Wednesday, October 15, 2008

New Wood Stove

For the past couple of months I have been looking for the perfect wood stove to replace my small existing one. The new stove needed to have a large firebox, good damper control and burn through the night on one load. I picked up this gently used vintage 1977 wood stove over the weekend for $100 off of CraigsList.

The firebricks are all intact and the stove only has superficial rust which comes right off with a wire brush. The door seal needs replaced but that shouldn't be a problem.

The stunning iron work aside this beauty has a big firebox (24" wide, 22" tall 20" deep), a finely controlled damper which opens automatically if the temperature gets to low, a large front loading door and a thermo siphon water heater built into the back. The water heater is a great plus.

I plan on putting the new stoves back against the bathroom wall. I already keep a 30 gallon metal tank in the bathroom for water and heat that 30 gallons when I want to shower. With the thermo siphon the water in the tank will heat through the night and be ready for a morning shower. A great plus.

The stove vents from the back. I will be installing black stove pipe with a damper from the wood stove to the ceiling. Then attach the stove pipe it to a ceiling support box and continue on up with triple walled chimney pipe. Currently I run chimney pipe all the way down to the stove. This is very safe but I am losing a great deal of heat that would be provided by the thin walled black stove pipe.

Down the road if I decided that this wood stove is not efficient enough and uses to much wood I am only out a $100.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice Find! That looks like a real nice heater with the water heating and big box.

You could spray that thing black with some flat black hi temp grill paint after you bruch it off and it will look good as new.

Kiley said...

Not trying to advertise for them, but I got this ad in the mail the other day. Prices seem extremely reasonable. http://www.northerntool.com/sale/heater-sale/

Most claim they will heat around 1500-2000 sqft and a load of wood will burn for 12 hrs. prices from $400.

BigBear said...

I picked up my small stove at Northern Tools. It is a nice stove to take the cold off and looks good but if the stove does not have a good damper control you can't close it down and control the burn rate. Most of the cheaper stoves at Northern Tools are basic boxes with a hole in the top for the flue. Not a lot of burn control. So do some deep research.

Mayberry said...

Great score!

WrethaOffGrid said...

Great find! Would you explain a little more about the thermo siphon water heater part? Maybe even post a few pix of that part? We have a wood stove that my hubby made, it's quite stout, it would be great to incorporate a thermo siphon water heater into our stove, right now I just keep a large stock pot full of water on top of it for hot water. We would make this ourselves instead of buying it.

Thanks,
Wretha

Staying Alive said...

Looks like you found wht you are looking for. You will probably find it good for your needs. Nice tip on the thin wall up to the ceiling!

Michael

Anonymous said...

That is a beautiful wood stove!

Anonymous said...

The rust just makes it all the more rust-ic.

The Scavenger said...

Great find Big Bear. I love craigslist, lots of good stuff cheap and even free.

Wildflower said...

Hey, what did you do with the old one? Is it for sale? I'm in Manitou and need something small.