Another reason to love my OWB

[oneoldbanjo]

Normally I will just add enough wood to my OWB in the morning to last all day - then at night I add more - and only enough to last until morning. I try and build as small of a fire as possible and hope to only have coals when the next loading time comes around. I believe this helps to keep wood consumption down, keep the smoke down, and it makes the coal bed easier to rake and keep the hot coals on top.

We were leaving for the Thanksgiving weekend so on Thursday morning I got up early and cranked up the heat in the house to 74 and cranked up the heat in the garage to 60 (we normally heep the house at 68 and the garage at 50). After the house came up to temperature I loaded up the Woodmaster 4400 with as many logs as I could fit. The wood was about 8-12 inches in diameter and 36" long and I filled it to the top - and then I threw in as much small stuff as I could fit around the big pieces. I then turned the house thermostat down to 60 and turned the garage heat off, and turned the sidearm on the water heater off. Our house and garage are made out of SIPS panels - which are styrofoam panels with OSB plywood on each side and they are both very well insulated.

When we returned last night after being gone 3.5 days the house was down to 60 degrees and the garage was not yet down to 50, and the hot water from the water heater was down to lukewarm. We had about a 12 inch thick bed of large coals and about 1/4th of the wood still left in the OWB - I guess it would have gone about 4 days without being tended. I don't know for sure what the outdoor temperature was while we were gone - but I would guess it was down to the low 30's at night and high 40's to low 50's in the daytime. I cranked the heat back up to 68 degrees and it took about 2 hours for the temperature in our house to get back up to 68, and this morning I added a couple of small logs and stirred the coals around. This evening I will probably just stir the coals again around 5:30 and then add some wood before turning in for the night.

On the 300 mile trip from the Youngstown area to Northern Kentucky I saw lots of wood smoke coming from rural houses. I am not sure if more people are burning wood these days....or maybe I just notice it more now that I am burning wood.

 

[S. Todd]

I tried something different with my Heatmor during our time away from home over Thanksgiving. We left Wednesday morning, returned Saturday night.

We have a Heatmor 200. I had a good bed of embers and loaded the furnace to the brim with hardwood. Then I let it run thru one burn cycle. Next I shut the power off to the outdoor furnace. I turned the indoor thermostat for the indoor household blower (owb heat) all the way down. I turned the propane furnace thermostat to 65. I turned the propane water heater back on, set the temp fairly low. I left the owb circulating pump on, left the furnace heat exchanger open, left the sidearm water heater open. This left 2 sources of heat for the owb water and it continued circulating. There would also be a little heat produced in the owb from the smoldering embers.

After 4 days we got back home. The first thing I did was look inside the owb, the water temp was around 115 and there was still 3/4's a load of wood in there. I flipped the power back on for the owb and shut off the propane furnace and water heater. The house warmed quickly.

The only downfall was the 4 foot torch shooting out of the Heatmor stack from the creosote built up in there. That lasted only one burn cycle.

I couldn't notice any difference in the level of propane in my tank. This worked well and I didn't have to worry about bothering my buddies or coworkers to come fill the furnace. Our temps were in the teens to 30's while we were gone.

Hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving weekend.

 

[Butch(OH)]

Yup, a little planning goes a long ways. We have not been gone more than a day in the winter since we installed ours but have spent little time worrying about it. Not sure if the other brands will do it but the ETC will shut the WM down when it gets down to a set temp (120 I think is factory?) Then the back up heat will keep it from freezing. The few times we have been gone for 24 we just load it up and turn the house 'stat down and come bck to a bed of red coals. We have not burned a cubic foot of gas for heat since we installed it over two years ago. About Jan 1 we should be back to even on the investment, based upon two year old gas prices, and into the savings zone for hopefully many years.

 

[ms310]

sips

Banjo IMHO you have the best built home money can buy! Those sip panels are awesome, i am surprised that you heat with an OWB do to the insulation the sips give! I used to sell modular built sip panel homes and you could heat a 1500 square foot home with virtually anything.... I miss those homes and if they wouldnt have gone out of business i would be living in one myself. THey had 6" of solid foam walls and 10" of solid foam in the ceilings all sandwiched between two sheets of osb.... Loved those houses!!

 

[iCreek]

Normally I will just add enough wood to my OWB in the morning to last all day - then at night I add more - and only enough to last until morning. I try and build as small of a fire as possible and hope to only have coals when the next loading time comes around. I believe this helps to keep wood consumption down, keep the smoke down, and it makes the coal bed easier to rake and keep the hot coals on top.

That is funny I do this same thing, it is harder to stir up the bottom coals if there is a bunch of wood intop of them. So I only load about to the door heighth, when the temps are in the 30/40s. With nights getting in the teen and 20s I will load a little more, and easy get 14 hour burns... no need to rush out there Saturdays, sometime I wait till about 9:00am. I have family close that burn also, so if one of us is going to be gone more than 24 hours (rare), then we take care of one another. Glad to hear you how well everything is working for you.... Glad you were able to travel over Thanksgiving, and not really have to worry about the home...

 

[oneoldbanjo]

MS310:

My wife and I just built our home last year.....and it is expected to be our "retirement home". (We used brick, concrete, vinyl clad windows and a metal roof to reduce our maintenance requirements). We used SIPS panels and the OWB is an attempt to keep the utility companies from taking away all our savings once we are retired. We have 6" walls and an 8" thick roof in the house. When we were building our house we had a single 1,500 watt heater in the basement and it kept the whole house at 50 degrees during the first winter of construction. If you opened the doors or windows the recovery time was very long - but the little heater kept the house up to a reasonable temperature for doing framing and woodwork. My wife and I did most of the labor and it took 3 years to complete the house - I will be finishing the garage interior this year and hope to have it finished before we start into our 5th year! Because of the good insulation it may take longer for us to get a "payback" on the cost of our OWB - but when you consider that we are heating and lighting a 2,200 square foot house and 1,800 foot garage with free wood and $ 70 a month in electric costs - I think the payback time won't be real long. I doubt that I could afford to keep my garage at 50 - 60 degrees without the OWB.

 

[Nickota]

Banjo
Your set up sounds great! I am a few years behind you on the retirement home but I am building my own OWB this month. I live in NKY and we had real wind storm a few months back that provided a lot of free wood to folks willing to go out and help their neighbors clean up the local parks. I hope to get off of the nat. gas and work on the efficiency of the home-made burner between now and my retirement home. I got kids who can pack wood for college money:bang: