Thanks for the info.
Is it as simple to operate as toss it in and walk away once it's set up right.
The owner of that business did lol.
There are various videos linked on their site, it's kinda like saying I think I can build a better tire, I may be able too, but at what cost. Spending thousands of dollars doing it might decrease the savings a little, but you may also be the next new business owner, go big or go home
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Great info, I probably would burn mostly hardwood, but from what I've seen of the controls and whatnot they could control the burn on whatever you toss in it.
Yes, it is that simple. There's a computer on the side of the unit with a dial to adjust for your desired heat output. I guess I should point out that I don't toss wood in like I did with my old Yukon Klondike. Rather I stack it with the ends facing the door. You can stack a LOT of wood in there.
My house picks up a lot of solar gain on sunny days, so right now at these super low temps my routine is to fill the firebox all the way at about 10pm. I turn the dial to Hi.
At about 7am I go down and pull the coals forward. There's a ton of hot coals at this point. I toss 4-5 small splits in while I'm there. My house is old and drafty, with almost exclusively single pane windows and storm windows. At that point in the day I want a nice blast of heat to carry me until the sun amounts to anything.
Then at 11am I load the furnace about 1/2-2/3 of the way full. The coals from last night are nicely burned down by then. At this point I turn the furnace down almost all the way to low.
At 5pm I repeat the current 7am process. I pull the coals forward and toss a few splits in to give me some nice heat while the coals finish up.
So I mess with it 4 times every 24 hours. It'd be less if our heat demand was more constant. And once I finished the installation I've only had to light a fire once. My old Yukon needed wood every 2-3 hours, so we were lighting a fire at a minimum of once a day. Usually twice though, since I'd fire it up in the morning but once the sun was high enough I'd have to let it go out or we'd cook. So I'd have to light it up again in the evening. Honestly, just the convenience of not having to split kindling and light a fire so often is really great.
And about making one, sure, a talented fabricator could probably make something pretty close, but it'd take a lot of work and experimentation. The draft is controlled by a computer which reads the combustion temp via a thermocouple in the firebox. A lot of work went into the design of these furnaces, that's pretty clear. The way the air is preheated and introduced is pretty complex. Plus, the main air intake is a solenoid controlled door with 4 positions which modulate based on the computer's instructions. It has to balance a clean burn with the desired heat output set by the user.
So, in my opinion, the purchase isn't cheap, but building one wouldn't be easy. Nor would it be cheap. It weighs 700+ pounds. And you'd need to buy the blower too. In my estimation, a talented fab guy would probably be better suited to make an hourly wage doing what they normally do and apply their earnings to the purchase rather than attempt a DIY version. Oh, and I forgot that the Vapor Fire is UL listed and EPA rated. The EPA rating might not mean much to the user, but the UL listing (or lack thereof with a homemade unit) might be of significance to your insurance agent.
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, funnier if you been staying up with the thread, at least to me.
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