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[Jeremy Baker <childscrick AT yahoo.com>]

I have lots of experience heating with wood and have studied heating systems 
extensively. I aim for low wood consumption, clean combustion, safety, and 
comfort. Sounds like a great project and potential for renewable heating from 
our tree friends. There are some basics of wood heating to consider before 
designing a system. 
 Starting with safety: any cracks or holes in a stove or pipe may potentially 
emit deadly carbon monoxide which is odorless. A rusty stove should be 
scraped to check for holes. The exhaust should not be rusty and be 
appropriate diameter for the stove, well supported, long enough to draw well, 
and insulated on the section outside which should rise above the peak of the 
roof. If you live in a building code enforced county the there are guidelines 
that help install a safe exhaust and distances from walls. Insurance 
companies may check for code compliance. Fire-rated insulated fixtures are 
used to penetrate the ceiling and roof. I found a competent builder to help 
me install ours. Stove pipes can get red hot if a stove air damper is left 
open or a creosote fire ignites in the exhaust. Keep the pipe the recommended 
distance from anything flammable. Burn dry seasoned wood to reduce creosote 
 Don't use ducting pipe, stovepipe is thicker gauge steel than ducting and 
holds up much better. The straighter the exhaust the more draw, ease of fire 
starting, and less smoke escaping when the door is opened. However, I have 
used several stoves with exhaust exiting through the wall that worked OK but 
ash can build up in a exhaust pipe that is not vertical.
 People have used clay/sand mixture as refractory mortar to make stove 
exhausts components and fabricate custom systems such as cob rocket mass 
heaters. Perlite is also a non flammable insulator but is also a conductor so 
will heat anything it is in contact with. Air is one of the best non 
conductive insulators. A pipe within a pipe and perhaps even a third pipe has 
been often used. Many systems use insulated stovepipe from near the stove all 
the way through the roof. The goal is to maintain hot exhaust in order to 
increase draw and prevent condensation of flammable creosote in the pipe. 
However, heat may be wasted with this setup. Another method is to burn a hot 
fire and install several Magic Heat heat recovery units in the exhaust which 
exits through insulated stovepipe. With this system a more complete 
combustion occurs with a hot fire but the heat is recovered before exiting. 
The fire burns out faster and needs to be monitored more but is more
 efficient in my opinion than the damped down slow combustion strategy of 
popular myth.
    
     

Sent from my iPad

On Sep 13, 2011, at 1:29 PM, Stephanie Colombo <st.colombo AT gmail.com> wrote:

I am currently a tenent at a ramshackle but lovely cabin in the woods on the 
edge of someone's property. The cabin was built by someone else in a loft 
model with two floors and a skylight/attic. It has a few started if left 
unfinished ammenitites. The most daunting task will be to fix the woodstove 
which is not yet functioning. The base of the stove is there, the box rusty 
and there is no flue/stove pipe. There is hole cut through to the 2nd floor 
and a place to cut through the aluminum roof for the chimney to exit. My 
primary questions are:
 
- how rusty can a woods stove be to still be usable?
- can the stovepipe/flue be built of found piping metals or must the metals 
be a galvanized steel or some particular grade of metal?
- how can one make a double-layered chimney flue?
- how far should all burnable materials be from the edge of the stovepipe?
- how hot can a stovepipe get and what are the exploding hazards?
 
I thought it would be a lofty (pun intended) but fun fix up to try and make 
livable in the winter. I really don't think I'll live in the winter, but I 
would like to get through October potentially. Is there a way to make this 
workable, or create another heat source that makes this a place that can be 
slept in?
 
Any chimney or wood stove people in the house?

-- 
Sincerely,

Stephanie Colombo
321-331-3719

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