Ideas for Better Efficiency.

This is my first year burning coal with a LL pioneer. It has been a bit of a little hobby to "play" with. Number one concern has been safety though. But I have gotten these ideas for better efficiency. First thing that had me wondering is about the washing of the heat off the stove. The darn sides and inside top panel are 200+degrees but an inch away is like 110. The whole heat exchange chamber is only heated on one wall. Any other heat exchange method uses some kind of fins usually. Does anybody know of a problem of mounting aluminum extrusions of finned heatsinks on the top inside of the air chamber and on the outer sides. Then I plan to have sheet metal covers over the side heatsinks and blow air thru them. I can get a 24"x14"-1.5" heatsinks for $30. I figure one side of the bolts holding the heatsink might need to be a little loose to allow for the expansion differences.
Also I was thinking about the combustion fan and in my case the power vent and Baro. I figure I must be pumping of of my stove about 100-150 cfm between the cumbustion moter and power vent. This volume of air must be coming from inside my house. So I assume it must be pulling outside air at the rate of 100-150 cfm from every little air leak in my house. That is pretty much cold air entering my house I am trying to heat. Makes me wonder if the cumbustion fan and Baro should not be pulling outside air instead.

These are all good ideas....I'm pretty sure someone on here has done the external heatsink with sheetmetal overlay beofre...I know I have seen a picture here somewhere. We always recomend trying to plumb a cold air return of some kind when it is possible. If you can run a cold air return to the furthest room from the stove you will get a much more even heat as it will be virutally sucked through the house...the cold air return really helps with the convection. I would TRY to go that route before actually cutting a hole somewhere in a wall and directly pulling in outside air. Don't get me wrong...THAT would be the most efficient way (the DVC-500 actually works that way) If you want the best of both worlds then run the cold air return to the distribution blower and run a an outside air source to the combustion blower. That would maximize efficiency and heat distribution in the house. Being that you are power venting I would think that you should not have to worry about your exhaust temp being too low and negatively effecting your draft like someone with a chimney would have to factor in. If you had a chimney then there IS such a thing as being TOO efficient...as wierd as that seems. The one thing you will have to look for on the outside of your power vent is that the exhaust is not so cool that there is a lot of condensing going, causing premature corrosion. That could end up being more expensive than what you save on efficiency.

Hello tw, do a search for 'outside air' and look around the forum.. there are several threads about providing outside air to the combustion fan inlet..

As for the heat sinks.. there have been a few experiments with this.. but it was a year or more ago. I can't remember the thread about it. You want to monitor your stack temps.. you can only get so much heat out of the stove box..

Also,, the sides of the stove provide radiant heat.. unless your stove is where you don't want radiant heat.. I'd let it radiat,, it is a very comfortable heat..

Greg L

Yes, a few on have done that, check out the "Pictures of your Stove" Thread in the BEST OF Section of the forums

Pictures of Your Stove

Here is my jacket on my hyfire I just had made locally. Mine is in the basement and I don't have any other way to distribute the heat upstairs without cutting floor registers into the hardwood floors (NOT!), I only have one opening where the current furnance is.

Thanks for ideas. I will try some more thread searching. My situation is that I do want to move the air into the adjacent room, the stove is not in my primary living room. Luckily the room the stove is in is 4 ft lower with a sloped ceiling which really does help alot on getting the heat out into the other areas. You can see with a string that cool air at the floor is flowing in as the heat is flowing out the top of that room. So my plan is to get as much heat off the stove to get it into the other rooms. Not ideal ,I know ,but its going pretty good as is.

Last night while pondering ideas was when the cumbustion fan idea hit. Am I correct in assuming that for every CFM that goes out my chimney (power vent) another CFM is coming in somewhere else from the cold outside? If so, that is alot of cold CFM's per day coming in my house. My house is quite new with very sealed windows and doors though. Then the question is what is the effect of 40 deg. colder air from the outside to be pumped into the cumbustion blower. Will that cool the fire box any. I could run the LL at say a 14 feedrate for 4 hours then make the change and wait 4 hours and check Stack temps.

Cold outside air has no effect on the 1500-2000* fire.. the cold outside air does have an effect on your comfort in your house..

Greg L.

I run my stove with outside combustion air and it has no noticeable effect on the combustion area. Like you my house is well sealed and every stove that I have had I used outside air for combustion because I did not want to try sucking air into my house from every nook and cranny. With a well sealed house I was afraid of the combustion blower competing with the baro damper for air. Go ahead hook up the outside air, you won't be sorry.

Go ahead hook up the outside air, you won't be sorry.

Best advice I've read on this forum.