Can I power vent a Hyfire out my basement window?

Hi, all!

I'm new to the forums here. Hubby and I are looking at the Hyfire I or II, if we can power vent it out a small basement window (that we don't mind boarding up). Our 1890 Victorian has such a thick foundation that it's way wider than the 16" max on the power vent for going through a wall!

We're planning to hook into the ductwork for an existing hot air oil furnace, hoping to use it as emergency back up next winter with the Hyfire as primary heat for our 2200 sq. ft. house.

Anyone have an opinion re: whether we need the Hyfire I or II? We were going to get a stoker stove for the first floor but the guys on this forum said to go with the whole house furnace since we're in Maine (can you say COLD?). We've already got a tankless water heater and the water-to-air exchanger seems complicated, so we're leaning toward the Hyfire.

Any thoughts are appreciated--coal is totally new to us. But I'm NOT paying $4,500 to heat my house next winter (at going rates). No way!

Depends on how you mount you power vent, you should be able to as long as you follow the installation recommendations from Field Controls (SWG) power vents. As long as you have enough clearance in/around it.

I would go with he larger Hyfire II, it's probably not much more and you get 50K more BTU output. You may have to get a heat jacket around it to get more heat off the unit, unless you want to keep the basement warm too. You can run 1 burner in spring/fall when you just need to take the chill off, and both burners when you really need it in the winter time.

We have a HYFIRE I, and keeps it relatively warm on the 1st floor, but upstairs in 5-6 degrees cooler. It depending on your location of your stove, it may work fine if you have good circulation. We keep the doors closed to keep the cats out, so it get a bit cooler.

Hi,
We no longer are going to make the Hyfire I. It's in the brochure and I still have 3000 brochures on the shelf but the demand is not there to keep building them. If your going to power vent you need to make sure that you follow all the codes that are on line, (in products SWG). You need to be 4' from the left, right and below any door or window. A min. of 12 to 18" above the ground surface. Your local code inforcement officer I'm sure will have something to say about it. Our PV is UL listed and tested.
Thanks,
Jerry LLS

Leisure Line wrote:Hi,
We no longer are going to make the Hyfire I. It's in the brochure and I still have 3000 brochures on the shelf but the demand is not there to keep building them. If your going to power vent you need to make sure that you follow all the codes that are on line, (in products SWG). You need to be 4' from the left, right and below any door or window. A min. of 12 to 18" above the ground surface. Your local code inforcement officer I'm sure will have something to say about it. Our PV is UL listed and tested.
Thanks,
Jerry LLS

Thanks, Jerry! Other windows are far enough away but our window is at ground level, so we're going to have to talk to the stove installer guy about hopefully bringing it out and mounting it high enough up the side of the house. Or is that not an option--does it have to mount right where it exits? Good to know about the Hyfire I. Makes our decision easier--we'll go with the II if we can work out the power vent!

Oh--any chance that auto ignition is on the Hyfire II? Or is it just on the stoves?

Might it be possible to powervent the hot air furnace & put the coal into the existing chimney? Powerventers use a fair amount of electricity and will run 24/7 on a coal device. I'd still like to know more about coal heaters that are "direct vent". My gut tells me they won't use as much electricity. I guess I should check to see just how much power a powerventer uses. I just know when we stopped using ours and built a chimney, it seemed our electric bill dropped.

When you install a PV you would like to keep the pipe as short as possible. We try to stay under 30' of pipe. Sounds like alot, but every 90* elbow is equal to 9' of straight pipe, so it adds up quickly. Also on the electric, it will run you between $9.00 and $15.00 a month for the PV.The idea about tying into your chimney and PV your furnace is worth looking at. I recommend that to everyone.
Have a great summer,
Jerry

"it will run you between $9.00 and $15.00 a month for the PV."

At ow much per kilowatt? Here in Maine electricity is twice the cost of some states. If it were $30 a month for a powerventer, it seems financing a chimney would be cheaper.

Excellent point, Freddy. Utilities are so expensive here--wasn't prepared for that! We were thinking it sounded like a hassle to switch the venting on our existing oil furnace. But given that monthly cost for the power vent, I think we'll look into putting the power vent on the back-up oil unit and use the chimney for the coal furnace. Man, this is complicated!

Thanks for the info, Jerry! We're going to call the dealer in Gouldsboro this morning to get some more info from him re: switching the venting, etc. Still hoping to make the Hyfire Ii work.

The power vent or direct vent are basically the same and run 24/7. I would think either would run you about the same for electricity. They both have blowers that need to run. If you are talking about putting a power/direct vent on your furnance, then it would would only run when the furnance is on.

The power vent mounts on the outside and pulls the exhaust gases out and you can adjust with a baro damper. The DIRECT Vents mount on the stove and push the gases out the pipe, you have to also seal the pipe good so nothing leaks at the joints.

you can't use a baro unless you can get it mounted between the direct vent and stove, sometimes not an option.

I would go with power venting the oil burning furnace and venting the coal appliance into the chimney. In the long run it will end up costing a lot less in reference to the electric bill. Also, with the coal burner on power vent you will need to install an uninterruptible power source as a back-up to keep the vent running if there is a power failure to eliminate any possibility of products of combustion entering the living space. This is not needed with a power vent on an oil burner, as the burner will shut off when the power goes out.

I was going to power vent my coal stoker out the cellar window (I only have 1 window that was a larger opening that was used to chute coal into the cellar years ago). I decided to vent the coal stoker into the chimney.

I have a very thick fieldstone foundation here.

With the proper coal burning set-up the oil burner will never run. There are also coal burning central hot air furnaces available, I'd consider one of them if you have the room in the cellar and the cash to buy one. I'd stay away from combination units (that burn multiple fuels such as coal and oil), as they are known to be quite inefficient.

As far as this being complicated, yes it is. But once you sort it all out it becomes more understandable.

Wood'nCoal wrote:With the proper coal burning set-up the oil burner will never run. There are also coal burning central hot air furnaces available, I'd consider one of them if you have the room in the cellar and the cash to buy one. I'd stay away from combination units (that burn multiple fuels such as coal and oil), as they are known to be quite inefficient.

As far as this being complicated, yes it is. But once you sort it all out it becomes more understandable.

Thanks, Wood'nCoal! Glad to know I'm not the only one who thinks it's complicated. I feel like I'm taking a crash course in underwater basketweaving without scuba gear. Rice coal is brand new to most folks in my area. It's catching on quickly but no dealers around here know much. Bill in Gouldsboro has been quite helpful but he's four hours round-trip away, so I can't exactly pop over when I want to look at a model of something!

I hadn't heard that combination units are inefficient. They told us today we cannot power or direct vent out our basement b/c it's too close to ground level and no way to go up w/o too many bends. That means we'd have to replace our oil unit with a combination unit (got to have an oil backup for when we tuck tail and run to Arizona in February to regain sanity). If they are that inefficient, it makes me feel better about probably going with a Harman DVC-500 (or LL Pioneer) in the family room and using a bit of oil for the upstairs during the coldest weeks instead of taking out a working furnace, having to pay to line the chimney (argh), and spending twice as much on a combo unit.

This decision has taken over my life!!

Yes, these decisions have a way of taking over.

As far as the combo unit efficiency is concerned, I will state that from what I have read, the coal burning efficiency isn't that bad but the oil burner is terribly inefficient. I'll step back to let other members add their comments here, they know more then I do about this subject. So a combo unit may not be that bad if you are only using the oil burner as a back-up. Let's see what the others say....

I have a Harman hand-fired in the dining room and an Alaska stoker in the cellar connected to my hot air duct with a temperature controlled switch running the blower in the oil-fired hot air furnace. This combination heats the house well. I also have a Fisher woodburning insert in the living room, hardly gets used since I installed the Alaska. Since finishing the Alaska install I have used NO oil for heating this old barn, only for hot water, and that has dropped off since I connected the Alaska to the water heater.

Where there's a will, there's a way (or relatives!).

I wish someone could find out just how many amps power venters vrs direct vent actually draw. My gut says direct vent is quite a bit less than a power venter. The reason being.... a direct vent is built for the appliance it's in, a power venter is adjustable to fit many different things. Power venters I think are a bit over powered to accomadate.

Freddy,
Power vents are run on a rheostat that control amps. A direct vent runs full blast all the time. The think that the motors are the same fasco for both, but I'm not sure.
Jerry

Freddy wrote:I wish someone could find out just how many amps power venters vrs direct vent actually draw.

Field Controls SWG-4: Nameplate 136W, 1.77A. Will exhaust up to 170K Btu, hence the need for flow regulation and a barometric damper.