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Originally Posted by cal40john  I don't get it. Donald Street also said wood is dry heat, don't use liquid fuels for heat in his books. What I don't get is if you have a chimney the products of combustion are going outside. To me if you're getting wet your chimney isn't drafting correctly, or your using something like a stove with no outside exhaust.
John |
I think the dry heat concept is do to the overwhelmingly hot surface of a wood stove, it really dries stuff close to it. Unlike a forced air system that mixes the air well. and everything is about the same temperature. If something is wet inside it will stay wet longer since it's not near a surface that is radiating lots of heat. In reality one is not any drier than the other, it's just a nice feeling to be able to sit next to a nice warm woodstove. And if it's really roaring you just move a little farther away and open the windows.
I love wood heat in a boat, It's really doesn't use very much, since you normally don't heat the entire boat, just a small space around the woodstove, just enough to make you comfortable. I would collect a medium sized cardboard box full of 1 inch to 2 inch sticks that you can easily break with your hand, and that would last a couple days in 30 degree weather on my 30 foot boat. I had a Cole woodstove, about 1 cubic foot or so. I'm putting it on my 45 footer but need to find another for the rear cabin. I would transport the wood box on my kayak without any problem. I always anchor out. I also head my house with wood, have been doing so for 30 years, ever since I got the first electric bill.
At home I have this neat little thing to help light the fire. It's a little cast iron bucket about 4 inches diameter and 6 inches tall with a lid that has a slot in it. Inside the bucket is old drain oil or diesel and a stone ball that has a bolt through it as a handle. You set the ball in a piece of newspaper and then build a pile of wood on top, light the paper the rock catches and burns all the oil out of the rock by that time the fire is burning quite nicely. You fish the rock out of the fire or ashes and after it has cooled store it in the bucket for next time. I suspect the rock is something like cast firebrick with a hole through it. On the boat I've always just used a piece of paper and twigs, I wasn't burning much more than twigs anyway.
I have used a tuna fish can "pot burner" about half full of diesel or oil in the stove too. Normally a stick in it will get it started.