windthrown
361 Junkie
Bs?
Well, my thermodynamics engineering education says it is not BS...
Ignorance is bliss.
Well, my thermodynamics engineering education says it is not BS...
Ignorance is bliss.
Woodmaster vs Central Boiler advice please
- Thread starter HUSKYMAN
- Start date
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Im ignorant as to why a natural draft would be better. Since you have a thermo dynamics background please explain it in depth.
opcorn:
grandpatractor
Addicted to ArboristSite
I'm under the impression that the fire actually burns hotter with a forced draft and the air coming up thru the coals. just my 2 scents
I think hotter would be a more complete burn?
I think hotter would be a more complete burn?
ghitch75
ArboristSite Guru
well i'm not an thermodynamics engineer and i have worked almost every brand of boiler out there and the best way i can put it is your not smokin' hams your makin' heat and the worst out there is a centrel boiler(with n/a draft) and far as recovery time(up to 4 hours on start up) and mine dosen't do any better with the blower off and just with n/a draft...and i'm not sayin' you need to run the blower wide open(mine has a reastat) it just takes a small amount for blower to fire it hot(can recover form dead cold 45df to 180df in less than an hour) even with green wood!
as far as warrenty's go with any and i mean any dealer of owb's you would be better to wipe you a@# with it than getting them to stand behind it even if you follow there giude lines for step and use they will find something you did wrong and you warrrenty will be VOILD!!
even the one's i sell!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
as far as warrenty's go with any and i mean any dealer of owb's you would be better to wipe you a@# with it than getting them to stand behind it even if you follow there giude lines for step and use they will find something you did wrong and you warrrenty will be VOILD!!
even the one's i sell!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
windthrown
361 Junkie
CB warantee
The CB warantee really sucks? You have any personal personal experience with that? Anything that has gone wrong with *our* CB has been replaced on the spot. New controller and aquastat after controller readout dial failed, unit still worked OK. Aquastat did not need replacing. A new damper door after I found that there was a small warp in the mount hinge. The dealer replaced entire damper door and hinge with a new one on the spot. As a result of the damper door not closing right, the unit boiled over. So he also gave us a free gallon of anti-corrosion fluid as well. I did not even ask for that. I had not even thought about losing corrosion inhibitor in the boil-over. So far, anything that has gone wrong with the CB unit (minor stuff) and they have replaced all parts at no cost, with no hassle and instantly. So from my personal experience I can say that the CB warantee is a good one, and they live up to it.
While we are on the subject, we ordered out CB unit and paid for it expecting it to be delivered in 6 weeks. It came in 3 weeks. It was here before the pad was poured for it. Every time I have called the dealer he was there and/or called back. Every time I called the factroy they had a technical expert there to deal with my questions. Mainly with design, and sizing the heat exchangers for the unit with our given situation. The heat exchangers were and are a perfect fit for our heat needs here. The thing runs pretty flawlessly. Keep the fire going, and that's pretty much it. As for draft, I will get to that in the next post...
The CB warantee really sucks? You have any personal personal experience with that? Anything that has gone wrong with *our* CB has been replaced on the spot. New controller and aquastat after controller readout dial failed, unit still worked OK. Aquastat did not need replacing. A new damper door after I found that there was a small warp in the mount hinge. The dealer replaced entire damper door and hinge with a new one on the spot. As a result of the damper door not closing right, the unit boiled over. So he also gave us a free gallon of anti-corrosion fluid as well. I did not even ask for that. I had not even thought about losing corrosion inhibitor in the boil-over. So far, anything that has gone wrong with the CB unit (minor stuff) and they have replaced all parts at no cost, with no hassle and instantly. So from my personal experience I can say that the CB warantee is a good one, and they live up to it.
While we are on the subject, we ordered out CB unit and paid for it expecting it to be delivered in 6 weeks. It came in 3 weeks. It was here before the pad was poured for it. Every time I have called the dealer he was there and/or called back. Every time I called the factroy they had a technical expert there to deal with my questions. Mainly with design, and sizing the heat exchangers for the unit with our given situation. The heat exchangers were and are a perfect fit for our heat needs here. The thing runs pretty flawlessly. Keep the fire going, and that's pretty much it. As for draft, I will get to that in the next post...
windthrown
361 Junkie
Heat transfer in OWBs
OK boys and girls, this is not a sales pitch to sell you lots of crap that you do not really need on an outdoor wood boiler. As a matter of fact, you can save money by not buying a lot of stuff that they sell on outdoor wood boilers. Why? Becasue a lot of the features are not really needed. In two cases in particular, stainless steel water jackets and forced air draft fan.
Yes, CB does sell both the SS options and forced air drafts on their boilers. But you do not need either one. Strainless steel in particular is not great for several reasons. One is that it is really hard to weld SS. Welding fixes in the field are going to be really hard to do. Another reason is that SS is about $1,000 more expensive to buy. Another reason is that SS does not conduct heat as well as plain carbon steel does. And finally, in the case of CB units, their carbon steel is really thick stuff and it is not apt to rust through anyway. As long as you keep the right level of corrosion inhibitor in the water and tank (stays good for about 3 years before needing replaced) you will get no rust on that side of the boiler. Creosote is actually very mild on steel surfaces. I have the data and can post it if needed, but creosote will not cause a sttel tank to rust from the firebox side of the boiler. That leaves the ash area of the boiler. You can use Ashtrol in the ashes, which is basically agricultural lime to ballance the acid pH of ashes in your boiler pan to keep the ashes from rusting out the pan. I do not use it, and I do not have any rust in the firebox of my boiler. The place that the boiler is most apt to rust is if you are burning green or wet wood and it seeps into the ashes and gets trapped between the ashes and the steel. I scrape the ash pan down to the steel once a week with a plain garden hoe, and that loosens any chunks of ash and/or water that are next to the steel. Again, after using it for the better part of 2 heating seasons, there is no rust in our plain steel firebox.
Now, on to forced air draft. Again, forced air drafts are specific to the design of the firebox. I can only say that in the case of the Central Boiler design they are not really needed. In actuality they are not needed in many designs of boilers out there on the market today. Yes, CB sells them as an option, becasue people like the ones on this forum seem to have it in their heads that a fan is somehow better than natural convection for moving gasses around in their boilers. In the case of the CB, the damper is more than enough to get the fire going and keep the fire hot. As someone else here stated, it can take longer to get the fire going with a natural draft than with a fan. That may be so, from a cold start. If you let the fire go out all the time and let the water get stone cold between firing, then you may indeed need a fan to get it going fast enough to heat your house. But in the case that you fill the unit with enough wood on a regular basis, like 2x a day, that will not be a problem. I can let our fire go out and the water will still stay above 120 before I can get more wood on it the next morning. There are always enough coals in there to light the fire with more logs tossed into the boiler the next morning. And from 120 to 165 it usually only takes about an hour to get there. And during that time the house is still 70 degrees, and the hot water is still hot from the night before.
Now, as for the thermodynamics of a fan vs the magic of natural convection? As others here have pointed out, CB does sell fans on their units as an option. About 10% of their boilers are sold with them. That leaves 90% of the rest of us w/o forced air fans on our boilers. What makes our boilers work without fans? Simple. A principle of thermodynamics is that heated fluids and gasses rise. Why? Becasue warmer fluids and gasses are less dense than colder ones. Being less dense, they rise and float above the cooler mass. So, when the damper door opens, hot air escapes out the top of the smoke stack. That causes a vacuume in the boiler chamber, and that in turn causes the cold air outside the damper door to be sucked in to replace the hot air that escaped out the top of the boiler. That cold air then meets the flames of the burning wood inside the boiler, and is heated, that air rises becasue it is now less dense, and the process continues until the damper door closes.
That whole process is called convection, one of the processes of heat transfer. It is one of the three basic processes to heat transfer. Convection, as described for gasses above, condution, and radiation. The energy that comes from your firewood in your boiler is radiated out in the form of low level light waves. We see some of that energy in the form of flames, and we feel most of that radiation in the form of heat. When the fire in the boiler is going, there is both radiant heat and convection heat being delivered to the surface of the steel in the firebox. A good boiler will have a heat trap above the firebox for keeping in some of the convection heat to allow it time to transfer to the steel. The radiated heat is also absorbed by the steel. Now the third process of heat transfer ocurs in the steel itself. The heat is conducted to the rest of the steel through the molucules of the steel. They ones nearest the fire vibrate with more energy and that causes a chain reaction to move the energy (heat in this case) to the rest of the steel in the boiler.
Now, we have a hot fire, with convection fueling the fire to burn, and the energy from the fire is released and transfered to the steel by convection and radiation. Then the heat in the steel is transered to the rest of the steel and then to the water on the other side of the steel jacket. Now more convection happens as the steel releases its heat energy to the water. Convection works in gasses and fluids. As the water gets hot in the boiler, it rises. That causes what is called natural convection in the boiler. At the same time there is a pump that circulates water from the boiler to the house, and back to the boiler. That is called induced convection. If you add a fan to the damper of the boiler, you also induce convection.
Now, the difference between the fan and the natural convection (or draft) air supply boiler. Again, it is design specific. You have to have a damper at or near the bottom of the burning chamber to supply cold air at a low point so that natural convection will draw the hot air out the top and through the stack. Placed too high and the draft will not work right. You also need the right diameter stack and one that is tall enough to provide a good draft to allow gasses to escape the burn chamber and allow more cold air to enter through the damper. A stack that is too low will not work right either. Same as any masonry house fireplace. Now if that draft is not designed right, or you want a bigger air supply then you can add a fan to force the airflow through the system. This will indeed induce the wood to burn faster, and in many cases hotter. But... at the same time you are adding more air flow to the air entering the burn chamber. In many cases that I have seen, the forced air fans actually force a lot of the heat that you otherwise want to trap in the firebox right out of the stack before it can be transfered to the steel, water, and your house. You see, more air flow is not always better. A stong air flow can actually casue you to burn more wood. While the wood itself may be burning nice and hot and more efficiently.... you may also be losing a lot of that heat out the stack. So efficiency is a trickey word to use in the wood boiler industry. What you want is good heat transfer, and as much of the heat in the firewood to be transfered to your steel boiler and in turn transfered to your boiler water tank. Good heat efficiency, not good wood burning efficiency (although both are desirable). That heat in turn neds to get to your heat exchnagers, in turn to be delivered to your hot water heater and you in the shower, and to the forced air or hydronic heating system to heat your house.
The main problem with most starved-air OWB systems that are are talking about here (all but the likes of Greenwood and high-efficiency indoor wood boiler heaters) is that they lose a lot of energy in the off cycles. This is becasue when the damper closes of the fan is turned off, the wood is still being heated. It basically is being turned into charcoal, and the wood gasses are allowed to escape before they are burned. One reason that I try to use the minimum wood needed her to keep our fire going here is that I do not want to BBQ the firewood before it flame burns. Charcoal is made that way: wood is heated but not burned, which drives off the wood gasses leaving the charcoal. Those wood gasses have a lot of energy in them, and that is one reason that these types of boilers have less efficiency than the likes of the Greenwood systems. But the advantages of these systems is that they do not need to be filled as often, and they burn at lower temperatures, and they store energy in the wood that has yet to burn, and in the water tanks. Water has a good heat capacity, and that is why it is used in these types of systems.
Well, that should be enough to confuse everyone here and fan the flames...
OK boys and girls, this is not a sales pitch to sell you lots of crap that you do not really need on an outdoor wood boiler. As a matter of fact, you can save money by not buying a lot of stuff that they sell on outdoor wood boilers. Why? Becasue a lot of the features are not really needed. In two cases in particular, stainless steel water jackets and forced air draft fan.
Yes, CB does sell both the SS options and forced air drafts on their boilers. But you do not need either one. Strainless steel in particular is not great for several reasons. One is that it is really hard to weld SS. Welding fixes in the field are going to be really hard to do. Another reason is that SS is about $1,000 more expensive to buy. Another reason is that SS does not conduct heat as well as plain carbon steel does. And finally, in the case of CB units, their carbon steel is really thick stuff and it is not apt to rust through anyway. As long as you keep the right level of corrosion inhibitor in the water and tank (stays good for about 3 years before needing replaced) you will get no rust on that side of the boiler. Creosote is actually very mild on steel surfaces. I have the data and can post it if needed, but creosote will not cause a sttel tank to rust from the firebox side of the boiler. That leaves the ash area of the boiler. You can use Ashtrol in the ashes, which is basically agricultural lime to ballance the acid pH of ashes in your boiler pan to keep the ashes from rusting out the pan. I do not use it, and I do not have any rust in the firebox of my boiler. The place that the boiler is most apt to rust is if you are burning green or wet wood and it seeps into the ashes and gets trapped between the ashes and the steel. I scrape the ash pan down to the steel once a week with a plain garden hoe, and that loosens any chunks of ash and/or water that are next to the steel. Again, after using it for the better part of 2 heating seasons, there is no rust in our plain steel firebox.
Now, on to forced air draft. Again, forced air drafts are specific to the design of the firebox. I can only say that in the case of the Central Boiler design they are not really needed. In actuality they are not needed in many designs of boilers out there on the market today. Yes, CB sells them as an option, becasue people like the ones on this forum seem to have it in their heads that a fan is somehow better than natural convection for moving gasses around in their boilers. In the case of the CB, the damper is more than enough to get the fire going and keep the fire hot. As someone else here stated, it can take longer to get the fire going with a natural draft than with a fan. That may be so, from a cold start. If you let the fire go out all the time and let the water get stone cold between firing, then you may indeed need a fan to get it going fast enough to heat your house. But in the case that you fill the unit with enough wood on a regular basis, like 2x a day, that will not be a problem. I can let our fire go out and the water will still stay above 120 before I can get more wood on it the next morning. There are always enough coals in there to light the fire with more logs tossed into the boiler the next morning. And from 120 to 165 it usually only takes about an hour to get there. And during that time the house is still 70 degrees, and the hot water is still hot from the night before.
Now, as for the thermodynamics of a fan vs the magic of natural convection? As others here have pointed out, CB does sell fans on their units as an option. About 10% of their boilers are sold with them. That leaves 90% of the rest of us w/o forced air fans on our boilers. What makes our boilers work without fans? Simple. A principle of thermodynamics is that heated fluids and gasses rise. Why? Becasue warmer fluids and gasses are less dense than colder ones. Being less dense, they rise and float above the cooler mass. So, when the damper door opens, hot air escapes out the top of the smoke stack. That causes a vacuume in the boiler chamber, and that in turn causes the cold air outside the damper door to be sucked in to replace the hot air that escaped out the top of the boiler. That cold air then meets the flames of the burning wood inside the boiler, and is heated, that air rises becasue it is now less dense, and the process continues until the damper door closes.
That whole process is called convection, one of the processes of heat transfer. It is one of the three basic processes to heat transfer. Convection, as described for gasses above, condution, and radiation. The energy that comes from your firewood in your boiler is radiated out in the form of low level light waves. We see some of that energy in the form of flames, and we feel most of that radiation in the form of heat. When the fire in the boiler is going, there is both radiant heat and convection heat being delivered to the surface of the steel in the firebox. A good boiler will have a heat trap above the firebox for keeping in some of the convection heat to allow it time to transfer to the steel. The radiated heat is also absorbed by the steel. Now the third process of heat transfer ocurs in the steel itself. The heat is conducted to the rest of the steel through the molucules of the steel. They ones nearest the fire vibrate with more energy and that causes a chain reaction to move the energy (heat in this case) to the rest of the steel in the boiler.
Now, we have a hot fire, with convection fueling the fire to burn, and the energy from the fire is released and transfered to the steel by convection and radiation. Then the heat in the steel is transered to the rest of the steel and then to the water on the other side of the steel jacket. Now more convection happens as the steel releases its heat energy to the water. Convection works in gasses and fluids. As the water gets hot in the boiler, it rises. That causes what is called natural convection in the boiler. At the same time there is a pump that circulates water from the boiler to the house, and back to the boiler. That is called induced convection. If you add a fan to the damper of the boiler, you also induce convection.
Now, the difference between the fan and the natural convection (or draft) air supply boiler. Again, it is design specific. You have to have a damper at or near the bottom of the burning chamber to supply cold air at a low point so that natural convection will draw the hot air out the top and through the stack. Placed too high and the draft will not work right. You also need the right diameter stack and one that is tall enough to provide a good draft to allow gasses to escape the burn chamber and allow more cold air to enter through the damper. A stack that is too low will not work right either. Same as any masonry house fireplace. Now if that draft is not designed right, or you want a bigger air supply then you can add a fan to force the airflow through the system. This will indeed induce the wood to burn faster, and in many cases hotter. But... at the same time you are adding more air flow to the air entering the burn chamber. In many cases that I have seen, the forced air fans actually force a lot of the heat that you otherwise want to trap in the firebox right out of the stack before it can be transfered to the steel, water, and your house. You see, more air flow is not always better. A stong air flow can actually casue you to burn more wood. While the wood itself may be burning nice and hot and more efficiently.... you may also be losing a lot of that heat out the stack. So efficiency is a trickey word to use in the wood boiler industry. What you want is good heat transfer, and as much of the heat in the firewood to be transfered to your steel boiler and in turn transfered to your boiler water tank. Good heat efficiency, not good wood burning efficiency (although both are desirable). That heat in turn neds to get to your heat exchnagers, in turn to be delivered to your hot water heater and you in the shower, and to the forced air or hydronic heating system to heat your house.
The main problem with most starved-air OWB systems that are are talking about here (all but the likes of Greenwood and high-efficiency indoor wood boiler heaters) is that they lose a lot of energy in the off cycles. This is becasue when the damper closes of the fan is turned off, the wood is still being heated. It basically is being turned into charcoal, and the wood gasses are allowed to escape before they are burned. One reason that I try to use the minimum wood needed her to keep our fire going here is that I do not want to BBQ the firewood before it flame burns. Charcoal is made that way: wood is heated but not burned, which drives off the wood gasses leaving the charcoal. Those wood gasses have a lot of energy in them, and that is one reason that these types of boilers have less efficiency than the likes of the Greenwood systems. But the advantages of these systems is that they do not need to be filled as often, and they burn at lower temperatures, and they store energy in the wood that has yet to burn, and in the water tanks. Water has a good heat capacity, and that is why it is used in these types of systems.
Well, that should be enough to confuse everyone here and fan the flames...
HUSKYMAN
Addicted to ArboristSite
Thanks for the response. You have explained well how boilers without fans work, however you have not proven that a boiler without a fan works better than a boiler with a fan. I still think a boiler with a fan will heat up faster and burn cleaner than one without.
That, combined with the fact that the Woodmaster is over $1000 cheaper will have me calling the Woodmaster dealer tomorrow. I think CB makes a good product, but I want to look at the Woodmaster up close and if it is of comparable quality and the dealer is competent, I think that may be what I go with.
That, combined with the fact that the Woodmaster is over $1000 cheaper will have me calling the Woodmaster dealer tomorrow. I think CB makes a good product, but I want to look at the Woodmaster up close and if it is of comparable quality and the dealer is competent, I think that may be what I go with.
I do agree but they have stoves from 2002 and 2003 that I have been taking the spray foam off of to have a boiler company fixing....the point is that they take a long time and its hard to get money out of them.
dont get me wroung here CB are a very good stove been around them for about 8 years, working with one of the biggest dealer.(they dont deal anymore cuz of some issiues) When to a guys house today looking at a small leak. It happens.
Mine would take 10-15 minutes to go from 120-165.
From what I have seen the natural draft boilers are wjat give OWB's a bad name. They smoke and smolder and are on cycle much longer.
Now it would seem to me the longer you are on cycle the more wood your going to burn.
As for stainless....tell that to all the boiler owners with leaky boilers. Mild steel boiler last as little as 5 years. This is according to people I talked to before I bought mine that actually had to have their leakers welded.
BTW the best warranty is not having to use one. I am going on five season with my Heatmore and I havent had to do anything to it other than to oil the fan motor twice a year and monitor the water PH.
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windthrown
361 Junkie
Fan or no fan...
I am not saying that a non-fan unit will work better than a fanned unit. I am saying that in many cases a fan is not needed. It is also design dependant. In simple terms... look at the average house fireplace. If you added a fan to the front of the fireplace, would it burn any better? Yes, it would burn hotter and faster, but it would also force a lot of heat up the flue. Would it heat any better? No. Actually it would heat worse. And a big reason that there are not many people putting fans on the front of their fireplaces to keep the fire going in them. Natural convection can be as effective as a fan, becasue in effect it is a fan. Simple. No moving parts. Nothing to break down.
Good luck with your purchase, whatever one that you get. The Woodmaster should be a reasonable OWB. They have been around.
I am not saying that a non-fan unit will work better than a fanned unit. I am saying that in many cases a fan is not needed. It is also design dependant. In simple terms... look at the average house fireplace. If you added a fan to the front of the fireplace, would it burn any better? Yes, it would burn hotter and faster, but it would also force a lot of heat up the flue. Would it heat any better? No. Actually it would heat worse. And a big reason that there are not many people putting fans on the front of their fireplaces to keep the fire going in them. Natural convection can be as effective as a fan, becasue in effect it is a fan. Simple. No moving parts. Nothing to break down.
Good luck with your purchase, whatever one that you get. The Woodmaster should be a reasonable OWB. They have been around.
johnb
ArboristSite Operative
Buy the Hardy Heater
Buy a Hardy, All stainless steel, forced air, burns anything wet, dry, mother in laws! We have several of the major brands within 3 miles of me and everyone wished that they seen a hardy first!! Happy hunting John
WWW. Hardyheater.com
Buy a Hardy, All stainless steel, forced air, burns anything wet, dry, mother in laws! We have several of the major brands within 3 miles of me and everyone wished that they seen a hardy first!! Happy hunting John
WWW. Hardyheater.com
Hardy has to take the award for the cheapest/cheesiest wood boiler going....
HUSKYMAN
Addicted to ArboristSite
Yesterday I met the Woodmaster dealer and he was very knowledgeable. He has been a dealer for nine years and is also an electrical contractor. I was able to see a Woodmaster 6500 in action, heating a 40x80 horse barn, 30x40 barn, a 40x60 barn, a 2500 sq foot house, and a garage. Needless to say I was impressed. The owner had a bin setup for dumping bucketfulls of wood pellets and a conveyor going right into the firbox. I wouldn't want to split wood for that monster!
Anyways I liked the dealer and will probably be a Woodmaster owner in a little while. Thanks for your input everyone
Anyways I liked the dealer and will probably be a Woodmaster owner in a little while. Thanks for your input everyone
Why do you say this about the Hardy heaters? Not trying to start anything, just curious. I've had mine for two seasons now and love it.
johnb
ArboristSite Operative
Well lets start something!
Isn't the Heatmore the tin can with augers for ash draws?? Just kidding they all have there faults Mr. Walker but giving a hardy a bum rap you can't. They are a fine product, great warrenty and have a long track record of good service! What's up with all of the units on jackstands and angle iron?? talk about heat loss!! WOW The Hoosier
Isn't the Heatmore the tin can with augers for ash draws?? Just kidding they all have there faults Mr. Walker but giving a hardy a bum rap you can't. They are a fine product, great warrenty and have a long track record of good service! What's up with all of the units on jackstands and angle iron?? talk about heat loss!! WOW The Hoosier
johnb
ArboristSite Operative
Lets face it
You need the boiler on the ground, concrete or whatever in order to better stabilize the unit. Having it supported on legs allows cold air to encompass the unit, even if it is insulated. Plus you have to make the lines so they don't freeze coming out of the bottom of the unit. All extra! Think of the sheer weight supported by all the extra metal frame work to hold water (crazy). Because of this you are forced to use heavier steel and reduces your tanks heat transfer rate. lets face it is easyer to heat through 16 gauge steel then 1/4 plate. The real reason they are on legs is to make them easyer to be replaced, by a fork lift. Sorry to be so direct but Mr. Walkers commnets about the Hardy really set me off!!!!!! I could go on and on but you get the point. The Hoosier
You need the boiler on the ground, concrete or whatever in order to better stabilize the unit. Having it supported on legs allows cold air to encompass the unit, even if it is insulated. Plus you have to make the lines so they don't freeze coming out of the bottom of the unit. All extra! Think of the sheer weight supported by all the extra metal frame work to hold water (crazy). Because of this you are forced to use heavier steel and reduces your tanks heat transfer rate. lets face it is easyer to heat through 16 gauge steel then 1/4 plate. The real reason they are on legs is to make them easyer to be replaced, by a fork lift. Sorry to be so direct but Mr. Walkers commnets about the Hardy really set me off!!!!!! I could go on and on but you get the point. The Hoosier
No I dont get your point. Hardys thats funny my father inlaw had 2 of them, allright stove but they dont take much beating, it was all beat up after 2 years. He isnt rough on stuff, but this thing is not stroung at all, how do you think they can make them cheap. The handles on the ash door and fire door = weak, the sides of the fire box is all bent up and its just thin, there is nothing to block any heat from going right out the chimney. Legs are a good idea for moving and some people like it better, cold air under the stove, doesnt make one bit. But it lasted about 6 years and leaked, try to find people that like to weld them up...lots of money.
The doors on a Hardy look like they belong on a hamster cage. I stand by my comment that they look cheap.
One thing I would like to comment is that its mentioned often that Heatmor's ash auger has issues. I simply havent seen them? What are these supposed issues?
Valid point and one of the reason I didnt go with a Woodmaster when I was in the market for a OWB.
One thing I would like to comment is that its mentioned often that Heatmor's ash auger has issues. I simply havent seen them? What are these supposed issues?
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