Great to hear rhat David! Every yard moveing south is good, there is only one thing l hate with all my hearth. Snow… hope you get a bit less where you went.
I have had good proggres and am on schedule. Shuld post more… but apart from time shortage l allso hasitate to show much of the intermediate product, we Leitingers are known for doing things our own way. Might seem absurd for some.
I always forget to take pictures will post the ones l got now… and take closeups if anyone is interested later.
this is the hearth of the house, the stove. It is a steel hearthed brick layed design for thermoacumulation. It allso doubles as a water heater.
Fire has 4 options to go to when it comes from the combustion area.
First, under the whole steel plate for when lots of cooking is planed.
Second, the whole plate and around the oven. For baking.
Third, in a flue center water vessel, for heating water.
Fourth, trugh a isolated steel pipe chimney in a brick chimney, where only about 1x2feet of the plate are heated and nothing else. All heat is dumped here or evacuated out. Thats for summer cooking when exeess heat is unwanted.
Every combination of those 3 is possible, by use of hand operated levers.
This requires a second post and is typed with SteveU in mind. Just thod of shareing the experiances.
Wood IS the freedom fuel. It will never dissapoint. I say this because this year a chain of events forced me to sell all my prepared firewood (5 cords +) in order to raise money for house building. This lead us with 0 firewood for winter. The all wood l burn now, heating 2 houses, is green wood harvested in our forests fresh weekly and “processed” inside. Took some time to master the art of burning green wood but we did it!
In short. We have 3 drying stations. First, we stack wood next to the stove. This will reduce moisture conciderably over a couple of days.
Second, we stack the wood in the actual oven dont laugh, sometimes a man got to do what a man got to do. Oven, when opened, never gets hot enaugh you cant touch it inside so no risk of catching fire. Over night, the wood dryes some and preheats.
Then lastly, we load the wood in the fireplace. If cooking is in plan, we load the combustionzone full half a hour before cooking and close the intake air. This will alow the wood to boil off all its water without combusting. Then, when air is opened, the hot dry wood bursts in to flames and you got a hot flame to cook with.
Its certainly not ideal but the sistem gets os and our stomacs warm and happy
Kristijan, “nothing new under the sun” I’ve seen old-timers do that - bring in frozen wood from the shed and put a batch in the oven to avoid frosty condensation on the logs. Better to dry/heat them there than cooling the combustion, making tary/sooty smoke.
Thanks for the update.
Exactly KristijanL.
The height of true wood-for-living capability is developing a physical system and procedures that will allow you to do effectively, safely with winter picked up wood.
Not ideal. Maybe only 20% effective heat.
Buy Hey! Actually 100% efficient versus Nothing. Or Grid buying-out. Dino selling-out.
Cut more. Use more. And promise yourself, “Next year . . . I will do better”.
This year I have perfectly dried wood. Ha! I forgot how to burn it!!
Regards
Steve unruh
Steve, amen. Specialy about the “l will do better next year”. Curseing about wet wood all winter, l sayd to my wife l will prepare 47 cords of wood this year she just rolls her eyes
Please, @KristijanL, hand over my admiration to your wife. They looks like my mom’s just taken out of frying pan. I had not such for a quite long time.
It looks just like a Pączki, lent is coming and this time of year I start thinking about doughnuts HA HA…
Your doing a fine job on the house.
In early fall we used to fill a room in the basement with the previous years cut and season firewood. We had a special cold room for this with a vent outside to reduce any dampness and humidity from the wood affecting the house. Winter up here in the northland is very dry so it also helped to have the vented room to reduce the moister content. Our system was a typical iron air tight wood stove… we didn’t know any better.
At the Family homestead we had a large brick cook stove with an iron top not much different from yours. Also it had a back boiler for heating water but also to act as a heat storage to make up for times when the fire was out. I imagine you used a lot of lessons learned in the design of your stove and heating system but just remember to make sure the wife knows too…
The original farm house burned because one of my aunts would make huge fires and then choke off the air supply and eventually this lead to a chimney fire. After that an oil stove was put in it s place and an oil furnace for heat ( sometime in the 50s or 60s I think ). The some of the original masonry was left mostly intact in the kitchen but much of it was removed to make way for modern electric appliances in later renovations.
You could even in a harsh Canadian winter heat and maintain a comfortable home with that old wood burning masonry stove, just too bad later generations could not be bothered to use it ( we had free wood a small saw mill no less!! )
Ah the oil stove…
My grandfather moved it too his hunting camp, but he converted it back to wood because he hated the smell oil. It was nearly identical to this but had a warming oven on top. That much iron could once warm keep the whole kitchen and most of the cottage warm all day.
This type of thermostaticaly controlled stove heated the main building at night… Again we did not understand that smoldering fires were not efficient fires and we burned a lot of wood…
For my contribution in the mid 80s I made a fire box and converted an oil fired hot water tank to wood. I lined the inside of the firebox with brick and would make a small but hot cleaning burning fire in the mornings and we would have hot water all day using nothing more than scraps I would find walking around the camp. Wood is a hell of a lot more convenient that loading drums of fuel or gas cylinders into a boat to fuel the cottage on an island…
Small fires…
Do not pass up the opportunity to pick up scrap wood around the homestead. If it s dry dead fall. Its dry and makes fast easy fires, and your reducing the tinder around your home and the risk of fast spreading fires a long the ground. Cutting and splitting wood is work, but if you get everyone into the habit of collecting dead dry wood where ever you see it you would be surprised how much that little bit of effort can reduce the burdon of cutting trees to make firewood.
Its been around 4 months or so since the stove ran non stop, only cleaning ash once a week and brushing the boiler flue once a month. So far l am pleased. Still needs some estetics thugh.
Great video tour Kristijan.
I love to see that completely burnt out white ash.
Ha! Ha! Here for the last 5-6 years my chimney top screen has been corroded out.
So every spring and early summer the female barn swallow birds fly down and soot’s clean my chimney for me!!
Sorry. Illegal to exchange wildlife, not walking and talking in human form.
You will have to find you own swallow birds.
The children are quite entertained, me chasing then one out of the woodstove and around the house, and out.
My wife is not amused the sooty rag-a-muffins soot streaking her walls and ceilings.
Is naming christening a done later in your family?
Good video Kristijan. Very well thought out stove contruction with lots of options.
Does the boiler part heat tap water directly, or is there a heat exchanger?
Thanks for the vidio of cooking with wood gas.Neat design, couldent have built it any better. Burning nice dry wood, i like your TWO flu bypass controls. And your gardon teaching job is invaluable. OR I think that means , caint put a large enough value tag too it.
The design was inspired by our old cooking stove, factory made, with added features and a brick lineing for heat acumulation.
Steve, never heared that before! Wonder what they are looking for in the chimney!
Not sure of what exactly you mean with christening?
JO, directly. There is a flue trugh the boiler and nothing else. Probably cant go much simpler and foulproof. So far l am extremely pleased! Still missing the insukation thugh…
Probably looking for a place to build their nest. I have had chimney swifts in the house before but the barn swallows usually are found in the out buildings around here.
Same here. Jackdaws on the other hand, they really like to build a pile of twigs in flues not used - or in ventilation flues. Free heat is the reason I guess. A ball of chicken wire down the flue is the solution.
will post the ones l got now… and take closeups if anyone is interested later.
