Confirmed. My Wife, Does Not...Like the Chubby...

CapeCoaler wrote:Are you putting the new stove wher the Chubby used to sit?
If so the DSM 1500 will look better than the #4 in the living room...
Bigger glass door than the Newstyle but no over fire air vents...
Some pics of the different stoves from R&T Stoves...
http://rtstoves.com/stoves.htm
I may change out my small glass door with vents to the bigger glass now that I have spent some quality time with the #4...
Coalfire upgraded the regular 16x16 firebox to the 16x20 that the Basement #4 has to get 130k btu...
Or was that a Basement #4 with Circulator tubes added...
Either way get the bigger firebox...
I believe the used Kodiaks do not have the hopper...
Check for the ability to put one in...
Once you have had a hand fed with a hopper nothing less will do...
Ok maybe a stoker boiler....
You can save some money by picking up the stove yourself...
These stoves are heavy, Amos has a fork lift but you must plan on how to get it out...

Cape,

Yeah, the new stove will be going where the Chubby is now. Unless I re-pour a new pad next to my furnace in the basement. Then I can duct it into the existing vents. But then it may also mean I'd have to use the same chimney for the stove as the furnace, unless I power vent it. If it is power vented I could put it where the now defunct washer and dryer are, but that in of itself also poses another problem since I'd then have to figure out how to get rid of the washer and dryer. So, the easiest and quickest way to heat would be to shut the Chubby down, pull it out of th way and put the new stove in.

I'm also thinking BTUs over looks. Function over form. That sort of thing. I actually like the way the #3 and #4 look so it wouldn't bother me none. I'm also sure once the heat starts pouring out of the stove my wife will forget how ugly it is. I was looking through their stoves this morning. I will ask about the larger firebox and what-not. I've emailed RT Stoves too. See what they have to say.

I have a truck to pick-up either a Kodiac or a DS Machine...I'd need some ramps, and my furniture dolly and a couple of friends to get it out of the truck and into the house and setup. But its still going to be at least two weeks before it goes down. I'm waiting for the check from the bank then it has to be deposited in the other bank. So, I've still got two weeks at the minimum to nail down the details. Of course, if anyone here would like to come hang out with me for a weekend and take a road trip it'd be awesome. I'll definitely be letting everyone know when the time comes to go get the new stove.

I'm On Fire wrote:I like pictures.

Hearth.png

So, basically, the red line represents the plate that is currently installed. It doesn't quite seal against the bottom of the hearth. I'm gonna fix it with a piece of cement board since it is easier to work with than sheet metal.

The green line is what I'd like to do with another piece of cement board.

If you have gaps in your chimney then that's where all your heat is going.

I would seal up the red (make sure there is good high temp insulation in there) the maybe put a couple of pieces of form board (little bigger then cement board for a tight fit) connected to the back of your cement board then seal that up and like mention on here have some type of shiny stuff to reflect the heat inward.

You keep working on your house and by the time that two weeks roll by you may not want to spend that money on a new stove.

IoF

Are you allowed to have a coal stove in a bed room? I thought having a wood/coal stove was against code?

Snowman

Great job with the shaker handle!!! I always had a problem with mine thinking it was too short because it never could go in far enough to get the middle hole in my grate to be clear of the bar in the middle of the fire pot bottom. Tried a piece of 1/4 in. rod and was amazed at how much more of a shake you can get with it! I'm going to have to find some 3/8 rod and make myself one. At the store today all they had was 1/4 and 1/2.

I'll make a suggestion that may make your house or at least the living room more comfortable..

Your Chubby is a radiant stove, not really a convection stove.. so you want to direct as much of the radiant into the room as you can.. Right now, you have the back of the chubby radiating heat toward the open fireplace [using your diagram for reference]. You need to stop heating the fireplace..

So, go get that piece of cement board, or even a piece of 5/8" drywall. [the green line in your diagram]. After cutting the board to fit, cover the side facing the room with aluminum foil. You can use spray on contact cement, or just wrap the whole board with aluminum.. The amount of heat reflected back into the room, instead of being absorbed by the fireplace will amaze you..

This is a cheap fix, or a cheap improvement. If you have significant air leaks causing loss of heated air, you will have a win/win with a reflector board..

I know the aluminum won't look all that wonderful.. if you want to make it more attractive, you could install a piece of polished SS or Aluminum sheet over the blocker board, but either way you do it, the reflection of the heat off the stove will be noticable.

It's certainly worth a try..

When I bought my big drafty farmhouse, I noticed a lot of drafts.. from everywhere.. and the boiler was in the cellar, I didn't have any heaters in the house itself. What I found was that the two fireplaces, that had woodburning inserts installed, had the trim installed without any insulation to seal the trim, and the combustion air vents to the stoves were wide open.. the amount and velocity of air near the woodstoves would pull a candle flame sideways and put it out. A couple of strips of fiberglass tucked behind the trim, and closing the air vents made a HUGE difference in the house.. I no longer was using a propane boiler with baseboard heat to warm the air that was just going up the chimney..

Greg L.

Heat transfer from the chubby is dominated by convection. A simple calculation can prove this: radiation goes as the fourth power of the temperature so the number of BTUs burned from weight of coal consumed would yield a super high temperature which the stove never reaches because most of this heat is convected away. One also knows that doubling the stove temperature does not produce 16 times more heat! The bricks inside my open fireplace do not heat up much at all (98 F I just measured). I would worry about convection up the flue both inside and outside the pipe. A fireplace cover would reduce the latter.

Fire: Consider how much coal you burn and if you get a bigger stove that is going to go up dramatically. Coal can get expensive if you have to buy it and you are wasting the heat.

Fire: You once did some experimenting with your fans. It is very important that the stove have a source of (cold) air feeding it. Ideally this should come from somewhere on the opposite side of the house. Mine comes mainly up my basement staircase. Cold air is going to move toward the stove on the floor and return to the other side of the house along the ceiling. I would suggest turning all the fans off except maybe the ceiling fan near the stove that you could run pulling air upward.

Remember also that air with all its convective powers has very low heat capacity, i.e. it takes very little energy to warm it up. You can open up a door to a warm house and replace all the warm air with cold air and the cold air will warm up very quickly. This is not true, however, of the mass of the house, the floors, walls, ceiling. It takes a lot of energy (a long time) to warm these up and they stay warm for a long time once they get there. This to me is the beauty of coal heat: it is always on (low) all the time gently keeping a warm house warm, unlike a furnace which cycles or a wood stove which is fed only periodically. The role of air then is to efficiently move the energy to the walls, etc. although the air itself has little stored energy.

Lobsterman,

I just turned the other fan off. See if that helps out tonight.

I also just tried spray foaming the gap between the throat and plate and it didn't work. I guess from the heat it doesn't hold it's shape. I'm going to do the whole foam board and cement board thing and then cover the front with a piece of cement board and I have aluminum diamond plate I can cover it with that might look nice.

I still feel though with the Chubby I'm going to be fighting the cold to keep the house warm. Right now my living room is 70* but I am currently burning a mix of nut and stove coal. There is actually more stove than nut at this point. Stove is idling at 600*. Its only 25* out right now. So, putting a larger BTU stove is still on the docket within 2 weeks. Figure since we've been concentrating on getting the kids covered for Christmas a nice big BTU stove would be mine and my wife's Christmas gift.

Adam,

No, it isn't code to have a stove in your bedroom. I wasn't going to actually hook it up. In fact, it might still sit in the living room in the corner as a conversation piece.

Lobsterman, any hot object will heat the air next to it, creating natural convection. A convection stove by definition is meant to heat air, and has air-heating passageways, fans, ducts, etc meant to heat air. This chubby would do better as a convective stove if it had a shield or double wall around the back 2/3 of the cylindrical body.. cold air would enter at the bottom, be heated and rise out the top.. making it a circulator. The added shield would also be much cooler, and not radiate as much heat toward the heat-sink of the fireplace..

You measuered the temperature of your fireplace brick.. and I have a question: what is on the other side of the brick?? more Masonry and the outdoors?? That is what most outside wall fireplaces are, just a masonry heatsink.. I had one of those on my old family room,, it was pulled down with no regrets during the demolition of my old house.. it was a huge heat sink.. I had frost on the fireplace bricks when the outside temps dropped below -10* and I had any west or northwest wind.. just imagine the loss of human body radiant heat to a masonry ice-cube in the fmily room. I insulated the fireplace with 3" foam, and lived with the thing till I could demolish it.

Put a piece of steel a few inches from the fireplace brick and insulate it from the brick and see how hot it gets from the radiant heat.. I'll bet it's a lot more than 98*..especially if you paint it black.

I'm not saying your math and physics is not 100% correct, but the stove is not heating the house as it should.. and every little bit makes a huge difference. If the backside of the stove is radiating it's heat to the masonry, it's not heating the room, and that's what IOF needs.

Greg L

I have personal experience that seconds Greg's statements in his post above. My VC Defiant wood burner sat in front of a large brick wall. Once I added the heat shield to the back of the wood burner, the increased heat transferred to the air was noticeable. When starting cold, there was a noticeable increase in how quickly the house warmed up. When I bought my current coal fired Vigilant II, I bought the rear heat shield with the stove. Like Greg states, the convection off the back of the radiant stove is the direction to go if the back of the stove is any were near some type of heat sink. IOF, until you get the bigger unit, give it a try - quick easy fix for more BTUs moving about.

I'll definitely try adding a piece of duct or something to the back of the Chubby and see if it helps any. Until I get the bigger stove. BTW, my fireplace and chimney are half inside and half outside.

How's the humidity level?

Just the way humidity makes you feel hotter in the summer, it makes you feel warmer in the winter.

Water carries heat better than air.

I'm On Fire wrote:I'll definitely try adding a piece of duct or something to the back of the Chubby and see if it helps any. Until I get the bigger stove. BTW, my fireplace and chimney are half inside and half outside.

That is how most fireplaces are I believe, at least from the ones I've seen.

Foam doesn't really hold it's shape when sprayed upside down. I would stuff some high temp insulation in there before doing the cement board.

If foaming overhead...
Foam then place AL foil with some support below...
You can peel the foil off after it dries if you want...

Heh, didn't think of that. I'll try that tonight when I get home.

Another thing I thought of was where do you keep the coal you refresh the fire with?

If the coal is dead cold from outside, it will that longer to light than if you had it in a bucket next to the stove all day.

The BTU's and time taken to heat up the fresh coal are not being used to warm your house.