Does anyone here heat mostly with wood?

[Busybee1952]

If you heat mostly with wood, I wonder if you would share your tips with me on keeping things from freezing up underneath. I'm on a full cement slab with 1" styrofoam board under the skirting and have a heat tape on the incoming water line. I'm repairing the middle section of this 14 x 70 and reinsulating right now so if there's anything else I can do while I'm at it, I sure would appreciate the advice.

I do have a propane furnace for back up in case the stove goes out but I would rather not use it any more than I have to.

Thanks for any ideas.

Pat

[Jim from Canada]

Yup, furnace came on maybe 6 times last year. The wood stove kept us nice and toasty. I have 3/4" plywood skirting that I seal up for winter. A couple of fans, one built into stove. My wood stove is central in my 14x70. The fan on the wood stove blows the air up almost directly into a ceiling fan. We have sat in minus temps with the patio door open. My heat tape has never worked and I have never had a problem. I don't recommend this though. My inlet pipe is well wrapped with insulation. The ends of the house get a little cool at times, but that is where the bedrooms are and we like it cooler for sleeping. Use good hardwood, a hot fire to help prevent creosote build up. Damp(er) it down at night. We keep a few days wood in the house, all the rest is outside under a tarp covered structure. BTW, I have 2x6 walls with good insul. that makes a big difference.

Jim

[Jim from Canada]

OH yes, if you don't have your stove installed yet....go straight up with the chimney, no elbows anywhere, much easier for cleaning.

Jim

[Busybee1952]

Thanks Jim. Do you keep the floor vents open? I'm not sure if I should keep them open or not. If the furnace comes on, they probably should be open but if I'm using the wood stove, maybe they should be closed.

[Mark]

When I fire-up my solar heater, I use the blower from my furnace to circulate the heat. Not only does it keep things thawed down under, but it keeps the heat more even throughout the rooms of the home. To run the furnace blower, I installed a special thermostat that acts as a timer. Every 40 minutes it turns only the blower on. It runs for a few minutes, then shuts off. Works great! More info here: http://www.mobilehomerepair.com/solarstat.html

Mark

[Jim from Canada]

That's a great idea Mark! I do turn the blower on manually every now and then if the ends of the house starts getting cold. I am thinking of replacing my duct and incorperating a squirrel cage fan to blow hot air from the stove into it. There will be outlets just at the ends of the home as the warm air will return through the house and the stove keeps the middle toasty already.

[Busybee1952]

Last year, there was a huge wood heater in the pole barn which had 2 outlets on it and one of them was piped out through the pole barn, then underground about 20', then up under the rear of the trailer where it went into one of those squirrel cage deals and blew the heat through all of the registers. It was thermostatically controlled and it was never cold in here. Of course I didn't have to worry about the pipes freezing because there was enough warm air escaping underneath. However, that huge wood furnace went through about a cord of wood a week in cold weather and just wasn't practical when there was no longer a free source of wood. I think the squirrel cage blower will work fine if you can get it hooked up.

You are all going to freak when you see my woodstove because all that is behind it in this picture is the aluminum foil. It has a double insulated pipe though and a triple insulated chimney. It's a small box stove and I had to use it exclusively from Jan. to April. I'm gone from 8 am to 5:30 p.m. and when I got home, many times there were still coals in the stove but it was only about 52 degrees in here and I had the back bedroom entirely closed off. My pipes froze and broke but I found out that the underbelly was all falling apart and there was no insulation behind the metal skirting that had holes in it everywhere.

I will use this same stove again this year but there will also be a baffled fireproof wall going over top of this aluminum foil. I'm still getting the underbelly repaired and closed in and will have foamboard insulation behind the skirting which has had the holes patched.

I'm not sure that running the blower will do a lot of good with this little stove because it heats pretty well but only for a short time and I think the blower from the propane furnace might just blow cold air around after the fire dies out. No, I don't think I'll be getting a new stove this year as it has cost me a fortune to redo the underneath, replace the pump and pressure tank that froze and broke and some of the waterlines. I'll have to make do as best I can with this and that's why I'm hoping for some genius solutions.

[Jim from Canada]

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but you are taking your life in your own hands using this set up. This is not a MH approved stove and the installation is terrible. The min. clearances aren't being met and having it up on blocks is just asking for trouble. Get that thing out of there and have a proper stove installed correctly before anything happens. An inspector would have a stroke if he looked at it.

Jim

[Busybee1952]

ya, thanks Jim. Good advice.

[Jim from Canada]

1 cigarette .....1 sleepy person...15 minutes of burn time....almost lost a life down the street from us in '05

[KRITER]

I hav a 14 x60 with a propane furnise.Want a woodstove.Wut woodstoves are MH aproved?Im off grid so dont want nomore electric stuff.