forced draft fan

[vwboomer]

I have a Hotblast 1300. It heats my little house pretty well. However I'm sick of having to start fires twice a day. When I get home in the morning, and when I wake up at night. You can figure about 30 minutes from opening the door to getting some heat out of it. Granted, it's a cheap furnace (used delivered 2 years old $300 ).

From what I've gathered here, some people hate the draft fans, some people love em. I shied away at first due to a smoldering fire creating creosote.
I'd like to give it a try though and am looking for information. The cheapest I've found the HB kit for is $160. I think I can piece something together for about $50. I need to know the CFM of the blowers so I have enough fan, but not too much.

Rather than use the limit controls and all that is supplied with the kit, I could probably run it off my PID controller which is currently only showing me flue temp. Using that to switch a relay on for the fan at a given temp should work just as well, plus I can turn it off from the living room when I want to not use it.

Anyone ever done something similar, and have info on the fan rating?

 

[laynes69]

I'll tell you the design is worthless. You will not see any benefit using the draft fan to start a fire any quicker. The units that have them push air under the grates or level with the fire work much better. When you put the fan on the unit, you will also introduce more air whether its running or not. Running or not, your burn times will be reduced. If you want to do it, I would recommend purchasing the kit. Everything is there thats been tested with the furnace to ensure its safety. The limit/control goes hand and hand with the distribution blower and the forced draft. When we had our old furnace, if I woke up hearing the forced draft fan the fire was out and the furnace was cold. I wouldn't consider placing blowers and other controls on the furnace. Its a design that can overheat quickly if something goes wrong. I bought a kit and thought it would be much better, but it just made things worse. Updgrading to a better furnace would solve those problems, but then theres cost. I have seen those furnaces from the 1300-1500 hotblast units sell for 600.00 used around here. You would easily get your money back and then some.

 

[vwboomer]

I was thinking I could set the limit by the flue temp. turn it on at 300, off at 400. That would keep it from overfiring. I did try running it last winter with the rear plug removed, and didn't much care for the lack of control and went back to just using the ashpan door.

But yeah a better furnace would be nice. I already have about 4 more years before the 'break even' point on equipment purchases though. I'm on NatGas and it's pretty inexpensive really. My neighbors highest bill was $150/mo last year.

Guess I'll keep an eye out for a cheaper used unit, and allocate and hour and a half to making fire every day (go through a LOT of kindling) :bang:

 

[laynes69]

Why do you have to build a couple of fires a day? Your work schedule or short burns? That would get old fast I'm sure. If our home was 150 a month to heat, I would ditch wood in a heartbeat.

 

[vwboomer]

I work between 8 and 12 hours a day, usually 8. But I'm the only one at the house. I work 3rd, so I make a fire when I get home to a cold house, and by 10-11 it's warmed up. I get up for work about 8pm and have to start the process again.

I might buy a bag of pellets and see how those work out as firestarters, but either way it's a ton of kindling and splitting smaller pieces in the basement.

I admit that last year I used the gas furnace probably as much as the wood furnace. It heats the house up a bit quicker and is easier than up and down the stairs 10 times. Highest gas bill was still only about $65.

While my wood was pretty decent last year, hopefully this years will be dryer as it was stacked in a better location. That should help heat up quicker as well.

If gas prices ever skyrocket, I could probably justify a new furnace, but for now it's not worth it. My gas furnace is 94% efficient anyway.

 

[Jkirk3279]

Rather than use the limit controls and all that is supplied with the kit, I could probably run it off my PID controller which is currently only showing me flue temp. Using that to switch a relay on for the fan at a given temp should work just as well, plus I can turn it off from the living room when I want to not use it.

Anyone ever done something similar, and have info on the fan rating?

Well, I put in a forced draft kit recently at our business. (Really poor instructions in the kit.)

But it's working. I come back to coals twelve hours later and throw in some newspaper.

While keeping the flue at perfect temp would keep the chimney clean and make the operation safer, it wouldn't make the burn time longer.

If you could add a water heating loop, burn the wood quickly and then store, say, six 55 gallon drums of hot water... you'd get a clean burn and store the heat in the thermal mass.

I just read about a stove design that blows in air from the front so only the wood in the front burns, front to back.

Ideally I'd like to get a Sedore Stove for home. They burn bottom to top.