How We Heat a Large House With a Single Wood Stove
(Page 4 of 5)
November/December 1976
By the Mother Earth News editors
ANOTHER FAN
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In addition to the two fans in the floor (which—except for a four-hour "rest period" each morning—run almost continuously throughout the winter), we've placed a 14-inch exhaust tan above the divider that separates the bedroom from the utility room. This blower is tilted slightly towards the floor, so that when it operates it pushes warm air down into the bedroom.
We've found that when the bedroom fan is running (which is to say, just on the chilliest days) not only is the bedroom's temperature increased . . . the whole house becomes cozier too. This is further proof—we think—that it pays to keep warm air moving.
Each of our three fans, by the way, has a three-way switch . . . and so far, we've never had to run a given blower on any but the lowest (and quietest) setting.
OUR HERO: THE JØTUL
The hero of this story, of course, is our wood stove . . . which happens to be a Norwegian Jøtul Combi-fire 4. (At $500-plus, the No. 4 Jøtul isn't the least expensive woodburner we could've bought, but it's the one we found best suited to our purpose.)
According to the manufacturer's literature, the Combi-fire 4 is designed to heat 8,825 cubic feet of air. Our house—with about 12,700 cubic feet of interior space—considerably exceeds that recommended volume. Still, the stove (aided by our fans and the false floor I've described) has proven equal to the task.
We located the Jøtul right in the center of the house. It's next to a simple chimney built of 8" flue tiles surrounded by mortared C-shaped concrete chimney blocks, and only a few feet away from the pair of plywood columns that conceal our floor-mounted exhaust fans. Thus, the two fans are able to draw into the floor the warm air (warmest in the house) that collects directly over the stove.
We keep the wood-burner's fire going all the time during the winter, although on clear days the sun-shining as it does through a number of windows and skylights—provides our home with a great deal of warmth. (This allows us to let the fire burn down somewhat from time to time so we can clean out some of the ashes that've accumulated in the stove.)
At night—before going to bed—we pack the Jøtul with as much wood as we can get in and close the front vent (and the back flue) almost all the way, so there's just enough draft to keep the fire alive. This way, the house temperature automatically drops to about 50° overnight. Then, in the morning when we reopen the vent, the fire quickly flares up again and raises the building's temperature to somewhere between 65° and 70°.
Quite by accident, we discovered that if we kept a pan of water on the stove, we increased the unit's apparent heating capacity. The reason for this (we later learned while reading the centerfold in MOTHER NO. 36) is that moist air holds heat better than dry air, and—of course—by heating our tea w ater on the J ø tul we were simply humidifying the atmosphere.
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