So my current wood stove is a little chinese jobby that takes nothing longer than about 14" and about three (3) 6" in diameter logs. I have decided this spring to build my own wood stove.
Back ground: vacation cabin on the flanks of fuji. average low in the three coldest months is about 2 Fahrenheit and the cabin is not well insulated cost to insulate more is prohibitive as I would either need to strip the siding and replace it along with the insulation, or strip the interior paneling and replace it after adding insulation. not to mention the cabin has huge glass sliding doors covering 90% of the south facing wall and 40% of the east facing wall.
the little chinese stove will heat the house to 68 degrees running full blast, it is just so small that it only holds that temp for about 2 hours before it needs to be reloaded. so my idea is to make a new stove that will hold enough fuel to run 4 or 5 hours or longer. All the adds I see for stoves like the Jotul series all claim 7 to 8 hour burn times (is this true or advertising hype?)
After reading about reburners and converting normal stoves to reburning, my first thoughts were to build a reburner. Then after reading some more the consensus seemed to indicate that the reburners while burning cleaner and producing plenty of heat seemed to go through wood faster due to there design, as well as having problems with producing and then burning off a bank of coals.
I also read some about stoves with grates in the bottom with a secondary air feed on the bottom that burned the coals better and allowed for an ash tray to easily clean the ashes out. decisions decisions....
I have both tig and mig capabilities in my home shop so welding and fab is not an issue. I was considering 7/16" steel plate for the top of the stove and 3/8" for the sides and bottom. I have seen plenty of plate steel stoves in my friends houses that were made of 3/8" (factory made of course) so I would think that a slight overbuild will be safe.
I will update this thread more later, time to go to work. anya suggestions on design or any threads that you are aware of that might not pop up on a normal searach please link
Back ground: vacation cabin on the flanks of fuji. average low in the three coldest months is about 2 Fahrenheit and the cabin is not well insulated cost to insulate more is prohibitive as I would either need to strip the siding and replace it along with the insulation, or strip the interior paneling and replace it after adding insulation. not to mention the cabin has huge glass sliding doors covering 90% of the south facing wall and 40% of the east facing wall.
the little chinese stove will heat the house to 68 degrees running full blast, it is just so small that it only holds that temp for about 2 hours before it needs to be reloaded. so my idea is to make a new stove that will hold enough fuel to run 4 or 5 hours or longer. All the adds I see for stoves like the Jotul series all claim 7 to 8 hour burn times (is this true or advertising hype?)
After reading about reburners and converting normal stoves to reburning, my first thoughts were to build a reburner. Then after reading some more the consensus seemed to indicate that the reburners while burning cleaner and producing plenty of heat seemed to go through wood faster due to there design, as well as having problems with producing and then burning off a bank of coals.
I also read some about stoves with grates in the bottom with a secondary air feed on the bottom that burned the coals better and allowed for an ash tray to easily clean the ashes out. decisions decisions....
I have both tig and mig capabilities in my home shop so welding and fab is not an issue. I was considering 7/16" steel plate for the top of the stove and 3/8" for the sides and bottom. I have seen plenty of plate steel stoves in my friends houses that were made of 3/8" (factory made of course) so I would think that a slight overbuild will be safe.
I will update this thread more later, time to go to work. anya suggestions on design or any threads that you are aware of that might not pop up on a normal searach please link