Hey have you ever seen tiny wood fuel like these?

Just wanted to show you my other firewood. Compressed sawdust = wood fuel pellets.
Here you see the inside of the Hopper.

And here’s my other “woodstove”  – my pellet boiler.

That’s a woodstove?  Well actually a wood pellet boiler.  Look here’s a look at the fire.

Its automatic, lights itself, maintains temperature.  Connected to my central heat and my hot water for showers etc.  Just one disadvantage – i have to put pellets into it.  And i do have to buy the pellets.  The mighty little woodstove uses mostly free firewood.  So the fuel for the pellet stove comes from the store.  But someday i will get myself a pellet mill.  For sure when i do i will share it with you.

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Ok time for a little science lesson.  Lets talk about what happens when u burn wood (or similar fuel).

Fire is a chemical reaction.  The components are the fuel, (wood = carbon compounds and volatile substances), Oxygen and Heat.  The heat is necessary to start the chain reaction, then the fire provides its own heat and is self sustaining until the fuel runs out.

Water is not part of the reaction.  It is a hindrance.  Before wet wood can burn, the fire must first dry out the wood enough, to raise the temperature enough, for the wood to burn.  In other words, alot of the heat is lost driving the water out of the wet wood.  That’s heat you will never benefit from, never warm your house.  Its wasted energy, it only vaporizes the water, doesn’t raise the heat level.  So DRY your wood and KEEP IT DRY! (more here, and here)

Now the first thing that happens when wood starts to burn is called out-gassing.  The heat of the fire drives the volatile substances out of the wood.  These compounds are combustible and they ignite and are the source of most (or all?) of the flames you see if you watch the fire.  Here’s where the non-airtight stove is a good thing.  The fire can get the oxygen it needs.

Location, Location, Location.  We’re not talking Real Estate here, like a corner lot for your business.  We’re talking about stove location.  If you are serious about heating your home with a woodstove, the stove belongs in the basement.  Couple of reasons – first of all, heat rises, so it is automatically delivered to your home which is above.  But also very important – when the stove gets all the oxygen it needs, as the wood is out-gassing, that sucker gets VERY VERY HOT.  Notice in the previous post where my stove is, it sits on the basement floor (concrete) next to the furnace (metal).  Non combustible  items.  While you can make a safe place for your stove up in the living area, here are a few more reasons to put it in the basement:  Bark, Sawdust, Ashes.  The vicinity of your stove is difficult to keep clean.  If it’s in your living room that means daily clean up.  Basement?  once a month or so, no sweat.  Also don’t forget possible damage to your floors by hot coals.

So next time we talk about good wood heat, i will show you another trick i use to get that VERY VERY HOT stove to give up the heat to my home.

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Last post on wood we talked about DRY firewood.  Here’s my secret weapon in the war on wet firewood.  These pictures show two sheds.  The first is a small one, only about 4 ft tall.  Short, maybe 5 ft deep.  I show it to you just to emphasize what i said before about keeping wood covered.  That shed will be gone sometime this spring.  Never meant to be a woodshed.  but as long as i had it there i put some wood in it.  Smaller diameter stuff, most about the length of the shed.  That was last year sometime.  Then say 4-6 weeks ago i took out the wood, cut, split and brought it into the house.  Now i did store it near the stove.  Things do dry out easily there.  But the point i want to make is this – it lit easily, it burned fine, no sizzling to indicate it was wet etc.  Good dry firewood.

Now the bigger one, that is my main shed.  If you burn wood for heat, i recommend one like this.  note first the orientation.  This is a solar shed.  it faces almost due south.  So here in the northern hemisphere the sun shines into the shed all winter, and most of the spring and fall.  The roof keeps off rain & snow, the sun warms it and helps things dry.  The size is large enough to pile wood on either side with room to operate in between.  (around 8 ft deep x 12 ft wide, little over 9 ft tall in front).  The left side is from last year, maybe cut/split around 18 months ago.  The right side is what i started cutting this year before the snow stopped me.

This thing is a solar wood factory.  doesn’t cost me a nickel to operate.  Some day i may convert it into a full blown solar kiln.  Pretty sure if i make some kind of clear front cover the temp would soar well over 100.  Well anyway build yourself one. You’ll be glad u did. even if its smaller, make your woodshed open sided and face the sun.

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