls down on my property provides plenty of wood to keep me in supply for years to come. I can get all the wood I need within a 1,000 feet of my OWB and the wood will need to be cleaned up and burned anyhow - either in a brush pile or in my OWB....it is part of the process of keeping my property maintained. I have about 12 acres of woods and there is always some tree dying, falling over or dropping a large limb.

I may be part of the reason that started the comments about being untruthful about my burn times - my house and garage are well insulated and easy to heat. Also on 3 occasions when I have been out of town I have gone as long as 4.5 days on a single loading when I have taken steps to conserve energy while I am away (see previous post). The floor slabs in my garage are concrete and have PEX tubing that supplies radiant heat and they are seperated from the ground and foundation by Styrofoam Insulation. If I get my garage up to 60 degrees before I leave and shut the system off I will probably only lose about 3-4 degrees a day in the garage. It takes a lot of heat to bring my 6" thick concrete slabs up to temperature.....and it takes a long time for them to cool down as well. My house is very well insulated and when I turn down the thermostat and pack my OWB tight it can go a long time before the wood is gone. So far this winter the temperatures have really not been below 30 for more than a day or two in a row and my wood consumption is very low.....I have been loading my OWB twice a day with about 7-8 pieces of 36" long limbs that are 2-4 inches in diameter. I have been burning about 3 months and I have used about 2 chords of limbs.

For me the OWB is not a wood hog.....mostly because I have a very well insulated house.

 

[beerman6]

Thats the thing,there are so many variables(said here many times)That most answers will be different.

Heating with a OWB is work,is it too much?I dont think so.

 

[AIM]

I think if your house/garage is not well insulated and drafty and you have huge heat bills before installing an OWB....then the OWB is going to be just as inneficient at heating your house as any other heating system.

I also believe that the design of the OWB is not very efficient - especially when I occasionally see a foot of flame coming out of my stack when I burn small/dry wood inside the OWB. Maybe the OWB works best when you have large rounds of wood that burn more slowly - but right now I have a huge pile of small limbs to burn up and I often see fire coming out of my 5 foot tall stack.

100% agree with both comments. I KNOW that my POORLY insulated garage is a killer. I also know that my stack design on my home made OWB is a killer.
I don't have a pic of my stack going into my burn chamber but suffice it to say there are NO restrictions. I'll bet I have the cleanest, creosote free stack in the nation.
These 2 mods would probably dramatically increase burn times.

 

[iCreek]

Got a 15 hour burn lastnight (stat on 73), 5 degrees outside, was in the 20s yesterday afternoon, dropped all day, and still only 11 degrees at noon today, Sunday. Yesterday I loaded the stove with some larger mixed 'not so' and 'well' seasoned oak around 5pm, went out this AM at 8:00am and has a few small peices of wood, lots of red coals. I did notice lots less ash with oak than when I use hickory... So I stirred it up, threw in some small 2" - 4" then some larger odd shaped stuff to get through the day.

Was real happy because that is the coldest night we have had this season and I got 15 hours without craming the stove full.

My second year with a Hardy H2 and stir it and add wood about every 12 hours, usually about 6:00am, and 6:00pm during the week. Weekends I burn more junk wood and don't check it until around 8:00am. I don't load it full unless it is really cold, teens to 20 during the day and single digits at night. I can always get 12 - 16 hour burns when using good oaks and hickory, might even throw in a solid piece of elm. House is 5 years old rancher, well insulated, stat set to 73. I love to see a good red bed of coals, easier to stir that way before adding more wood.

 

[KH-1958]

Burn time

I have been averaging about 12-18 hours burn time in my OWB. If we use a lot of hot water from the DHW convertor than I average 12 hours. (well water) Still keeping my set point at 170 and doing okay, even with temps averaging 5-15 degrees and the strong wind. One good point the wife does not like the house above 69 . So that may be why I get a longer burn time.

 

[hydro2]

I have a Hardy and I am heating a 3,300 sq. foot house and I also heat my mother's house. It is about 1,100 sq. feet. I load it pretty full in the morning. When I come home from work around 4, I stir it around. If it is a real cold day 0 to 15 degrees, I will throw in a couple of pieces to last until I feed it before bed. I go out around 10 pm and feed it filling it pretty full. There is usually wood left when I go out to fill it around 7 AM the next morning.

On the weekends I fill it around 10 PM and sometimes don't put wood into it until around 1 or 2 the next day. I may go out and stir it around, but I don't have to add wood.

 

[pipe welder]

I don't know maybe I got the only bad one this outfit ever built. Loaded all I could stuff in of white oak at 10:00 last night, so cold and windy here yesterday that I lit up my old Rhon inside stove and left it going when I went to bed, I knew it would only burn about 3hr but that would be 3hr of load off the OWB. now to the point, At 5:30 this morning OWB water temp 96 degrees, Induction fan off on low temp, fire out and wood all gone, house cold me cold. I lit the inside stove back up to warm up the house while I am waiting for the OWB to come back up after reload and refire. These OWB makers can kiss my butt, this will be my last winter with this piece of crap.