*Please read before commenting*. If not apparent to you; the stove shown in this video, has a small added enhanced burn chamber. It burns at a high temperature (1,100˚F+) to burn off the gasses that cause creosote buildup. So the much lower temperatures shown going through the heat reclaimer, do not produce creosote. Experimental information to use at your own discretion.
@@Bozemanjustin Justin, I actually did have a RMH of sorts in there for a couple of years. I used the rocket stove, (that you can see in an earlier video), I used this very same chimney heat reclaimer, and I had a metal shelving unit up against the back wall to hold thermo mass. I had a damper valve at the back of the stove so I could switch from the mass on the shelfs, to the chimney heat reclaimer. The reclaimer would heat the rooms up faster, then I would switch over to the mass until that got hot. I was disappointed in the type of mass I used, (about a 1,000lbs of pea gravel), and the space that it took up, and wanted to try something else. In the mean time, I took all that I learned, and made the hybrid masonry heater in the house, that I show in other vides. Thanks
Not enough time. Placing a pot of flammable liquid on a stove might make this guy a Darwin Award winner. When wax gets hot enough, it vaporizes. This can become a fuel-air mixture and explode.
@@jwrosenbury So what temp will wax explode? Is it just temperature or temperature combined with a naked flame? Lets see you prove yourself, city boy! I despise 'know it all, MFers who aint got a clue!!!
People in the United states don't understand cold unless you live in a cold climate like MN, Northern NY, Wisconsin, Montana , Michigan, northern Illinois, VM, Main and NH where the temps in the deep winter can get below -25 F from Dec to April. People that do videos like this are priceless to help others to stay warm.
I think a lot of people are aware that winters are cold around places like this, if they are asked. They just don't know why anyone would want to live around here. Northern MN is has a lot of wilderness and freedom, so that's why they put up with the winters here. That's for commenting!
@@doubleMinnovations Same thing with NY, there is allot of wilderness, people think of NY as NY city only, NY actually has more farm land than many midwestern states believe it or not
I was sure that this was going to be just another one of those ridiculous changes to a woodstove and the flu that seem to be everywhere on the Internet. But I had a few minutes to kill and decided to watch your video. I watched with an open mind and no pre-judgment and I would have to report that I am absolutely completely shocked by what you have discovered and what I’ve learned from your video! I have always try thinking of ways to get more of the heat out of my woodstove and the exhaust flue. I actually considered one of those square boxes with the pipe holes through it that lets air come through and get warmed. I have also considered using a bunch of elbows on my exhaust flue and zigzag the flu back-and-forth and back-and-forth up to where it goes out. You’ve open my eyes and it feels like I just took the red pill because I could say with certainty that I think you’ve discovered something very special and very helpful for everyone! I’m gonna be heading to town soon to buy all the parts to make what you’ve shown in your video! Thank you very much!
I tried multiple elbows on the exhaust before too. I actually seen that on an old western; and where I got the idea to try it. This one isn't a whole lot different. There are few styles out there. Thanks for watching!
what he has done is create a heat exchanger… you could have just as easily created a coil of tubing inside and routed water through for bathing and washing too. the more surface area that you have the better radiation of heat you will have
@@doubleMinnovations is that stove taking air from outside to burn ever think of running maybe intake pipe do the secondary burner just curious love your setup looks great
Just get one of those heat activated fans. They're actually way better than they used to be and move a decent bit of air. I wouldn't cool the smoke in the flu... You'll have massive creosote buildup in that reclaimer. As a matter of fact, between that and the massive pot of FLAMMABLE WAX!! this is just a string of fire hazards all in a row. I hope and pray he never spills that.
This is genius. I'm a materials scientist with heat treating specialty. In industrial settings we "recuperate" with a similar method: countercurrent flow. Your work here is excellent and is well supported by engineering principles. Well done!
Yeah, that setup is nice because is passive. For 'correct' heat transfer, it needs to have the air forced downward so the air gets preheated on the way down and then exits to the room. That way the final temp reading is highest due to coming off the hottest parts of the jacketed heater before entering the space. The downside is quenching the exhaust too much on a stove like that will lead to creosote buildup in the pipe. ...and eventually start a house fire is it's allowed to build up.
This is extinction level dumbness. Insulating the fire box prevents the heat from getting out to the room. The top of the stove is 400F while the side of the stove is only 200F. Imagine if the heat could transfer through the side of the stove.
@@notapplicable430 With rocket stoves, the reason you insulate the burn area is to make the smoke hot enough to ignite to (over-simplistic, but the trick is to 'crack' the hydrocarbons). When done correctly, it's a net positive to deprive yourself of the initial burn to reap the heat from complete combustion. This application doesn't do all of that, it's more of just an illustration of a jacketed heat exchanger.
For anyone watching this as a new burner, having a a heat reclaimer is truly a double edged sword. By removing heat from your flue gases, you increase the likelihood of the gases condensing in your chimney and building up creosote. This is mitigated by burning very dry woods that has been seasoned at least a year. You would also need a very ideal chimney height to produce enough draft. It’s the draft in your chimney that powers your stove - draft is what draws air into the firebox, and it is generated by the rising gases in the flue. The hotter those gases, the more draft. In the dying phase of the fire, the chimney needs to continue drawing air into the stove and out the flue. If there are any pressure differentials created, like a clothes dryer or bathroom fan, then having a weak draft can result in the flue reversing its flow. That will bring CO into the living space. In an old cabin, not an issue. But use this flue setup in the basement of a two story house with standard appliances and mechanical systems, then someone sleeping in the basement may not wake up in the morning.
I think most UK stove manufacturers recommend the steel flue has vermiculite poured around it if it passes through the old brick chimney for that very reason, not many do it though to keep costs down.
@@tangoone6312 yes. In North America, most manufacturers require insulation, usually a ceramic fiber blanket wrap, be used unless you can verify a 1 or 2 inch continuous air gap around the chimney exterior. But the number of uninsulated liners way outnumbers those that followed the instructions.
@@anthonyman8008 how hot is hot enough? Did you read my post or just the first two sentences? I specifically said in the dying phase of the fire, so the concept of hot enough in a stove that is decreasing in temperature isn’t really relevant.
One other improvement you could make. To stop drafts from windows and doors, give your stove it's own air supply from outside. Then the stove wouldn't pull air through cracks and door seals to vent it out the chimney. As the room air heats it will sort of pressurize the room with warm air and drafts will be minimal if ceiling and walls are well insulated.
@@shmeli Debateable. Letting heat escape will reduce the efficiency of your stove, but pulling cold air in will reduce its effectiveness in heating the room. You will need to decide on a case by case basis what you need.
@messin with mike exactly on needing fresh air, in this video a fresh air duct from outside should be connected to the top of his duct, it will get sucked in and heated then distributed hot at floor level. Any air sucked in from outside (which every stove or fireplace does) gets heated first then used to burn the wood.
I have heated with wood and I am an engineer... I am totally amazed by your innovation... I really like when people take off the shelf items and make them work! Brilliant!
As a retired Chimney Sweep, I thank you for sharing your innovations. I love it when someone comes up with ways to get more out of equipment and devices. Most of my customers were never informed as to how take care of and operate their stoves when they had them installed and I was glad to help them understand the ins and outs of their units so that they in many cases could extend the time and reduce the frequency of needing to have their chimney cleaned.
@@_gramcrakka_82 Well, he has the "cool" or or"cold" air at the bottom which is sucked up by the discharged air out of the stove top which causes both the cold air to be warmed which causes cooling of the stoves discharged air in turn. Then the air coming out back at the top stainless elbow where the 'warmed" air comes back out into the room. The draw at the top of the flue draws the rest of the heated air out the top. Frankly, I am surprised that he gets a decent draw out of the top of the flue, he must have a very well done flue. I have had to fix many flue pipes that were not put in properly because there are many that can be done improperly when someone installing one doesn't understand completely the factors that can hinder the function of a chimney.
@@bozzojoe Yeah, I was wondering about the draw. You have 2 potential problems, the bends which will cause friction and loss of momentum for the flue gases as well as taking heat from the flue gasses which will potentially overcool them and cause them to drop rather than rise from the chimney.
@@bozzojoe from my understanding you only want 2 max 90°s. And running such a low temp really allows creosote to build. From my experience he would need to clean out he his flu multiple times a year to avoid any fires. Its a neat system dont get me wrong. But I'm curious to see the internals after just 1 month.
My Momma grew-up in the 1930's on a farm in Arkansaw (as it was spelled then, near Belleville) and they had a used tin wood stove for heat, NOT a CAST IRON ONE. MUCH LATER, they bought a cast iron cook stove (four cook top) second hand as they were share croppers and po'. The house first only had a fireplace for heat and cooking. You cooked one side and froze the other. She passed away in October at 93, fully lucid, and I have hours of videos of her and my Grandparents (and some of my Great Grandparents who lived well) telling about farm life. When they moved to Tulsa in 1942, my Grandmother cried as there was running water in the house they rented and two electric light bulbs. Carry water 2 miles from the "branch" of the Petite Jean River for EVERYTHING.
You cannot repeat stories about the "good old days" often enough. When people complain their life nowadays is so hard, they should know what our not too distant forebears had to go through, and maybe realise that for the vast majority of people things have improved beyond recognition, and be grateful for that.
The fire box improvements and the flu heat exchanger are really great. As a former commercial insulator, I like what you did there with the 2" board. I've always used thermal mass myself(even built a successful rocket stove) but likely my next stove set up will be something similar to yours- primarily because I moved south and don't want to burn too much wood in the tiny house I'm going to build. Best wishes and stay warm!
Love the dynamite box !! I used to have the old ones around. I remember going to the hardware with my great grandfather and buying dynamite,fuse and caps. Everyone could not believe it??? I told them that was when America was STILL FREE !!! You must have a very good draft on the chimney. Just keep it cleaned. I was in the hearth business for years. Started installing stoves back in the early to mid 70's !
As an aspiring piro, much respect. This dude is on another level. I love the thermal siphon. That is brilliant. I'm planning to install a wood burner in my tiny house and I'm stealing that idea.
I believe you nailed the thermodynamic theory with an excellent real world implementation. Burn hot over 1,000 F with the insulated firebox for a high combustion efficiency to burn secondary flu gases. Then use heat transfer methods to get exhaust gas down to 150 F to maximize efficiency. The hot burn, thermal management, and heat storage are key. Also the simple consumer off the shelf or COTS design is definitely a pro move. I built rockets, satellites, and defense systems for a living and I am impressed with your design. I am going to build one to heat my garage! A note: since you burn hot you burn all of the flu gasses so you will not have any build up in you chimney.
Wouldn’t it make sense to supply the fire with cold outside air for better efficiency still? you would potentially have a greater volume of exhaust to pass through the exchanger- wouldn’t you then need to slow that down to allow for the exchange to take place? Or could you soak the heat better into a liquid for radiant floor heat? Some of both? So much wasted energy…
@@gregorykusiak5424 Yes you can always add $$! To go from 90% efficiency to 95%. It is the old system engineering 90-10 rule. If you make the mods you suggested then it will be more $$$$ and heat flow trades. If you inject cold wet air into the fire box you may or may not reach over 1000 F degrees. Also extracting.heat with water may also upset the heat flow balance. You would have to built and test. Time and $$$$$.
@@SlowRiderDucati I can add a duct booster fan for $15 for the cold intake side. I can double it on the heat exchanger side. $30 isn’t that much of an extra cost to me, but I can see how some mightn’t agree. If I were have to choose one or the other, I’d choose the exchanger input to move more air past the heat source, cycling the air in the room more often/faster.
Great video! I recently moved into a home that had a really beat up Regency i3100. The previous own at some point installed it himself and had this beautiful stove insert exhausting almost directly into the flu. It did have a liner, but it was not capped, and when I removed the stove for repairs I could see it was likely not attached properly its entire life. I took it upon myself to repair and refinish it. After watching your video, I appreciate the modifications you made to the firebox as they are similar to what i had done to mine. For my baffles, I used Ceramic Fiber board, and furnace cement. I cut the boards to fit perfectly flush in the top of the firebox above the airtubes. I used furnace cement to cover the areas of the fiber boards that would be in direct contact with flame. It added rigidity to the baffles and also protects the fibers from careless loading of wood.
As a chimney sweep, at first i was like, dang i bet all those corners build up with creosote quickly, but then i see you have essencally a catalytic stove for cleaner emmisions aswell as easy access to each section where the creosote would build up. So right on dude! Thats a pretty neat setup! Around here, we sometimes see where people who have blowers on their stove run it into their air ducts to run warm air with the a/c off. And that is also a pretty effiecent way of increasing BTUs. Hell, a blower alone does wonder on BTU's just from having forced heat flow, instead of just radiant.
Thanks for commenting! I pulled that heat exchanger apart about a week and half ago. -(yearly cleaning). I just got some fluffy soot. I did a video clip of it, and will include it at the end of the next video.
Very ingenious, normally I'm against chimney heat reclaimers, but yours is a well thought out system, smaller firebox with a much hotter fire burns are the volatiles so as the reclaimer works and cools the flue gases down you dont have to worry about creosote forming as much since your burning way hotter then what the stove is designed for. It should be warned for anyone thinking of building something like this that its a must to also insulate the stove firebox because they work hand in hand.
There are many pitfalls to the heat reclaimer that really require a sound understanding of draft and creosote formation to be safe. Fine for use in a leaky cabin, but install this in the basement of a bungalow with an exposed outdoor chimney and standard mechanical systems, and something as simple as turning a bath exhaust fan on could create enough pressure differential to reverse the flue direction making the house a better chimney then the chimney is. Someone sleeping in that hypothetical basement may not wake up in the morning due to CO exposure.
@@ianhemingway5687 a CO detector doesn’t solve the problem anymore than seatbelts solve accidents. A CO detector should always be installed with any combustion appliance.
This is a really smart modification! Thanks for sharing. Also,another great way to improve efficiency of a stove is to set up an air supply from outside the house,so that the stove doesn’t suck warm air out of the room and up the chimney. 👌
I would think twice before doing that.. one of the great benefits of a standard stove is that it does indeed suck air from inside the house and sends it up the stack.. taking with it a lot of moisture. When you dry clothes inside the house with normal heating being used, you get condensation all over the place, esp in the windows.. this does not happen if you have a stove running. So running the stove keeps drying the house inside. But if you supply the stove directly from outside, you won't get this drying effect.
@@wotcherfaz This stove is in the barn, so not too concerned right now about the air. I found the directions for the installation of this stove, and they recommend the air comes from the room, and not directly from outside.
What I did is pipe 4" schedule 10 PVC into the house behind the stove. It's not directly connected and maybe only supplies 95% of the combustion air. No drafts under the doors. Our dog goes in and out every hour or 2 so that probably vents the house. We hang all laundry inside and no frost issues.
The stove pipe heat recover is a great idea. I use a wood stove in my ( well insulated) 500 sq ft shop and burn free scrap pallets. For heat storage, I have cinder blocks stacked on top of the stove filled with sand. About 32 inches of pipe coming out of the stove is buried in the sand. Although not code anymore, the pipe turns at a 90 coming out of the sand horizontally and runs about 10 ft before it turns back vertical out the roof. I have a heat shield/cowling around that run with a fan blowing the air through. I work for 8-9 hours a day, leaving around 5:00 pm. Canadian winters with -30C overnight my shop is only 0 to -5 the next morning. I burn around 2 pallets a day when its that cold.
Thermal mass heat storage is a great idea, however, cinderblocks and sand are not dense and are a poor choice. Metal is a great storage material, if you could wrap your stove top in 700-800# of gold or spent uranium, you'd have the king of heat storage. If you have to settle for steel, I understand.
I was going to ask whether the sand and cinder block was meant as an insulator or heat sink. Would probably insulate more than hold and share heat. Very easy to install. Cobb is sand and clay and would be almost as easy to install in a cinder block mold that could later be removed.
@@carpediemarts705 The cinder blocks filled with sand act as a mass heat sink. ( free material on hand) The chimney runs through the sand for 2-1/2 feet as it exits the stove, absorbing all that heat during the day. It works extremely well. Example : I left my shop at 4:00 pm, I don't stock up the stove, and choke the air off to slow burn what ever is left in the stove. It was -14 C overnight and it was still 9 degree in my shop the next morning at 8:00am.
I watched it all, I got a new to me steel stove new fire brick. The 1 thing I had to do was cut a outside air Intake for the firebox,,, what a big difference 5x the heat, no more cross drafting or sucking in Cold air. Cut my whole consumption of wood and LP gas in Half ore better. Must get outside air Intake. Best ever.
Brilliant - my grandfather did something similar with the pipe design, but with this fireplace in the basement. I never thought about having something on the stove that held the heat. Appreciate you taking the time to make this video - these are the things that should be passed on. Im building our home in the heart of the Colorado Rockies, and I am trying to make the home as energy efficient as possible, so I am putting a wood burner in the basement and this design with be perfect!
You may like to look at the videos I made for my hybrid/masonry fireplace. "th-cam.com/video/ldqGQHpM2_8/w-d-xo.html" Have been using this in our house for 5 winters now, and what I would really recommend. It was a lot of work, but has been well worth it! Thanks.
As a Firefighter of 20+ years I saw your thermal storage wax and shuttered. If that wax ever over heats, your begging for a serious house fire. Might I suggest getting some large pieces of soap stone as a MUCH better thermal storage system. I have heated my house with wood for the past 18 years and about 10 years ago picked up some soap stone cutoffs from a counter top maker local to me. They are just some odd shaped cutoffs and I placed them on top of and behind my stove with them sitting on some bricks to allow airflow and WOW what a difference they made. My stove sits on a brick outer heart in front of a old cooking fireplace (my house is 190 years old) and after having a large fire in the stove for about 8 hours we can let the fire die down and the soap stone and brick hearth will radiate heat for he next 18 to 24 hours. We only have to keep a fire going all day on days it stays well below freezing. Also, fire brick, by design, avoids absorbing heat and makes poor thermal storage, if you can't get soap stone, regular solid bricks work much better than fire bricks for it. BTW, absolutely love he heat reclaimed and am thinking about ways to make one myself, how did you seal the pipes on it up and did it affect your draft?
Yep; I have been well informed here about how stupid, crazy, and dangerous I am. 😁 In this set up, my stove top runs about 300-400˚F. The flash point of paraffin is 392-480, boiling point 698˚F, melting point 120-150˚F. I'm just trying to get it to the melting point, and with that much wax, it takes hours. Attention needs to be payed to it just like cooking does. I wish there was soap stone available around here, and at a decent price! The area of flow between the 8 & 5" pipe, is pretty much the same as the 6" flue. -so I haven't noticed any less draw.
Just thinking out loud, but I think some of the concern is having so many turns in the pipe. Must be your fire box mods making all the difference. Making the gases hot enough to scavenge enough heat for your heat exchanging to be efficient and the gases are probably moving much faster to reduce any Eddie's or disruption in flow. I think it's a good technique, but with a little creativity you could make it appear more sturdy. Maybe make a square frame around it out of some angle iron to anchor to. Just to the height of the stove top to add security to the 3 way junction. Could even add a little rack or hanger to the frame to place a poker or other fire place tools. Just throwing an idea out that I had, not trying to minimize your work. Probably a lot of neat things to do. The industrial/rustic look never goes out of style.
@@donavonrobbins1908 I haven't had a problem with the draw, even when first starting the fire. The area across a 6" pipe is 28.27. The area across a 5" pipe is 19.65. The area across an 8" pipe is 50.26. 50.26(8") - 19.65(5") = 30.37. The area of flow between the 8" and 5" pipe is greater than the 6". I tried a 4" interior pipe first, then the 5"; and didn't really notice a difference. Anybody can do anything with this, it's open source. All thoughts are welcome, and gives others ideas too!
@@doubleMinnovations I wasn't really thinking of any noticable draft trouble. I was mentioning those things as contributors to creosote deposits. But you have that taken care of with the high burn temps. Even at start up, any build up potential would be burned away shortly. I mentioned in another post a parlor stove in my cabin and using an electric oscillating fan behind it to transfer some heat off it. Sometimes I would place then fan in front of the open ash clean out and get the flames going to burn off a little creosote. It was a short run to a wall thimble (air gap design) to an exterior pipe that was well away from the log siding and a low roof edge. Wouldn't be able to modify the cylinder shaped burn box like yours.
@@donavonrobbins1908 Once I experienced some type of hot burning wood heating device, I never wanted to go back to anything else. But before, I always put one of those magnetic wood stove thermometers on the pipe where it goes into the chimney adaptor. Tried to keep that in the 'safe' zone. Hardwoods were always better, using pine is where potential trouble came in. Where I live now, there is mostly pine, and it works in a hot burning stove. Thanks for sharing!
This is an excellent video. What he is doing is reducing "quenching" by not extracting heat before combustion is completed. This where most woodburning stoves fall down. Google quenching to understand the principle.
Wow! I never knew about wax as a phase change material for storing heat. That's just brilliant!!! It means you get a constant 220J/g released at a constant 60 Celsius as it solidifies. That's perfect for keeping a room warm, compared to water where you get 4 J/g released for each degree Celsius the water cools by. So you would need to get a 55 degree Celsius cooling of the water to release the same energy as the phase change of the wax. Of course, under that scenario the water would be scalding hot and thus cooling rapidly at the start, and by the end be too cold to make much difference. Thank you so much for this. I always thought my woodstoves could be improved, and now I know how! THANK YOU!
Looks like you have been reading up on this! Still need a better way to heat the wax up. It takes too long I think, compared to wax melters you can get from Amazon that can melt 9 gallons of paraffin in less than 20 minutes. This takes around 3 hours. Also need quite a bit more to be real effective. Maybe some type of heating loop of water from the stove to many containers of paraffin. I seen some information about a solar heat storage system like that. Just thinking... Cheers!
@@doubleMinnovations Well, I've just bought a load of second-hand solar panels (pv) and was looking for a way to store the energy directly as heat when I stumbled on your video. Here in the UK we have lots of days in Spring and Autumn that are sunny in the daytime but cold in the evening, and I live in an old house that is hard to heat, so I had been thinking of hot water or maybe gravel chips, but then I saw your video and was totally inspired. I never even thought about phase change heat storage before. Yes, I am sure you could use piped water to transfer heat from the stove into the solid wax to melt it quicker, and if you had the wax is in a tall thin tank, it would be like a wall radiator.
This fire pit is one of a few covered pits that is on the list th-cam.com/users/postUgkxAU9pOCSV9Y5JprooHvfxTpOrt4hx8uRM of approved products for Disney Fort Wilderness. The product served its purpose well and provided excellent fires throughout the evening. We were able to open the door and do s'mores, but I had to be careful because the handle was a bit hot on occasions. Additionally, I wish they had replaced some of the standard nuts with lock nuts in some places. We lost the door handle after just a couple of days of usage. Not a deal breaker, just a recommendation. I still give it 5 stars.
The stone hearth around my woodstove is about 7 tons of masonry. After a good long cold snap, the heat emitted from the stone lasts about 3 days... heating the entire 1500sq ft house.
@@gtanom He explains the silver color tube just goes thru middle of stove pile, so heat in stove pile heats air in silver pile. At top has to be sealed well
@@gtanom No smoke ever goes into the silver pipe. It's a smaller diameter silver pipe inside of the black flue pipe. Where the silver pipe enters and exits the black pipe, it is sealed off.
I fully expected to see yet another person who does not really understand wood heating appliance design. Then you opened with stating you added insulation to the fire box. Good job sir your right on point!
Thank you very much! Now people all over the world are in difficult economic conditions.I believe that your amazing and simple invention can help a lot.I will try this scheme for my small house.May the Lord bless you!
My respect to you Sir. I really appreciate your time and effort to do this video. You are helping a lot of people. Thank so much. Carlos from Whitby, Canada.
Just watched this and thought I should say what a clever bit of practical engineering and physics ...Loved it ..Thank you I had not thought of thermal mass heating...
I connected a 12V-Vent with my equipment solar,put it right above the curve,and shurely i got quite the same effect without welding and buying pipes and other special stuff.Anyway,good spirit,effective realisation..greetings from my YOTUL 602N from Patagonia!
you can use metal 5 gallon buckets filled with road salt. put behind your stove they will store heat ,plus hot salt melts ice faster for your driveway or walkway .. been doing that one for years 🍻🍻
@@doubleMinnovations At some time in the past I have read about it for solar heat storage. I recall it being a liquid solution and had a phase change involved. The result was days of gentle heat return.
They use molten salt in solar thermal plants, but you need very high temps to melt salt... Although there's probably a mix that a 400 F stove could melt
As an hvac tech and contractor, I would suggest combustion air piped directly to the fire box so that the stove doesn't pull a negative pressure on the structure. Wood stoves and fireplaces need air from somewhere and a leaky building allows cold air to be drawn from outside. In this case the author mentioned that it had been below zero Fahrenheit for 2 weeks. A source of fresh air piped to or near the stove would allow the cold combustion air to be heated as it feeds the fire. One customer I visited had gone so far as install a small electric heater in his combustion air ducts that were controlled by a dry bulb thermostat (I think that's what he used. ) One idea I think about is how can the warm air from a wood stove or even a gas log be distributed through the house so that the "Great Room" where the stove is located can share it's heat with other parts of the house. I like the idea of a wood boiler with 2 windows so that the residents and visitors can see 2 flames ,the primary flame and the gasification flame,there's a boiler like that made in CANADA though I probably shouldn't mention it's brand name. I've got an idea for a duct booster fan for the 5" pipe array that would only run when the air circulation system is warm. Good video. Interesting
NO! It isn’t brilliant, it’s foolish! When that wax gets hot enough it will catch fire. What little bit of thermal mass that pot of wax has is not worth the trade off for the amount of risk it creates. Would you put a newspaper on top of the woodstove if you thought it had thermal mass?
1) Quite happy to see some well thought video about energy coming from US. 2) The camera ( the additional insulated one) doesn't seem long enough to burn CO and C. 3) Just saying that because I am unable to see the typical blue flame that comes out when it burn. But if you say so, I trust you 4) The non electric heat reclaimer, even if not designed by Gucci...., its working great 5) if you will see the wax starting to boil.. it can be substituted by benzoic acid that store 3 times the energy of a paraffin/was at 120 celsius and cost 2 euro / kg and will never boil at less than 250 C° 6) Go Vikings! and thanks for the video
This video shows temp readings. th-cam.com/video/4fzQSEiWpw8/w-d-xo.html Never want to anything but melt the wax. Any high temps, and you could be in the world of hurt, if it reached the flash point. Thanks for watching!
Use simple heat reflector on that wall behind the chimney. It receives quite a lot of radiation and the heat is pretty much lost on it. Radiate it back into the room using a celophane (aluminium) foil and some insulation. They make such blankets with one deflector side for cars. Use another reflector on the ceiling on top of the heating elements. A lot of heated air accumulates there and its radiation needs to radiate downwards.
Great video. You're following fast burning masonry heater principles there... We have a Finnish counterflow style and our chimney temperature is around 90 C after passing through all the masonry. So you're getting as good results for a fraction of the price. Really good.
The masonry heater in our house is a counter flow too. And I think the setup in the barn is burning just as clean; according to what I clean out. -I make videos on that too. Thanks for watching!
I think this is great if you have trees on your land Fire wood is expensive these days and what you did was reducing the heat loss and saves you on wood, great job , Thank you for sharing
Thank you for taking the time to share your knowledge I have a wood burner and I'm tired of free,zing and alot is going out my chimney, it's safer and get more heat with your ideas thank you sire
That is brilliant; two minor suggestions. First one could allow the chimney to be straight up, but bulged, and fit the 5" pipe inside it but coming out left and right, but with a single 5" intake. This would allow the main chimney to draw better but still give you a heat exchanger. Second one could use a spinning vent on the 5" outlet to distribute the heat.
With a fan added and built into brick fireplaces, that thermal siphon is called a "Heat-O-lator" and improves a fireplaces ability to heat a room and even a house immensely. We had a large, corner fireplace with a 36" firebox (measured across the rear of the box is the true measurement of a firebox) and a floor to ceiling brick build with a Heat o lator and it did warm the whole house, with the addition of a properly positioned fan in a hall entrance going to the back of the house. I miss that fireplaces to this day.
It seems to me that it might be beneficial to pull cool air from outside your house to feed the fire somehow. Otherwise your fire is pulling the warm air that you worked so hard to heat, and then sending it out your stove pipe, creating a vacuum in the room that can only be filled by fresh cold outside air leaking in through every gap in your doors and windows. You would need some type of insulated and sealed intake pipe through your floor or wall that sucks fresh outside air directly into your stove without allowing the warm air in your room to be pulled into the stove for combustion.
There's lots of thought on this. If you take the air directly from the room, you can get rid of the stale air and replace with fresh air for breathing. But the air going to the fire needs to be replaced somehow. Most of the newer houses have air exchangers that balance out the air. I have one in mine. Right now in the barn, the air is replaced from any cracks and going in and out the door, and the fire is only going for a couple of hours a day. So I'm getting by, but will do something better to replenish. Thanks for commenting!
@@doubleMinnovations Why go through all this trouble with changes to your sove and chimney for only a couple of hours of firing???? Why not just buy a stove with a very high KW in the first place??? I bought a stove last year with the highest KW you can find, and after an hour my entire house is warm, from 17 degrees celc. to 23, and this is both in the basement and first floor. I am from Denmark, and for the last 150 years we have had some of the most innovative and productive stoves in the world. Go check it out. Names like Morsø and Varde Ovne and Meteor.
@@cecwill This is an innovation channel. I improved what I already had, and it didn't cost any money. The stove is still intact, I just rearrange the fire brick and added some left over insulation broad from the masonry heater I build in the house. The stove pipe heat exchanger is one I made over 4 years ago. The 3 hour burn time is to heat up the thermal mass; the stove is off until the next day. Just want to keep it above freezing. Burned it for 2 hours yesterday. It's -23˚F outside this morning, with a wind chill of -35˚F, looking for a high of -1˚F. Got water for the chickens this morning in there, it's about +35˚F. 3 hours of burn time today will heat the place up to +70˚F and warm the thermal mass. Just using a very tiny amount of wood. No reason to spend money on some other expensive wood heater, when I got efficiency now. If you watch some of the other videos in this playlist, you could get a better understanding of the situation here. We may put a gas furnace in there at some point.
This video is an extremely well presented and explained tutorial. This gentleman has thought through the issue of wasted heat and successfully captured a considerable amount of it. I live in the upper mid west and have a built in wood burner that consumes huge amounts of expensive hard wood. I have often wondered how much ($) heat goes into the atmosphere and is effectively wasted, this video explains that very well.
have you thought about a tubing jacket inside your re-claim side chimney? maybe for some on demand hot water or running tubing elsewhere for a radiant heat source in a different area if needed?
I really appreciate your thoughful diy engineering on your project, especially using the infrared thermometer to show the actual operating temperatures at different points in your completed system. (Too many diy experimenters just use unscientific terms like hot, warm, and cool to describe their heating systems - almost useless if you ask me. All they need to do is buy an inexpensive infrared thermometer, like you did, and collect real time performance data on their designs to demonstrate real world performance characteristics. That way further system improvements can be scientifically compared with earlier versions to see what new features actually work well.) Some things that all diy wood stove experimenters need to be mindful of: -Ignition temperature of any phase change wax used as thermal storage -Points where creosote might condense due to ideal condensation conditions -Maintaining complete combustion conditions in the firebox -Proper exhaust gas venting under all weather conditions Some opportunities for improvements: -Thermoelectric fans powered by solid state conversion of heat to electricity -Arduino controlled & powered outside air supply for direct vented combustion & thermostat control -Active heat storage via thermal transfer fluid piped to a thermal storage battery -Improved heat exhangers for greater operating efficiency All that said, this was a very creative & inexpensive diy build that appears to work as intended. I really enjoyed watching both videos to learn more about it.
Great video, I’ve got an old monarch paramount wood cook stove in my garage that I love to use. It works great for cooking a pot of stew and brewing a pot of coffee as I’m working in the garage but it just doesn’t put out quite enough heat to really keep it warm on a chilly Minnesota day. I’ve been kicking around ideas for awhile now and seeing your video was a big revelation, I love your chimney pipe heat exchanger idea and I am going to try to adapt it to my stove. Great tip on the pot of wax as well, that would work great for me as it’s already a cook stove with a nice big flat cast iron cooktop already.
Thanks. Just remember that melting wax needs attention just like your cook with a hot oil. You don't want to over heat, just melt it. Check out this video I made about it, because some people have great fears of melting wax. th-cam.com/video/qg_s9IzF8sw/w-d-xo.html
I do stack up some firebricks on top. Still would like more thermo mass it there, but the weight gets to be so much. My masonry heater/fireplace in the house has plenty though. You could check out those videos if interested. Thanks.
Re your chimney mods, I can only say that is brilliant! Over 100° from your reclaimed heat tube! Why hasn’t a design company thought of this? Takes a man (or woman to keep it pc 😅) to think outside the box. Well done you. 👍
Great ideas. I love your wax. I sugest you put it in a locking lid presure cooker pot with rhe vent open so if it ever gets bumped off it wont sill very much. This will reduce fire or skin burn potential. Why not stack the extra bricks around the sides on the lip and mortar in place. Thank you for sharing.
Thanks for your ideas. I do put bricks around on top of it. I took them off for the video. If you look at my latest video on this subject you can get a better feel for the way it is. th-cam.com/video/hopXmMXrqAY/w-d-xo.html
The thermosiphon chimney heat extraction is very smart. Nice work. I’m working on a water heater, we don’t need space heating, so it’s going to be quite different
I saw a set up with copper tubing in a spiraling circular motion that set on top of a wood stove and went to the heater next to it. There was quite a bit of copper tubing used.
I am really interested on the wax heat storage part of your system heat retention. What is the heat storage ability of the wax compared with water Sir ??? Very interesting methods you put together for efficiency. What else could you do to increase the heat output of this stove ??? Nice work fella too.
Reports I seen don't seem to be real consistent with comparing paraffin and water, and vary. (one favorable quote): "Paraffin wax stores 5 to 14 times more heat per unit volume then sensible storage material such as water, masonry, or rock." Source: "ijariie.com/AdminUploadPdf/_ENERGY_STORAGE_SYSTEM_FOR_HEATING_AND_COOLING_APPLICATION_USING_PARAFFIN_WAX__ijariie10109.pdf" Also do an internet search for "phase change sheetrock". Interesting! I don't think I could meaningfully increase the heat output of this stove anymore. It's burning clean, and I use about half as much wood as I did before. Better wood, would help I guess, like oak...
@@doubleMinnovations I can agree that hard woods hold a lot more heat than pine. Most of my wood is Ash, Oak, Hickory, Osage Orange. Which is suppose to have the most heat when burned. Also, my wood has just about three to four percent moisture content. Really dry wood works best for sure. Nothing worse than trying to cook wet wood in the stove. Thanks
@@victoryfirst2878 While I don't have this set up, I can say mostly "yes" to both of those questions. I have a small pot that I melt wax in to make fire starters. The wax does have a smell, but unless you're using scented candles - it's not bad in my opinion. As long as you don't get it hot enough to smoke at which point it can catch fire. I got distracted once and had that happen (and then it really smells lol) but both of those things I am sure are mitigated by having a lid on the pot - which I do not have. My particular pot did not come with a lid. I also turned the heat way down (doing it on a regular electric stove), so as to avoid the fire hazard, it just takes longer to melt the wax. But that's waaayy better than burning down the house and/or filling it with smoke. 👍😁
You made your own would gas burner. I was very impressed I stayed at the guy's house for a few days dead of January. 6 below zero. If you had me land the floor next to him and watch the flames dancing around in that thing was just amazing and it wasn't even a good shape it was pretty beat up. I realized that I never worked with the wood stove before in my life even though I've used them for 30 years now. That thing was like a nuclear reactor. Actually fascinating to watch just lay there and just be entertained by watching the flames dancing and that thing!
Now duct in with dryer vent fixture and hose, outside make up air so you can enjoy 35% more heat. Dont burn already heated air! Burn cold expansive air that balances your system to neutral. I did/ do. Works a charm.
That heat reclaimer is excellent! I've seen something similar for heating a tent with a log torch, but it never occurred to me that it had broader application than that. Well done!
I like the thermal storage idea, very similar to utilizing the mass in soapstone heaters. In a Scandanavian Soapstone heater, you burn a very hot fire for a few hours, then let it go out. The mass of soapstone is heated by that fire, then radiates heat out into the room for many hours. It gives you a very even heat, not a hot and cold cycle. Instead of having to feed the fire fairly often as with your heater, you feed it once or maybe twice a day, depending on how cold it is outside. Radiant heat is good heat! I have a simple box heater with a large flat top as part of the firebox. I think I could fit 3 of your wax pots on its top. I may try that! If I had that heat exchanger contraption on my heater, then my home owner's insurance would cancel me! HA HA They would not like its appearance, no matter how efficient it is! My wood heater does have a recirculation draw so that smoke and gas is drawn down through the fire once it is up to operating temp, but I still have to clean my stainless steel chimney once during the winter cycle due to creosote buildup. I think it is due to how often we have to feed the box. About every two hours we add 3-4 sticks...or whenever we have a nice bed of coals from the previous sticks.
The masonry heater/fireplace in built in the house has many tons of thermal mass, and we just have short hot fires in it, once or twice a day. (videos in playlist) I definitely don't have enough thermal mass for the area in the barn where this stove is. Thanks for your interesting comment!
I would definitely be concerned about house insurance issues. Even not getting my wood stove professionally cleaned annually puts me at risk of insurance not covering a house fire.
Thanks for the video production and wisdom of sharing the efficiencies of a wood-burning stove. It would seem to me that building a dense Rock, such as granite cubby hole, to be absorbed into the granite would also be a good way for storing BTUs. Note: The yodel stove is the best efficient stove I've ever used especially if you're burning Locust and Hickory. I do like your stovepipe, very interesting concept. One could put a low voltage fan on top of the knuckle to blow more warm air out.
@@vinquinn I wanted this to be passive with no need of electric. When the coolest air at the bottom of the room get pulled up and heated by the exchanger, it needs to be replaced by the layer of air that's just above it in the room. So that drops down, and is also pushed down by the exiting hotter air after the heat exchanger. That cycle continues and the room heats up. It seems to work just fine. Thanks for commenting!
Great heat exchanger. I have square metal pips to make 2 camper-type stoves 12 x 8 x 16. It's been on the back burner because I was trying to figure out how to insolate with brick.... fiberboard is the answer much lighter and can trim really nice.. Looks like both your ideas work hand in hand. Thanks for the insight!!
Call me silly, but I'm scratching my head trying to figure out why he'd insulate the walls of a woodstove. Is he trying to keep the heat from escaping... into the room he's trying to heat?!? He's basically forcing all the heat out the flue and up the chimney. Fire brick isn't a great idea either, but at least it acts as a heat battery. The wool doesn't store much of any heat but basically just keeps it in the stove.
Nice job love the thermal siphon I use the thermal siphon in reverse I was burning Fuel oil and preheated my oil With steam from a garbage burner industrial scale I had a A 3/4'' black pipe inside a 2''' pipe the electric pre heaters Couldn't supply enough heat To the fuel in sub zero temps
All wood burners should have their air intake from directly outside. A 2-inch pipe is good enough, then through a check ball valve. This will cause the room to fill up with warm air...like a balloon. Where as without it the stove will pull in all the warm air that's in the room and back up the chimney, along with creating cold drafts.
Very interesting, I like your chimney heat reclaimer. Question: where is the air intake for your firebox? Is it fed from inside the room or you bring air from the outside?
Hi Carlos; the air intake source for the fire, is from inside the room. It does put a little negative pressure in the room, but equalizes when doors are opened, and seeps through air cracks which provides enough air replacement. Thanks for commenting. 👍🏻
@@davidm9214 I do pile up firebricks around and on top of it. I took them off for the video, but mention and show them off to the side. The phase change of the wax is what I'm going for. -to melt it to a liquid. It takes many hours to do that, and most of the time it doesn't get all melted. What I'm doing, is as dangerous as making candles. It would become more dangerous if I tried to keep heating it up to its flash point, 392-480 °F. The concern is understandable. Thanks for watching.
You could probably really increase the efficiency of your thermo syphon by finding a way to agitate the air as it goes through keeping it in the chamber longer. A cork screw effect would be ideal I think.
The duct you got on that stove is pretty innovative man. If a guy plumbed the 6in thru the floor, it would positively pressurize the house - no cold drafts
this is the way. supplying cold air from outside the building to supply the fire is way better than using warm heated house air. Stove use an enormous amount of air. Without supplying "make up air" it will use the house air.
1.Don't make the alteration until after the inspection or your stove plumbing will look like a Christmas tree of red tags. 2. Beware this will immediately void your warranty. 3.IF anything goes wrong and there's fire and or death your insurance company will tell you to go pound sand. 4. Install a good quality carbon monoxide detector.
Yeh thats what i was a bit worried about that het coming out of the top is he sure no carbon dioxide isnt coming out also if hes right good luck but its good to have other's opinion like yours becaUse we dont want someone dying thanx mate
Love the flue pipe heat recovery exchanger. I would think you may have a problem with creosote build up in the 8" outer pipe. You should look at insulation for 8" pipe - This will be safer too. Hot pipe low to floor.
Uncle built house with fireplace, he put heavy 2in id tubing built into the hearth, curved around behind firebox and thru chimney back out into living area......sucked cold air in under fire blew hot air out over fire.......he also enclosed firebox but without enclosure it still worked
This is a great setup. I put fire bricks on my stove to collect heat. You can add or reduce to whatever you need. I also put a big pot of water on the stove for humidity.
This is what I'm looking for. I have a similar wood stove. Whit that cold air return will be able to hook that up to a vent in my floor I put in. I have a boiler system so no docks. & yes my stove is in the basement. Still watching your video and see exactly how that chimney system is hooked up.
Thanks! You may want to check out some other videos I have, on other wood burners I built. The hybrid masonry heater in our house has been excellent, and have been using for 4 years. "th-cam.com/video/ldqGQHpM2_8/w-d-xo.html". also... Rocket stove water heater, -first video in the series: "th-cam.com/video/vjEwOq3sRwU/w-d-xo.html"
*Please read before commenting*. If not apparent to you; the stove shown in this video, has a small added enhanced burn chamber. It burns at a high temperature (1,100˚F+) to burn off the gasses that cause creosote buildup. So the much lower temperatures shown going through the heat reclaimer, do not produce creosote. Experimental information to use at your own discretion.
L O L!!!!! Just noticed the Dynamite box next to the stove!! Hilarious !!!!!!!
Howdy, thanks for the video. Where is that burn chamber? Or is it created by virtue of the extra insulation?
It's at the front half of the stove, right behind the glass door. It's created by the insulation board and fire bricks.
Best wishes!
Make a mass heater...DUH!!!!!!
@@Bozemanjustin Justin, I actually did have a RMH of sorts in there for a couple of years. I used the rocket stove, (that you can see in an earlier video), I used this very same chimney heat reclaimer, and I had a metal shelving unit up against the back wall to hold thermo mass. I had a damper valve at the back of the stove so I could switch from the mass on the shelfs, to the chimney heat reclaimer. The reclaimer would heat the rooms up faster, then I would switch over to the mass until that got hot.
I was disappointed in the type of mass I used, (about a 1,000lbs of pea gravel), and the space that it took up, and wanted to try something else. In the mean time, I took all that I learned, and made the hybrid masonry heater in the house, that I show in other vides. Thanks
Dynamite, chain saw and wood stove. Obviously a dedicated hobbyist.
Not a good idea with chainsaw next to lit stove. Dry wood nearby stove, but not flamible liquids! Please!
This is a man that has spent a lot of time in front of a fire thinking about that fire. Well done.
Thanks!
Not enough time.
Placing a pot of flammable liquid on a stove might make this guy a Darwin Award winner. When wax gets hot enough, it vaporizes. This can become a fuel-air mixture and explode.
@@jwrosenbury So what temp will wax explode? Is it just temperature or temperature combined with a naked flame? Lets see you prove yourself, city boy! I despise 'know it all, MFers who aint got a clue!!!
@jwrosebury He keeps a box of dynamite beside the fire do you think he cares ? No
To leave a dynamite box next to wood stove so people could leave more comments. Brilliant idea! :)
Never really gave that much thought. It's a box of fire starters I got as a gift. 😁
It TRIGGERED you, right dude! hahahahahahaha
One of the most impressive things about this video is that you have replied to so many of your commenters. This is excellence, I think.
I reply as much as I can, when I sense someone is genuinely interested and has question that I have answered before.
People in the United states don't understand cold unless you live in a cold climate like MN, Northern NY, Wisconsin, Montana , Michigan, northern Illinois, VM, Main and NH where the temps in the deep winter can get below -25 F from Dec to April. People that do videos like this are priceless to help others to stay warm.
I think a lot of people are aware that winters are cold around places like this, if they are asked. They just don't know why anyone would want to live around here. Northern MN is has a lot of wilderness and freedom, so that's why they put up with the winters here. That's for commenting!
@@doubleMinnovations Same thing with NY, there is allot of wilderness, people think of NY as NY city only, NY actually has more farm land than many midwestern states believe it or not
I was sure that this was going to be just another one of those ridiculous changes to a woodstove and the flu that seem to be everywhere on the Internet. But I had a few minutes to kill and decided to watch your video. I watched with an open mind and no pre-judgment and I would have to report that I am absolutely completely shocked by what you have discovered and what I’ve learned from your video! I have always try thinking of ways to get more of the heat out of my woodstove and the exhaust flue. I actually considered one of those square boxes with the pipe holes through it that lets air come through and get warmed. I have also considered using a bunch of elbows on my exhaust flue and zigzag the flu back-and-forth and back-and-forth up to where it goes out. You’ve open my eyes and it feels like I just took the red pill because I could say with certainty that I think you’ve discovered something very special and very helpful for everyone! I’m gonna be heading to town soon to buy all the parts to make what you’ve shown in your video! Thank you very much!
I tried multiple elbows on the exhaust before too. I actually seen that on an old western; and where I got the idea to try it. This one isn't a whole lot different. There are few styles out there.
Thanks for watching!
Agreed! I’m going to set this up as well. Thanks a bunch for the info.
what he has done is create a heat exchanger… you could have just as easily created a coil of tubing inside and routed water through for bathing and washing too. the more surface area that you have the better radiation of heat you will have
@@doubleMinnovations is that stove taking air from outside to burn ever think of running maybe intake pipe do the secondary burner just curious love your setup looks great
Just get one of those heat activated fans. They're actually way better than they used to be and move a decent bit of air. I wouldn't cool the smoke in the flu... You'll have massive creosote buildup in that reclaimer. As a matter of fact, between that and the massive pot of FLAMMABLE WAX!! this is just a string of fire hazards all in a row. I hope and pray he never spills that.
This is genius. I'm a materials scientist with heat treating specialty. In industrial settings we "recuperate" with a similar method: countercurrent flow. Your work here is excellent and is well supported by engineering principles. Well done!
Thanks John ross!
Yeah, that setup is nice because is passive.
For 'correct' heat transfer, it needs to have the air forced downward so the air gets preheated on the way down and then exits to the room. That way the final temp reading is highest due to coming off the hottest parts of the jacketed heater before entering the space.
The downside is quenching the exhaust too much on a stove like that will lead to creosote buildup in the pipe. ...and eventually start a house fire is it's allowed to build up.
This is extinction level dumbness. Insulating the fire box prevents the heat from getting out to the room. The top of the stove is 400F while the side of the stove is only 200F. Imagine if the heat could transfer through the side of the stove.
@@notapplicable430 With rocket stoves, the reason you insulate the burn area is to make the smoke hot enough to ignite to (over-simplistic, but the trick is to 'crack' the hydrocarbons).
When done correctly, it's a net positive to deprive yourself of the initial burn to reap the heat from complete combustion.
This application doesn't do all of that, it's more of just an illustration of a jacketed heat exchanger.
It’s not exactly countercurrent exchange, but it’s close, and way simpler this way with the thermosiphon
For anyone watching this as a new burner, having a a heat reclaimer is truly a double edged sword. By removing heat from your flue gases, you increase the likelihood of the gases condensing in your chimney and building up creosote. This is mitigated by burning very dry woods that has been seasoned at least a year. You would also need a very ideal chimney height to produce enough draft. It’s the draft in your chimney that powers your stove - draft is what draws air into the firebox, and it is generated by the rising gases in the flue. The hotter those gases, the more draft.
In the dying phase of the fire, the chimney needs to continue drawing air into the stove and out the flue. If there are any pressure differentials created, like a clothes dryer or bathroom fan, then having a weak draft can result in the flue reversing its flow. That will bring CO into the living space. In an old cabin, not an issue. But use this flue setup in the basement of a two story house with standard appliances and mechanical systems, then someone sleeping in the basement may not wake up in the morning.
I think most UK stove manufacturers recommend the steel flue has vermiculite poured around it if it passes through the old brick chimney for that very reason, not many do it though to keep costs down.
I'm glad this comment is toward the top. Heat reclaimers are nightmare fuel for the Chimney Sweep.
@@tangoone6312 yes. In North America, most manufacturers require insulation, usually a ceramic fiber blanket wrap, be used unless you can verify a 1 or 2 inch continuous air gap around the chimney exterior. But the number of uninsulated liners way outnumbers those that followed the instructions.
Not if it's hot enough
@@anthonyman8008 how hot is hot enough? Did you read my post or just the first two sentences? I specifically said in the dying phase of the fire, so the concept of hot enough in a stove that is decreasing in temperature isn’t really relevant.
One other improvement you could make. To stop drafts from windows and doors, give your stove it's own air supply from outside. Then the stove wouldn't pull air through cracks and door seals to vent it out the chimney. As the room air heats it will sort of pressurize the room with warm air and drafts will be minimal if ceiling and walls are well insulated.
It's better to pull cold air in all your chinks and gaps than it is to let heat escape out of them
@@shmeli Debateable. Letting heat escape will reduce the efficiency of your stove, but pulling cold air in will reduce its effectiveness in heating the room. You will need to decide on a case by case basis what you need.
@messin with mike exactly on needing fresh air, in this video a fresh air duct from outside should be connected to the top of his duct, it will get sucked in and heated then distributed hot at floor level. Any air sucked in from outside (which every stove or fireplace does) gets heated first then used to burn the wood.
additionally if you can warm the intake with the exhaust it'll cause the fire to burn hotter and thus transfer more heat to the room.
Heat rises, not sure how it would be sucked in if connected to the top.. It would take the warm house ait and vent it outside
I have heated with wood and I am an engineer... I am totally amazed by your innovation... I really like when people take off the shelf items and make them work! Brilliant!
Thanks! It's kind of a 'MacGyver' type thing. 😁.
As a retired Chimney Sweep, I thank you for sharing your innovations. I love it when someone comes up with ways to get more out of equipment and devices. Most of my customers were never informed as to how take care of and operate their stoves when they had them installed and I was glad to help them understand the ins and outs of their units so that they in many cases could extend the time and reduce the frequency of needing to have their chimney cleaned.
Thanks for watching and commenting!
What do you think of the low temps he was running on the final tee? Seems pretty low for wood.
@@_gramcrakka_82 Well, he has the "cool" or or"cold" air at the bottom which is sucked up by the discharged air out of the stove top which causes both the cold air to be warmed which causes cooling of the stoves discharged air in turn.
Then the air coming out back at the top stainless elbow where the 'warmed" air comes back out into the room. The draw at the top of the flue draws the rest of the heated air out the top. Frankly, I am surprised that he gets a decent draw out of the top of the flue, he must have a very well done flue. I have had to fix many flue pipes that were not put in properly because there are many that can be done improperly when someone installing one doesn't understand completely the factors that can hinder the function of a chimney.
@@bozzojoe Yeah, I was wondering about the draw. You have 2 potential problems, the bends which will cause friction and loss of momentum for the flue gases as well as taking heat from the flue gasses which will potentially overcool them and cause them to drop rather than rise from the chimney.
@@bozzojoe from my understanding you only want 2 max 90°s. And running such a low temp really allows creosote to build. From my experience he would need to clean out he his flu multiple times a year to avoid any fires. Its a neat system dont get me wrong. But I'm curious to see the internals after just 1 month.
My Momma grew-up in the 1930's on a farm in Arkansaw (as it was spelled then, near Belleville) and they had a used tin wood stove for heat, NOT a CAST IRON ONE. MUCH LATER, they bought a cast iron cook stove (four cook top) second hand as they were share croppers and po'. The house first only had a fireplace for heat and cooking. You cooked one side and froze the other. She passed away in October at 93, fully lucid, and I have hours of videos of her and my Grandparents (and some of my Great Grandparents who lived well) telling about farm life. When they moved to Tulsa in 1942, my Grandmother cried as there was running water in the house they rented and two electric light bulbs. Carry water 2 miles from the "branch" of the Petite Jean River for EVERYTHING.
Thanks for watching and commenting Ricky!
Those videos would be great to watch
I wish I recorded my grandparents and great grandparents talking about their youth
You cannot repeat stories about the "good old days" often enough. When people complain their life nowadays is so hard, they should know what our not too distant forebears had to go through, and maybe realise that for the vast majority of people things have improved beyond recognition, and be grateful for that.
@@lewislee9201 life before mobile phones and Facebook was a lot nicer😊
The fire box improvements and the flu heat exchanger are really great. As a former commercial insulator, I like what you did there with the 2" board. I've always used thermal mass myself(even built a successful rocket stove) but likely my next stove set up will be something similar to yours- primarily because I moved south and don't want to burn too much wood in the tiny house I'm going to build. Best wishes and stay warm!
Thanks for sharing Tom! Be well.
Love the dynamite box !! I used to have the old ones around. I remember going to the hardware with my great grandfather and buying dynamite,fuse and caps. Everyone could not believe it??? I told them that was when America was STILL FREE !!! You must have a very good draft on the chimney. Just keep it cleaned. I was in the hearth business for years. Started installing stoves back in the early to mid 70's !
Thanks for sharing! I should go into business making dynamite boxes. So many people are interested in having one.
As an aspiring piro, much respect. This dude is on another level. I love the thermal siphon. That is brilliant. I'm planning to install a wood burner in my tiny house and I'm stealing that idea.
I believe you nailed the thermodynamic theory with an excellent real world implementation. Burn hot over 1,000 F with the insulated firebox for a high combustion efficiency to burn secondary flu gases. Then use heat transfer methods to get exhaust gas down to 150 F to maximize efficiency. The hot burn, thermal management, and heat storage are key.
Also the simple consumer off the shelf or COTS design is definitely a pro move.
I built rockets, satellites, and defense systems for a living and I am impressed with your design. I am going to build one to heat my garage!
A note: since you burn hot you burn all of the flu gasses so you will not have any build up in you chimney.
Wouldn’t it make sense to supply the fire with cold outside air for better efficiency still? you would potentially have a greater volume of exhaust to pass through the exchanger- wouldn’t you then need to slow that down to allow for the exchange to take place? Or could you soak the heat better into a liquid for radiant floor heat? Some of both?
So much wasted energy…
@@gregorykusiak5424 Yes you can always add $$! To go from 90% efficiency to 95%. It is the old system engineering 90-10 rule. If you make the mods you suggested then it will be more $$$$ and heat flow trades. If you inject cold wet air into the fire box you may or may not reach over 1000 F degrees. Also extracting.heat with water may also upset the heat flow balance. You would have to built and test. Time and $$$$$.
Thanks Spencer! You know your stuff! I could use much more thermo mass in that area.
@@SlowRiderDucati I can add a duct booster fan for $15 for the cold intake side.
I can double it on the heat exchanger side. $30 isn’t that much of an extra cost to me, but I can see how some mightn’t agree. If I were have to choose one or the other, I’d choose the exchanger input to move more air past the heat source, cycling the air in the room more often/faster.
Great video! I recently moved into a home that had a really beat up Regency i3100. The previous own at some point installed it himself and had this beautiful stove insert exhausting almost directly into the flu. It did have a liner, but it was not capped, and when I removed the stove for repairs I could see it was likely not attached properly its entire life. I took it upon myself to repair and refinish it. After watching your video, I appreciate the modifications you made to the firebox as they are similar to what i had done to mine. For my baffles, I used Ceramic Fiber board, and furnace cement. I cut the boards to fit perfectly flush in the top of the firebox above the airtubes. I used furnace cement to cover the areas of the fiber boards that would be in direct contact with flame. It added rigidity to the baffles and also protects the fibers from careless loading of wood.
Thanks for sharing Jeramie!
As a chimney sweep, at first i was like, dang i bet all those corners build up with creosote quickly, but then i see you have essencally a catalytic stove for cleaner emmisions aswell as easy access to each section where the creosote would build up. So right on dude! Thats a pretty neat setup! Around here, we sometimes see where people who have blowers on their stove run it into their air ducts to run warm air with the a/c off. And that is also a pretty effiecent way of increasing BTUs. Hell, a blower alone does wonder on BTU's just from having forced heat flow, instead of just radiant.
Thanks for commenting! I pulled that heat exchanger apart about a week and half ago. -(yearly cleaning). I just got some fluffy soot. I did a video clip of it, and will include it at the end of the next video.
One of the best, most efficient ways to burn wood that I've come across. I've burned a fair amount of firewood in my day. Thanks for this, DMI.
Thanks for commenting!
Phase change thermal storage, double hull bypass flue, box liner. You are one smart man. Thanks for the great video.
Thanks for watching Private Information...😊
Very ingenious, normally I'm against chimney heat reclaimers, but yours is a well thought out system, smaller firebox with a much hotter fire burns are the volatiles so as the reclaimer works and cools the flue gases down you dont have to worry about creosote forming as much since your burning way hotter then what the stove is designed for. It should be warned for anyone thinking of building something like this that its a must to also insulate the stove firebox because they work hand in hand.
Thanks for your comments. I burn mostly pine, and don't have a problem with creosote, with this setup. The hot fire burns everything up.
There are many pitfalls to the heat reclaimer that really require a sound understanding of draft and creosote formation to be safe. Fine for use in a leaky cabin, but install this in the basement of a bungalow with an exposed outdoor chimney and standard mechanical systems, and something as simple as turning a bath exhaust fan on could create enough pressure differential to reverse the flue direction making the house a better chimney then the chimney is. Someone sleeping in that hypothetical basement may not wake up in the morning due to CO exposure.
@@brentoconnor6127
You sure about that ?
@@brentoconnor6127 easily solved with a $20 smoke CO detector combo.
@@ianhemingway5687 a CO detector doesn’t solve the problem anymore than seatbelts solve accidents. A CO detector should always be installed with any combustion appliance.
This is a really smart modification! Thanks for sharing. Also,another great way to improve efficiency of a stove is to set up an air supply from outside the house,so that the stove doesn’t suck warm air out of the room and up the chimney. 👌
Thanks for watching and sharing!
I would think twice before doing that.. one of the great benefits of a standard stove is that it does indeed suck air from inside the house and sends it up the stack.. taking with it a lot of moisture. When you dry clothes inside the house with normal heating being used, you get condensation all over the place, esp in the windows.. this does not happen if you have a stove running. So running the stove keeps drying the house inside. But if you supply the stove directly from outside, you won't get this drying effect.
@@wotcherfaz This stove is in the barn, so not too concerned right now about the air. I found the directions for the installation of this stove, and they recommend the air comes from the room, and not directly from outside.
What I did is pipe 4" schedule 10 PVC into the house behind the stove. It's not directly connected and maybe only supplies 95% of the combustion air. No drafts under the doors. Our dog goes in and out every hour or 2 so that probably vents the house. We hang all laundry inside and no frost issues.
The stove pipe heat recover is a great idea. I use a wood stove in my ( well insulated) 500 sq ft shop and burn free scrap pallets. For heat storage, I have cinder blocks stacked on top of the stove filled with sand. About 32 inches of pipe coming out of the stove is buried in the sand. Although not code anymore, the pipe turns at a 90 coming out of the sand horizontally and runs about 10 ft before it turns back vertical out the roof. I have a heat shield/cowling around that run with a fan blowing the air through.
I work for 8-9 hours a day, leaving around 5:00 pm. Canadian winters with -30C overnight my shop is only 0 to -5 the next morning. I burn around 2 pallets a day when its that cold.
Lots of people have shared their ideas for improving their wood heat, and they are all very interesting. Yours is too! Thanks!
Thermal mass heat storage is a great idea, however, cinderblocks and sand are not dense and are a poor choice. Metal is a great storage material, if you could wrap your stove top in 700-800# of gold or spent uranium, you'd have the king of heat storage. If you have to settle for steel, I understand.
I was going to ask whether the sand and cinder block was meant as an insulator or heat sink. Would probably insulate more than hold and share heat. Very easy to install.
Cobb is sand and clay and would be almost as easy to install in a cinder block mold that could later be removed.
@@carpediemarts705 The cinder blocks filled with sand act as a mass heat sink. ( free material on hand) The chimney runs through the sand for 2-1/2 feet as it exits the stove, absorbing all that heat during the day. It works extremely well. Example : I left my shop at 4:00 pm, I don't stock up the stove, and choke the air off to slow burn what ever is left in the stove. It was -14 C overnight and it was still 9 degree in my shop the next morning at 8:00am.
I watched it all, I got a new to me steel stove new fire brick. The 1 thing I had to do was cut a outside air Intake for the firebox,,, what a big difference 5x the heat, no more cross drafting or sucking in Cold air. Cut my whole consumption of wood and LP gas in Half ore better. Must get outside air Intake. Best ever.
Brilliant - my grandfather did something similar with the pipe design, but with this fireplace in the basement. I never thought about having something on the stove that held the heat. Appreciate you taking the time to make this video - these are the things that should be passed on. Im building our home in the heart of the Colorado Rockies, and I am trying to make the home as energy efficient as possible, so I am putting a wood burner in the basement and this design with be perfect!
You may like to look at the videos I made for my hybrid/masonry fireplace. "th-cam.com/video/ldqGQHpM2_8/w-d-xo.html"
Have been using this in our house for 5 winters now, and what I would really recommend.
It was a lot of work, but has been well worth it! Thanks.
Extremely interesting, Ive never seen anything like that little diversion off the side of the flue like that. Good ideas. Thanks.
Glad you liked it!
It seems to me I remember seeing this when I was looking at alcohol stills
As a Firefighter of 20+ years I saw your thermal storage wax and shuttered. If that wax ever over heats, your begging for a serious house fire. Might I suggest getting some large pieces of soap stone as a MUCH better thermal storage system. I have heated my house with wood for the past 18 years and about 10 years ago picked up some soap stone cutoffs from a counter top maker local to me. They are just some odd shaped cutoffs and I placed them on top of and behind my stove with them sitting on some bricks to allow airflow and WOW what a difference they made. My stove sits on a brick outer heart in front of a old cooking fireplace (my house is 190 years old) and after having a large fire in the stove for about 8 hours we can let the fire die down and the soap stone and brick hearth will radiate heat for he next 18 to 24 hours. We only have to keep a fire going all day on days it stays well below freezing. Also, fire brick, by design, avoids absorbing heat and makes poor thermal storage, if you can't get soap stone, regular solid bricks work much better than fire bricks for it.
BTW, absolutely love he heat reclaimed and am thinking about ways to make one myself, how did you seal the pipes on it up and did it affect your draft?
Yep; I have been well informed here about how stupid, crazy, and dangerous I am. 😁
In this set up, my stove top runs about 300-400˚F. The flash point of paraffin is 392-480, boiling point 698˚F, melting point 120-150˚F. I'm just trying to get it to the melting point, and with that much wax, it takes hours. Attention needs to be payed to it just like cooking does.
I wish there was soap stone available around here, and at a decent price!
The area of flow between the 8 & 5" pipe, is pretty much the same as the 6" flue. -so I haven't noticed any less draw.
Just thinking out loud, but I think some of the concern is having so many turns in the pipe. Must be your fire box mods making all the difference. Making the gases hot enough to scavenge enough heat for your heat exchanging to be efficient and the gases are probably moving much faster to reduce any Eddie's or disruption in flow. I think it's a good technique, but with a little creativity you could make it appear more sturdy. Maybe make a square frame around it out of some angle iron to anchor to. Just to the height of the stove top to add security to the 3 way junction. Could even add a little rack or hanger to the frame to place a poker or other fire place tools. Just throwing an idea out that I had, not trying to minimize your work. Probably a lot of neat things to do. The industrial/rustic look never goes out of style.
@@donavonrobbins1908 I haven't had a problem with the draw, even when first starting the fire.
The area across a 6" pipe is 28.27. The area across a 5" pipe is 19.65. The area across an 8" pipe is 50.26.
50.26(8") - 19.65(5") = 30.37. The area of flow between the 8" and 5" pipe is greater than the 6". I tried a 4" interior pipe first, then the 5"; and didn't really notice a difference.
Anybody can do anything with this, it's open source. All thoughts are welcome, and gives others ideas too!
@@doubleMinnovations I wasn't really thinking of any noticable draft trouble. I was mentioning those things as contributors to creosote deposits. But you have that taken care of with the high burn temps. Even at start up, any build up potential would be burned away shortly. I mentioned in another post a parlor stove in my cabin and using an electric oscillating fan behind it to transfer some heat off it. Sometimes I would place then fan in front of the open ash clean out and get the flames going to burn off a little creosote. It was a short run to a wall thimble (air gap design) to an exterior pipe that was well away from the log siding and a low roof edge. Wouldn't be able to modify the cylinder shaped burn box like yours.
@@donavonrobbins1908 Once I experienced some type of hot burning wood heating device, I never wanted to go back to anything else. But before, I always put one of those magnetic wood stove thermometers on the pipe where it goes into the chimney adaptor. Tried to keep that in the 'safe' zone. Hardwoods were always better, using pine is where potential trouble came in. Where I live now, there is mostly pine, and it works in a hot burning stove. Thanks for sharing!
This is an excellent video. What he is doing is reducing "quenching" by not extracting heat before combustion is completed. This where most woodburning stoves fall down. Google quenching to understand the principle.
Wow! I never knew about wax as a phase change material for storing heat. That's just brilliant!!! It means you get a constant 220J/g released at a constant 60 Celsius as it solidifies. That's perfect for keeping a room warm, compared to water where you get 4 J/g released for each degree Celsius the water cools by. So you would need to get a 55 degree Celsius cooling of the water to release the same energy as the phase change of the wax. Of course, under that scenario the water would be scalding hot and thus cooling rapidly at the start, and by the end be too cold to make much difference. Thank you so much for this. I always thought my woodstoves could be improved, and now I know how! THANK YOU!
Looks like you have been reading up on this! Still need a better way to heat the wax up. It takes too long I think, compared to wax melters you can get from Amazon that can melt 9 gallons of paraffin in less than 20 minutes. This takes around 3 hours. Also need quite a bit more to be real effective. Maybe some type of heating loop of water from the stove to many containers of paraffin. I seen some information about a solar heat storage system like that.
Just thinking...
Cheers!
@@doubleMinnovations Well, I've just bought a load of second-hand solar panels (pv) and was looking for a way to store the energy directly as heat when I stumbled on your video. Here in the UK we have lots of days in Spring and Autumn that are sunny in the daytime but cold in the evening, and I live in an old house that is hard to heat, so I had been thinking of hot water or maybe gravel chips, but then I saw your video and was totally inspired. I never even thought about phase change heat storage before. Yes, I am sure you could use piped water to transfer heat from the stove into the solid wax to melt it quicker, and if you had the wax is in a tall thin tank, it would be like a wall radiator.
This fire pit is one of a few covered pits that is on the list th-cam.com/users/postUgkxAU9pOCSV9Y5JprooHvfxTpOrt4hx8uRM of approved products for Disney Fort Wilderness. The product served its purpose well and provided excellent fires throughout the evening. We were able to open the door and do s'mores, but I had to be careful because the handle was a bit hot on occasions. Additionally, I wish they had replaced some of the standard nuts with lock nuts in some places. We lost the door handle after just a couple of days of usage. Not a deal breaker, just a recommendation. I still give it 5 stars.
The stone hearth around my woodstove is about 7 tons of masonry. After a good long cold snap, the heat emitted from the stone lasts about 3 days... heating the entire 1500sq ft house.
In the house, where the masonry heater is; we have about 5-6 tons of stone and masonry built into it. Really does the trick.
Thanks for watching!
How come the smoke isn’t coming out into the house? How did you convince the smoke to go left and the heat to go up and right?
@@gtanom
He explains the silver color tube just goes thru middle of stove pile, so heat in stove pile heats air in silver pile. At top has to be sealed well
@@gtanom No smoke ever goes into the silver pipe. It's a smaller diameter silver pipe inside of the black flue pipe. Where the silver pipe enters and exits the black pipe, it is sealed off.
Have any pics or vids John e. Hilbert? I’m intrigued with thrbckncept
Thanks for the video. Simple and straight forward re-engineering idea. Save on wood, increase the heat, reclaim it and store it. Grand!
Thanks for the compliment!
I fully expected to see yet another person who does not really understand wood heating appliance design. Then you opened with stating you added insulation to the fire box. Good job sir your right on point!
Thanks for the comment!
Thank you very much! Now people all over the world are in difficult economic conditions.I believe that your amazing and simple invention can help a lot.I will try this scheme for my small house.May the Lord bless you!
You're very welcome!
I love that Dynamite box by the stove.
My respect to you Sir. I really appreciate your time and effort to do this video. You are helping a lot of people. Thank so much. Carlos from Whitby, Canada.
You're welcome Carlos!
Just watched this and thought I should say what a clever bit of practical engineering and physics ...Loved it ..Thank you I had not thought of thermal mass heating...
I have become a strong supporter of thermal mass heating! You might like to check out my Hybrid Fireplace videos.
I connected a 12V-Vent with my equipment solar,put it right above the curve,and shurely i got quite the same effect without welding and buying pipes and other special stuff.Anyway,good spirit,effective realisation..greetings from my YOTUL 602N from Patagonia!
you can use metal 5 gallon buckets filled with road salt. put behind your stove they will store heat ,plus hot salt melts ice faster for your driveway or walkway .. been doing that one for years 🍻🍻
I have not heard of salt heat storage before.
Thanks for the tip.
Interesting! 👍🏼
Great idea
@@doubleMinnovations At some time in the past I have read about it for solar heat storage. I recall it being a liquid solution and had a phase change involved. The result was days of gentle heat return.
They use molten salt in solar thermal plants, but you need very high temps to melt salt... Although there's probably a mix that a 400 F stove could melt
As an hvac tech and contractor, I would suggest combustion air piped directly to the fire box so that the stove doesn't pull a negative pressure on the structure.
Wood stoves and fireplaces need air from somewhere and a leaky building allows cold air to be drawn from outside.
In this case the author mentioned that it had been below zero Fahrenheit for 2 weeks. A source of fresh air piped to or near the stove would allow the cold combustion air to be heated as it feeds the fire.
One customer I visited had gone so far as install a small electric heater in his combustion air ducts that were controlled by a dry bulb thermostat (I think that's what he used. )
One idea I think about is how can the warm air from a wood stove or even a gas log be distributed through the house so that the "Great Room" where the stove is located can share it's heat with other parts of the house.
I like the idea of a wood boiler with 2 windows so that the residents and visitors can see 2 flames ,the primary flame and the gasification flame,there's a boiler like that made in CANADA though I probably shouldn't mention it's brand name.
I've got an idea for a duct booster fan for the 5" pipe array that would only run when the air circulation system is warm.
Good video. Interesting
Thanks for watching Ron, and commenting!
I’ve been using wood stoves for quite a long time but never thought to use wax as a thermal storage. Completely brilliant!
NO! It isn’t brilliant, it’s foolish! When that wax gets hot enough it will catch fire. What little bit of thermal mass that pot of wax has is not worth the trade off for the amount of risk it creates. Would you put a newspaper on top of the woodstove if you thought it had thermal mass?
These are excellent improvements this gentleman has thought about the improvements for a long time well done
1) Quite happy to see some well thought video about energy coming from US.
2) The camera ( the additional insulated one) doesn't seem long enough to burn CO and C.
3) Just saying that because I am unable to see the typical blue flame that comes out when it burn. But if you say so, I trust you
4) The non electric heat reclaimer, even if not designed by Gucci...., its working great
5) if you will see the wax starting to boil.. it can be substituted by benzoic acid that store 3 times the energy of a paraffin/was at 120 celsius and cost 2 euro / kg and will never boil at less than 250 C°
6) Go Vikings! and thanks for the video
This video shows temp readings. th-cam.com/video/4fzQSEiWpw8/w-d-xo.html
Never want to anything but melt the wax. Any high temps, and you could be in the world of hurt, if it reached the flash point. Thanks for watching!
Super cool, like it all especially the wax pot - gonna look into that!
Thanks for commenting!
Use simple heat reflector on that wall behind the chimney. It receives quite a lot of radiation and the heat is pretty much lost on it. Radiate it back into the room using a celophane (aluminium) foil and some insulation. They make such blankets with one deflector side for cars.
Use another reflector on the ceiling on top of the heating elements. A lot of heated air accumulates there and its radiation needs to radiate downwards.
Great video. You're following fast burning masonry heater principles there... We have a Finnish counterflow style and our chimney temperature is around 90 C after passing through all the masonry. So you're getting as good results for a fraction of the price. Really good.
The masonry heater in our house is a counter flow too. And I think the setup in the barn is burning just as clean; according to what I clean out. -I make videos on that too.
Thanks for watching!
I think this is great if you have trees on your land Fire wood is expensive these days and what you did was reducing the heat loss and saves you on wood, great job , Thank you for sharing
Thanks for commenting!
Thank you for taking the time to share your knowledge I have a wood burner and I'm tired of free,zing and alot is going out my chimney, it's safer and get more heat with your ideas thank you sire
That is brilliant; two minor suggestions. First one could allow the chimney to be straight up, but bulged, and fit the 5" pipe inside it but coming out left and right, but with a single 5" intake. This would allow the main chimney to draw better but still give you a heat exchanger. Second one could use a spinning vent on the 5" outlet to distribute the heat.
With a fan added and built into brick fireplaces, that thermal siphon is called a "Heat-O-lator" and improves a fireplaces ability to heat a room and even a house immensely. We had a large, corner fireplace with a 36" firebox (measured across the rear of the box is the true measurement of a firebox) and a floor to ceiling brick build with a Heat o lator and it did warm the whole house, with the addition of a properly positioned fan in a hall entrance going to the back of the house. I miss that fireplaces to this day.
It seems to me that it might be beneficial to pull cool air from outside your house to feed the fire somehow. Otherwise your fire is pulling the warm air that you worked so hard to heat, and then sending it out your stove pipe, creating a vacuum in the room that can only be filled by fresh cold outside air leaking in through every gap in your doors and windows.
You would need some type of insulated and sealed intake pipe through your floor or wall that sucks fresh outside air directly into your stove without allowing the warm air in your room to be pulled into the stove for combustion.
There's lots of thought on this. If you take the air directly from the room, you can get rid of the stale air and replace with fresh air for breathing. But the air going to the fire needs to be replaced somehow. Most of the newer houses have air exchangers that balance out the air. I have one in mine. Right now in the barn, the air is replaced from any cracks and going in and out the door, and the fire is only going for a couple of hours a day. So I'm getting by, but will do something better to replenish. Thanks for commenting!
@@doubleMinnovations Why go through all this trouble with changes to your sove and chimney for only a couple of hours of firing???? Why not just buy a stove with a very high KW in the first place??? I bought a stove last year with the highest KW you can find, and after an hour my entire house is warm, from 17 degrees celc. to 23, and this is both in the basement and first floor. I am from Denmark, and for the last 150 years we have had some of the most innovative and productive stoves in the world. Go check it out. Names like Morsø and Varde Ovne and Meteor.
@@cecwill This is an innovation channel. I improved what I already had, and it didn't cost any money. The stove is still intact, I just rearrange the fire brick and added some left over insulation broad from the masonry heater I build in the house. The stove pipe heat exchanger is one I made over 4 years ago. The 3 hour burn time is to heat up the thermal mass; the stove is off until the next day. Just want to keep it above freezing. Burned it for 2 hours yesterday. It's -23˚F outside this morning, with a wind chill of -35˚F, looking for a high of -1˚F. Got water for the chickens this morning in there, it's about +35˚F. 3 hours of burn time today will heat the place up to +70˚F and warm the thermal mass. Just using a very tiny amount of wood. No reason to spend money on some other expensive wood heater, when I got efficiency now. If you watch some of the other videos in this playlist, you could get a better understanding of the situation here. We may put a gas furnace in there at some point.
This video is an extremely well presented and explained tutorial. This gentleman has thought through the issue of wasted heat and successfully captured a considerable amount of it. I live in the upper mid west and have a built in wood burner that consumes huge amounts of expensive hard wood. I have often wondered how much ($) heat goes into the atmosphere and is effectively wasted, this video explains that very well.
Thanks for the comment!
Best video on TH-cam for ages. Thanks for posting. I am to try these in my own home.
Wow, thank you!
have you thought about a tubing jacket inside your re-claim side chimney? maybe for some on demand hot water or running tubing elsewhere for a radiant heat source in a different area if needed?
I haven't really though of that. Someone reading through the comments might decide to do something like that.
Thanks for sharing your ideas!
I really appreciate your thoughful diy engineering on your project, especially using the infrared thermometer to show the actual operating temperatures at different points in your completed system.
(Too many diy experimenters just use unscientific terms like hot, warm, and cool to describe their heating systems - almost useless if you ask me. All they need to do is buy an inexpensive infrared thermometer, like you did, and collect real time performance data on their designs to demonstrate real world performance characteristics. That way further system improvements can be scientifically compared with earlier versions to see what new features actually work well.)
Some things that all diy wood stove experimenters need to be mindful of:
-Ignition temperature of any phase change wax used as thermal storage
-Points where creosote might condense due to ideal condensation conditions
-Maintaining complete combustion conditions in the firebox
-Proper exhaust gas venting under all weather conditions
Some opportunities for improvements:
-Thermoelectric fans powered by solid state conversion of heat to electricity
-Arduino controlled & powered outside air supply for direct vented combustion & thermostat control
-Active heat storage via thermal transfer fluid piped to a thermal storage battery
-Improved heat exhangers for greater operating efficiency
All that said, this was a very creative & inexpensive diy build that appears to work as intended. I really enjoyed watching both videos to learn more about it.
Thanks for all your input!
yes flash point of the wax is a good point
Great video, I’ve got an old monarch paramount wood cook stove in my garage that I love to use. It works great for cooking a pot of stew and brewing a pot of coffee as I’m working in the garage but it just doesn’t put out quite enough heat to really keep it warm on a chilly Minnesota day. I’ve been kicking around ideas for awhile now and seeing your video was a big revelation, I love your chimney pipe heat exchanger idea and I am going to try to adapt it to my stove. Great tip on the pot of wax as well, that would work great for me as it’s already a cook stove with a nice big flat cast iron cooktop already.
Thanks. Just remember that melting wax needs attention just like your cook with a hot oil. You don't want to over heat, just melt it. Check out this video I made about it, because some people have great fears of melting wax.
th-cam.com/video/qg_s9IzF8sw/w-d-xo.html
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Stacking that firebrick up the wall behind the stove should help capture and radiate heat also. Great video. Thanks for making this.
I do stack up some firebricks on top. Still would like more thermo mass it there, but the weight gets to be so much. My masonry heater/fireplace in the house has plenty though. You could check out those videos if interested. Thanks.
Re your chimney mods, I can only say that is brilliant! Over 100° from your reclaimed heat tube! Why hasn’t a design company thought of this? Takes a man (or woman to keep it pc 😅) to think outside the box. Well done you. 👍
There have been electric chimney heat reclaimers for decades; 'Magic Heat' (one brand), I just made a non-electric one. Thanks for the comment.
Great ideas. I love your wax. I sugest you put it in a locking lid presure cooker pot with rhe vent open so if it ever gets bumped off it wont sill very much. This will reduce fire or skin burn potential. Why not stack the extra bricks around the sides on the lip and mortar in place. Thank you for sharing.
Thanks for your ideas. I do put bricks around on top of it. I took them off for the video. If you look at my latest video on this subject you can get a better feel for the way it is. th-cam.com/video/hopXmMXrqAY/w-d-xo.html
The thermosiphon chimney heat extraction is very smart. Nice work.
I’m working on a water heater, we don’t need space heating, so it’s going to be quite different
It would be interesting to see what you come up with. Thanks for watching.
I saw a set up with copper tubing in a spiraling circular motion that set on top of a wood stove and went to the heater next to it. There was quite a bit of copper tubing used.
@@lindamoses3697 Lots of people do that for heating water. I have a big coil of copper tubing as well for experimenting.
cheers!
I am really interested on the wax heat storage part of your system heat retention. What is the heat storage ability of the wax compared with water Sir ??? Very interesting methods you put together for efficiency. What else could you do to increase the heat output of this stove ??? Nice work fella too.
Reports I seen don't seem to be real consistent with comparing paraffin and water, and vary. (one favorable quote): "Paraffin wax stores 5 to 14 times more heat per unit volume then sensible storage material such as water, masonry, or rock." Source: "ijariie.com/AdminUploadPdf/_ENERGY_STORAGE_SYSTEM_FOR_HEATING_AND_COOLING_APPLICATION_USING_PARAFFIN_WAX__ijariie10109.pdf"
Also do an internet search for "phase change sheetrock". Interesting!
I don't think I could meaningfully increase the heat output of this stove anymore. It's burning clean, and I use about half as much wood as I did before. Better wood, would help I guess, like oak...
@@doubleMinnovations I can agree that hard woods hold a lot more heat than pine. Most of my wood is Ash, Oak, Hickory, Osage Orange. Which is suppose to have the most heat when burned. Also, my wood has just about three to four percent moisture content. Really dry wood works best for sure. Nothing worse than trying to cook wet wood in the stove. Thanks
@@doubleMinnovations Does the paraffin wax have any odor when heated and can the temperature if high enough cause the wax to ignite ??? Thanks
@@victoryfirst2878 While I don't have this set up, I can say mostly "yes" to both of those questions. I have a small pot that I melt wax in to make fire starters. The wax does have a smell, but unless you're using scented candles - it's not bad in my opinion. As long as you don't get it hot enough to smoke at which point it can catch fire. I got distracted once and had that happen (and then it really smells lol) but both of those things I am sure are mitigated by having a lid on the pot - which I do not have. My particular pot did not come with a lid. I also turned the heat way down (doing it on a regular electric stove), so as to avoid the fire hazard, it just takes longer to melt the wax. But that's waaayy better than burning down the house and/or filling it with smoke. 👍😁
@@CondescendingOaf Could of not said that myself, a roof over ones head is a good thing. Peace
You made your own would gas burner.
I was very impressed I stayed at the guy's house for a few days dead of January. 6 below zero.
If you had me land the floor next to him and watch the flames dancing around in that thing was just amazing and it wasn't even a good shape it was pretty beat up.
I realized that I never worked with the wood stove before in my life even though I've used them for 30 years now.
That thing was like a nuclear reactor.
Actually fascinating to watch just lay there and just be entertained by watching the flames dancing and that thing!
Now duct in with dryer vent fixture and hose, outside make up air so you can enjoy 35% more heat.
Dont burn already heated air!
Burn cold expansive air that balances your system to neutral.
I did/ do. Works a charm.
Thanks for the tips!
That heat reclaimer is excellent! I've seen something similar for heating a tent with a log torch, but it never occurred to me that it had broader application than that. Well done!
I like the thermal storage idea, very similar to utilizing the mass in soapstone heaters. In a Scandanavian Soapstone heater, you burn a very hot fire for a few hours, then let it go out. The mass of soapstone is heated by that fire, then radiates heat out into the room for many hours. It gives you a very even heat, not a hot and cold cycle. Instead of having to feed the fire fairly often as with your heater, you feed it once or maybe twice a day, depending on how cold it is outside. Radiant heat is good heat! I have a simple box heater with a large flat top as part of the firebox. I think I could fit 3 of your wax pots on its top. I may try that! If I had that heat exchanger contraption on my heater, then my home owner's insurance would cancel me! HA HA They would not like its appearance, no matter how efficient it is! My wood heater does have a recirculation draw so that smoke and gas is drawn down through the fire once it is up to operating temp, but I still have to clean my stainless steel chimney once during the winter cycle due to creosote buildup. I think it is due to how often we have to feed the box. About every two hours we add 3-4 sticks...or whenever we have a nice bed of coals from the previous sticks.
The masonry heater/fireplace in built in the house has many tons of thermal mass, and we just have short hot fires in it, once or twice a day. (videos in playlist) I definitely don't have enough thermal mass for the area in the barn where this stove is. Thanks for your interesting comment!
Imagine spilling that hot wax on yourself. It's impossible to get off of you quickly. And it burns extremely well.
I would definitely be concerned about house insurance issues. Even not getting my wood stove professionally cleaned annually puts me at risk of insurance not covering a house fire.
Thanks for this, given the predicted energy price increases this year I think this is most helpful.
Great Ideas And Video. I Especially Am Impressed By The Wax Changing Phase Idea To Store Heat.
What temperature was your room at during wood stove operation and how much fun is it to clean that section of improved 5” interior piping?
Thanks for the video production and wisdom of sharing the efficiencies of a wood-burning stove.
It would seem to me that building a dense Rock, such as granite cubby hole, to be absorbed into the granite would also be a good way for storing BTUs. Note: The yodel stove is the best efficient stove I've ever used especially if you're burning Locust and Hickory. I do like your stovepipe, very interesting concept. One could put a low voltage fan on top of the knuckle to blow more warm air out.
Thanks for watching!
A small fan blowing down. You then have a cross flow heat exchanger. Plus you want the heat down low, not all hanging on the ceiling
@@vinquinn I wanted this to be passive with no need of electric. When the coolest air at the bottom of the room get pulled up and heated by the exchanger, it needs to be replaced by the layer of air that's just above it in the room. So that drops down, and is also pushed down by the exiting hotter air after the heat exchanger. That cycle continues and the room heats up. It seems to work just fine.
Thanks for commenting!
@@vinquinn Dang, I had no earthly idea heat rises !
It is very cool. 😊🌎♥️
Great heat exchanger. I have square metal pips to make 2 camper-type stoves 12 x 8 x 16. It's been on the back burner because I was trying to figure out how to insolate with brick.... fiberboard is the answer much lighter and can trim really nice.. Looks like both your ideas work hand in hand. Thanks for the insight!!
Call me silly, but I'm scratching my head trying to figure out why he'd insulate the walls of a woodstove. Is he trying to keep the heat from escaping... into the room he's trying to heat?!? He's basically forcing all the heat out the flue and up the chimney. Fire brick isn't a great idea either, but at least it acts as a heat battery. The wool doesn't store much of any heat but basically just keeps it in the stove.
I learned alot from this now my house is warm in the winter thank you!!!
Nice job love the thermal siphon I use the thermal siphon in reverse I was burning
Fuel oil and preheated my oil
With steam from a garbage burner industrial scale I had a
A 3/4'' black pipe inside a 2''' pipe the electric pre heaters
Couldn't supply enough heat
To the fuel in sub zero temps
All wood burners should have their air intake from directly outside. A 2-inch pipe is good enough, then through a check ball valve.
This will cause the room to fill up with warm air...like a balloon. Where as without it the stove will pull in all the warm air that's in the room and back up the chimney, along with creating cold drafts.
The draw through the 5" pipe is not combustion air, he made an effective heat exchanger.
@@donavonrobbins1908 he knows this
Very interesting, I like your chimney heat reclaimer. Question: where is the air intake for your firebox? Is it fed from inside the room or you bring air from the outside?
Hi Carlos; the air intake source for the fire, is from inside the room. It does put a little negative pressure in the room, but equalizes when doors are opened, and seeps through air cracks which provides enough air replacement.
Thanks for commenting. 👍🏻
The wax seems a little dangerous. I'd just pile some fire Brick on top or something. The amount of air flow through the heat exchanger is impressive.👍
@@davidm9214 I do pile up firebricks around and on top of it. I took them off for the video, but mention and show them off to the side. The phase change of the wax is what I'm going for. -to melt it to a liquid. It takes many hours to do that, and most of the time it doesn't get all melted. What I'm doing, is as dangerous as making candles. It would become more dangerous if I tried to keep heating it up to its flash point, 392-480 °F.
The concern is understandable. Thanks for watching.
You could probably really increase the efficiency of your thermo syphon by finding a way to agitate the air as it goes through keeping it in the chamber longer. A cork screw effect would be ideal I think.
Make the internal pipe into a tesla valve, it will agitate itself.
your chimney pipe heat reclaimer is genius sir.....
Thanks 👍
The duct you got on that stove is pretty innovative man. If a guy plumbed the 6in thru the floor, it would positively pressurize the house - no cold drafts
this is the way. supplying cold air from outside the building to supply the fire is way better than using warm heated house air. Stove use an enormous amount of air. Without supplying "make up air" it will use the house air.
1.Don't make the alteration until after the inspection or your stove plumbing will look like a Christmas tree of red tags. 2. Beware this will immediately void your warranty. 3.IF anything goes wrong and there's fire and or death your insurance company will tell you to go pound sand. 4. Install a good quality carbon monoxide detector.
Yeh thats what i was a bit worried about that het coming out of the top is he sure no carbon dioxide isnt coming out also if hes right good luck but its good to have other's opinion like yours becaUse we dont want someone dying thanx mate
Love the flue pipe heat recovery exchanger. I would think you may have a problem with creosote build up in the 8" outer pipe. You should look at insulation for 8" pipe - This will be safer too. Hot pipe low to floor.
Great adjustments for efficiency and thank you for sharing it.
That was a valuable few minutes of my life. Thank you.
You're very welcome
Thank you quite an amazing 30-year-old idea !!! This shows that "Necessity is the mother of invention." 😀
I lived off-grid at the time, and wanted to improve the old style cast iron stove I had. Thanks!
Ahhh!
Now I need a redesign.
I go thru 8 cords a year at my cabin and never thought about that at all.
Thanks
8 cords for a cabin! There must be some pretty cold winters there.
The put into its design was impressive. Bravo Sir
WOW, genius invention!!! Props and thanks for sharing!!!
THANKS FOR SHARING YOUR TRIAL & ERROR IMPROVEMENTS,OF HOTTER FIRE,LESS WOOD RADIATION, FLUE DESIGN IS SMART. TANKS, BUD !!!!
Thanks for watching Julio!
Brillant i just came up with a similar idea. I called them heat taps. But yes this is brilliant great demonstration
When I move to Alaska I have to upgrade the chimney that’s so cool
Uncle built house with fireplace, he put heavy 2in id tubing built into the hearth, curved around behind firebox and thru chimney back out into living area......sucked cold air in under fire blew hot air out over fire.......he also enclosed firebox but without enclosure it still worked
I see you're a man of culture, I too like to warm my dynamite by my wood stove.
Jokes aside, that thermo siphon on the flue seems like a great idea.
This is a similar idea as the Benjamin Franklin fireplace heater. Good job!
This is a great setup. I put fire bricks on my stove to collect heat. You can add or reduce to whatever you need. I also put a big pot of water on the stove for humidity.
I also put firebrick on top of, and around the stove. Still figuring on increasing the thermo mass material.
Thanks for watching!
@@doubleMinnovations make sure to use spacer
Love the heat reclaimer. And never thought of using a pot of wax for thermal mass. Well done on all accounts.
That side air channel that gets heated from exhaust is pretty brilliant. Good show.
Glad you enjoy it!
Best video I have ever seen on you tube..
Sir you really impress me..
Thanks!
This is what I'm looking for. I have a similar wood stove. Whit that cold air return will be able to hook that up to a vent in my floor I put in. I have a boiler system so no docks. & yes my stove is in the basement. Still watching your video and see exactly how that chimney system is hooked up.
Thank you for this video.
I want to fabricate a wood stove/burner and you've given me some good knowledge.
Thanks! You may want to check out some other videos I have, on other wood burners I built. The hybrid masonry heater in our house has been excellent, and have been using for 4 years. "th-cam.com/video/ldqGQHpM2_8/w-d-xo.html".
also... Rocket stove water heater, -first video in the series: "th-cam.com/video/vjEwOq3sRwU/w-d-xo.html"
Great chimney air heat exchanger. Excellent idea.
Thanks! 👍
You're a mighty smart guy!