Transoms away

Another pellet stove update, this is. Pellet stoves are not magic, they are merely producers of energy that cause the molecules in the air to fly around faster. That 'hot air' doesn't know where you'd like it to go, it just follows the laws of physics. And such it was with our house. The front room, where the stove is located was toasty but the very next room, the dining room, was not toasty. While temperatures up front could be almost 70 the dining room didn't break 60. Naturally this mystified me and I wondered if the stove just wasn't very powerful. Remember that I purchased the cheapest new pellet stove on the market and so my first thoughts tend to be negative.

I was wrong however. A little web browsing brings a host of site/forums/blogs on how to move around the heat produced by wood stoves. I thought that was interesting. Wood stoves certainly pack a heating punch but apparently folks had some of the same troubles as I did. So I've made two alterations at the moment.

(1) I put up a plastic curtain along the stairwell which is next to the stove. My thought was that the heat was drifting upstairs to the largely unoccupied rooms instead of heating the downstairs (largely occupied). The curtain did cool the upstairs, though not as much as you'd think. Its got me wondering about sectioning off the upstairs in the future to keep it cooler and keep those energetic molecules where I want them.

(2) I cut out the transom. The transom, as you'll see in the pictures below, is the mini wall above a door frame. Ours was pretty considerable, probably 16 or more inches (I don't feel like getting up to measure) and it turns out these things act like dams to hot air, much in the same way you can create a dam for water.

Above: from the living room. The cuts you see were exploratory to see if there was still plaster on these walls (some of the walls in the house don't have it anymore) and there was....yuck.

Above:Seen from the kitchen. Below: the paneling and plaster removed.

Below: Starting on the dining room side. There was a mixture of sheetrock and plaster and of course the usual layers of wallpaper. The trouble here is that the lathe runs the length of the wall and so it gets a little messy.

Below: All hollowed out. What you can't see are the jagged wooden edges of lathe that I had to snap off (because I don't have time to demo the rest of the wall...yet)

Below: The fan is in which seems to work well, though the air moves much better even without it. Eventually (someday...sometime) when the house is in the finishing stage it'll get framed in nicely.

The wall with the picture montage above the desk piled up with books is my next target. That wall forms part of a corner of the living room and if it wasn't there (or if part of it wasn't) then you could see the stove. The idea is that taking that wall down to a half wall and the other adjoining wall (forming the short hall to the living room) would further increase the flow of hot air.

Pellet Stove Update

Its Sunday, the stove was installed Friday and has been running for the past couple of days. Its time for some preliminary information.

The first run started around 2pm on Friday with most of a bag of pellets. Fitting a whole 40lb in seems a bit of a stretch so we're probably only loading it with 35 or so pounds. Unfortunately I don't know exactly how long it ran as it was out when I woke up the next morning. But I did get up during the night, past 3am and it was still running. When I came downstairs the machine was still warm, but not hot, so it had probably been off for a couple of hours. I will try to have a better idea in the future. The energy usage was 1.93 kWh for the time it ran which was at least 13 hours. This was on the lowest setting and it averages to 0.15 kW of power being consumed. If you run the machine all day and you pay $0.172 per kWh then your electric bill will be increased by $0.62 a day or $19.20 a month. Again this is for the lowest setting (1,1).

I've also been monitoring the exhaust. The exhaust comes out a little less than 36 inches off the ground. There's snow on the ground below the exhaust and its interesting to note that there's no sign of melting snow. That is, the exhaust, carrying what heat it does, is cool enough that the ground feels not appreciable heat.

The location of our pellet stove is anything but final. We have so many plans for this house that I can't say where it'll be in a year or two from now. Ideally it would be in a more central location as we're currently trying to determine how to move the heat around the first level (since the stove is at one end of the house).

I've also seen some installations where there is a vertical run of stove pipe within the house to capture some of the heat from the exhaust on its way out through the wall.

I'll continue to provide updates on the pellet stove periodically and when its moved (during warmer weather) I'll detail that move/installation as well.

Pellet Stove

The last post dealt with preparing for this event. I demoed a half way in preparation to install a pellet stove. The stove was bought at Lowe's. Its a Summer's Heat 55-SHP10L. As of January 2011 it retailed for $1,049 which is what I paid for it. It's the cheapest pellet stove available to my knowledge and even still it has pretty decent reviews. I fully expect that at some point the auger or auger motor will break. However I have heard of much more expensive stoves suffering the same problem. The unit runs fairly quietly. Others may run even more quietly but this unit is fine. It is supposed to heat 1200 sq. ft. which is more than I need it to do. We are currently running it at the lowest setting and its plugged into a Kill-a-watt meter so I'll be posting what the electricity use is like (auger motors x2, and fans for exhaust and heat).

I bought a ton of pellets from Lowe's at the same time. The pellets are made in Strong, Me and so are a local fuel. They were on sale for $187, which is a bargain. The hopper could probably take a full bag but we didn't see any need to stuff it. So there was a little left over. This was a common complaint, but so far I don't care.

The first burn began at 2:50pm, a future post will indicate how long the pellets lasted.

I also bought a masonary mat which measured 28"x32" which gives the correct clearances for this stove. I purchased the stove pipe (PL, 3 inch) individually instead of the kit. I can't guarantee that what I did is up to code. The International Building Code defers to the manufacturers instructions for pellet stove installation. That's the building code we use here, though there's a lot of information and a number of the pipe parts came with installation instructions also. I took all of this information and the information from several folks who had had pellet stoves installed and tried to make the most reasonable decisions regarding installation. You'll notice below that I installed a CO/Smoke detector right above the pellet stove. I'm fairly certain my installation is legit, but its not worth dieing over. There's an additional CO/Smoke detector installed at the top of the stairs (which are near the stove) as a further precaution.

On with the installation.

Nothing too pretty here. This house still has lathe boards under the sheetrock so its hard to find studs and so also just cutting a pretty circle in the sheetrock is hard. Fortunately the 'thimble' that the exhaust pipe travels through pretties up this mess.

We're eventually going to reside and insulate the exterior of the house so I don't feel bad just ripping through this old and brittle vinyl.

You can see that due to the brittle vinyl there was some breakage as I tried to cut out a rectangle for the exterior component of the thimble. You'll also notice its right next to a window. All instructions mention that the exhaust of a pellet stove should not be within 4 feet of an operable window. We're not going to operate that window. Its also within 4 ft of the front door. Its almost four feet but not quite. So what's the deal? I've heard of experienced installers doing the same. The code is well intentioned but let's be realistic, what the hell are you doing opening your window while running your stove?

Now we can see how nicely the interior component of the thimble covers up my horrific hole in the wall. Initially the pipe was about 1/8th of an inch too high to connect to the back of the stove so I had to take off the interior component and angle the hole a bit lower. Not hard. Apparently there's linoleum over the plywood over the hardwood floor, all of which is under the carpet....sigh.

The stove is heavy, very heavy. I'm fairly fit and all I could do is rock it and walk it. You will not pick it up, even if you have friends as there's no convenient place to hold it. Below its sitting on its masonary board.

The first time you operate the stove you take it for a dry run. You plug it in and turn it on and let it go for 20 minutes. You do this with NO fuel. Its just to test out the machine. After 20 minutes it will shut off automatically. The lower auger bit will continuously (but slowly) turn and that will be visible from the front window. The upper auger will turn periodically (not all the time) and will be visible with the hopper cover up IF YOU DEPRESS THE HOPPER LID BUTTON, visible below. I didn't realize this and spent 40 minutes on hold waiting for tech support to tell me I was an idiot.

You see, I had the hopper lid up and didn't see any auger movement. So I took off the back of the stove and took out my voltmeter and checked for any potential drop across the leads. The lower auger motor had the expected 120V but the upper motor had a drop of 0V. This is because when the Hopped Lid Button is extended it cuts off any current from going to the upper auger motor. Once its depressed current will flow. Its a safety mechanism. I'm not pretty familiar with the internal guts of my stove since I took it apart and checked electrical connections. There's a DVD included with the stove and it does a good job of walking you through the repairs. Its not bad.

Below we see the stove installed and running. It takes about 5 minutes for the pellets to ignite. You'll notice a small glowing circle which is the heating element heating up. The pellets will be drawn in from the lower auger and will pile up while this occurs. Then finally it'll like and you'll have a lovely fire. It then takes about 15-20 minutes before the fans begin blowing out hot air. We noticed a funny smell at first, but different than the smell exiting the exhaust outside. The CO/Smoke detector is 3 feet above the stove and has nothing to say and we should all be dead by now if there was a problem. We reason that it must be the paint or dust or some 'new car' smell if you will.

You can see a certain goober in the window below making funny faces.

Before finishing this blog I had to step out and pick up a few things. I picked up an ash bucket, shovel, gloves, some starter gel and a lighter (just in case of manual start). So far my total expenditure is about $1750 for stove, installation, accessories and 1 ton of pellets. Not bad so far.

Destruction

We're having a pellet stove delivered tomorrow (Friday) morning and in preparation I tore down a half wall between the front hall and the living room. This half wall may be the most solid part of the house. Pictures follow. Note that I have found hardwood floor under the carpet which is on top of some cheap plywood. I honestly have no idea what this house looked like before given that there's hardwood under the living room and the bathroom.

I do not know why there was styrofoam inside the top of this wall.

Check out the nails below, there are more nails in this one half wall than our whole house. This thing would be the last thing standing if the rest of the house collapsed.

Look below and you'll see the hardwood.