Favorite Baseburner #261

I'll take Miss Walker's stove over the ugly Heil stove any day.
I find the irony of history very amusing sometimes.
You could title this one: The Revenge of Miss Walker's Stove.

Miss Walker's stove is a magnificent example of craftsmanship, science and art crafted into one unit.
Miss Walker's stove is highly desired and restored examples of it are sold for many thousands of dollars.
Stoves like Miss Walker's are cherished by those who have one these days.
A lot of people want Miss Walker's stove but can't afford one or can't find one.
Nobody, wants, desires or covets an oil burning, brown enameled monstrosity from the late 40's.
Miss Walker's Base Burner is a treasured icon whereas the Heil stove is left in a scrap pile.
So much for all of that advertised superior modernity.
Miss Walker's stove disparaged as inferior and obsolete in the ad, gets the last laugh.

Sorry to say that but the problem with super insulated houses doesn't come from the insulation or being more air tight. If a house is built correctly, there is no in-house air quality problem. The more insulation you can have, the best energy efficiency you get. The heat produced from the heater: any kind of system, stay in the house. Just like a base burner keeps the heat inside of the house. ALL related problems come from a poor air exchange planning. In the past the air exchanges were naturally done and a lot of heat was lost, making the house unconfortable, except near the stove but feeling the cold air coming from the back.
To control the in-house air quality and the humidity level and having a confortable house, I say house for ALL the house, a good mechanical air exchanger is a must. Then YOU control these factors and don't sent the costly warm air produced outside of the house. Many poor insulations job were made and resulted in more problems after than before. If correctly done I certify that: more insulation is the way to go but it must be done like it SHOULD be done.

We do know a lot more about insulating houses than we did 30 years ago. And there are more options now than there was back then. I think the later 70's and through the 80's some of the stuff they were doing to super insulate houses at the time probably made sense to the contractor, but caused all kinds of trouble as time went on. I remember in one house I painted on, they put two thicknesses of plastic over the whole inside of the house under the sheetrock and was careful not to puncture it anywhere other than where the sheetrock nails went into the wall studs and that next winter they had trouble with moisture dripping from the ceiling in the front room. 10 years or so later they pulled all the sheetrock out of the house and did something different inside. I don't know what they did differently, but I saw them gutting the house and asked about it.
The insulation that they spray between the studs and then shave off looks really interesting to me. It would seem that stuff would go a long way towards dealing with the moisture problems. My house is ballon framed and I gutted the whole thing and in those days (1987) put fiberglass insulation in the walls, between the floors and ceilings and that seems to be working ok. I've had some of the places opened up since then and it all looks fine in there. This house was very cold before that was done. Talk about air exchange!
Some of the old gravity furnace set-ups brought in outside air into the cold air pit at the bottom of the furnace to "pressurize" the air in the home to help keep cold air from infiltrating. There used to be an old plumber down the street from me that did those old gravity furnaces when they were new. George said if those were done right, they really made for a comfortable house that was not drafty at all. It probably helps some with chimney draft in an otherwise pretty airtight home as well.

Hey Earl, how did that BIG 'Favorite' stove do for you this last heating season??

One of our forum members just found a Fvorite base heater that needs some parts, do you still have a parts stove around??

I think McGiever will be around shortly..

Greg L

wow...how did i miss this beauty of a thread great photo's earl!!! This stove looks very familiar but has the bonnet on it what a beauty this thing is... Is the Mica all seperate peices or one large peice on each side? closer look at the brackets that hold those Mica peices please?

Holy Base Burner Batman !!!

I do recall studying the thread when it was first posted, but I was not bitten yet with the bug.

Obviously it all has new meaning now. EarlH, I am your new best friend.

I'll be PM'ing you to discuss some possibilities.

LsFarm wrote:Hey Earl, how did that BIG 'Favorite' stove do for you this last heating season??

One of our forum members just found a Fvorite base heater that needs some parts, do you still have a parts stove around??

I think McGiever will be around shortly..

Greg L

I think someone stole the centerpiece from the Metropolitan Museum of Art ... and i think his name is Earl

I cant take my eyes off this stove and seeing it fired up its like gazing at a large crystal ball with churning fires inside... Its mesmerizing

Well thanks for the compliments about the stove. I have to say that I'm REALLY happy with it. It does a fine job of heating and does a pretty good job of burning up all the coal that's run through it. I found an old coal sifter and run the ashes through it and there is very little unburnt coal in the waste. And that's when it's warmer out and it's not being run very hot. If the fire is shook down and the magazine is filled to the top (It will hold about two hods full if the firepot is full) it will take care of itself and burn up everything in the magazine before it needs to be shook down again. And depending on how hard it's being used, it will hold a fire very easily for 24-36 hours. I usually leave the furnace fan on so I don't have to run the stove as hot and it heats the house just fine. Since I got it up and running we haven't had any 10 below zero kind of weather, but I really don't see a problem with it keeping up with that. I don't have a huge house and like the bedrooms on the cool side and can close some rooms off if I need to. I have not put refractory cement in the firepot. When I got the stove someone had burned up some stuff in it that left the inside of the firepot all coated with some black thick stuff in there so I wanted to get that burned out of there and get another one cast this summer. I'll use the re-cast bowl and keep the original as a pattern since it's in really good shape. I don't think I'll be putting cement in the bowl though. I've found that I don't have to run the stove hot enough to turn the firepot red. I've had it that hot a few times, but it heats well enough without doing that to it. It also tends to bank up a little bit of ash around the outside and that seems to help keeping it from getting that hot. I'll know better next year after I get to use it some more.
I did get the ash pit door sorted out as the keeper had been mislayed for the handle so I was holding that shut with a bar clamp. Anyway, it is a fascinating thing to watch. And it's easy to see why these things were SO popular years ago. And I'm sure many of them got hauled out of the houses with a great deal of sadness. But gas is so much easier to deal with! At least that's how it all got sold anyway.

Ive gotta say that I love my efm and I dont need any more heat,BUT... I could get used to sitting in front of that thing gazing at the glow ,reading and watching it snow outside.However, no matter how many times I ask for help finding one ,please ignore the cries for help. That thing is crazy sick...

Waldo

dcrane wrote:wow...how did i miss this beauty of a thread great photo's earl!!! This stove looks very familiar but has the bonnet on it what a beauty this thing is... Is the Mica all seperate peices or one large peice on each side? closer look at the brackets that hold those Mica peices please?

The mica is all separate pieces. One for each opening. On the back side of the doors there are small bumps that help hold the mica in place until the frame is bolted in place. Those raised places probably keep the mica from slipping out of place with heat cycles too I would imagine. The frames on the backs of the doors fit snugly to hold it in place and it's actually quite easy to take them apart and put them back together. Most of the pieces of mica in this stove are in the $3-$4 each camp and fortunately the mica was in really good shape in the stove when I bought it. It lasts for a long time as long as one is mindful of it. And it wipes clean pretty easily with some water with a little white vineger in it. If you look back through the pictures I posted a month or two ago you'll see a picture of one of the doors with the frame removed from the back and the mica just laying on the back of the door.

Here's one more picture of the old girl 'lit up' if you will. You can see that it will hold a fairly bright fire and the the firepot shows no signs of turning dull red. I should hunt up my thermometer and see how it gets when it has a fire like this in it. I've seen a few these things with whole sides of the firepot melted out of them! Probably done years later by people not having any idea about how to burn coal. WOW they must have let them get hot to do that. These baseburners really are a fascinating way to heat your house. My Mom has an old book from the late 1870's on housekeeping and all the conveiniences of the era and how to use some of them. And she pointed out a line in there about how "nice it was to warm one's self by an anthracite fire while reading a good book" and not to take it for granted that it has always been like this! Anyway, I know you like pictures, and so do I.

Im just amazed by this stove It looks like a mix of Art Nouveau with a little Empire State Building mixed in Its seriously a work of art... the value of that thing must be enormous!!!

dcrane wrote:Im just amazed by this stove It looks like a mix of Art Nouveau with a little Empire State Building mixed in Its seriously a work of art... the value of that thing must be enormous!!!

You know, it's really hard to say how much the thing is really worth. The value of all antiques is down quite a bit from where they were 5-6 years ago like pretty much everything else. And at a time when the cost of restoration has gone up dramatically. And it doesn't seem like any of these factors is going to change in the near or even in the next 5-10 years with what's going on in the world and here at home. The stoves that the collectors want are the real over-the-top ornate stoves that are about 10-15 years older than this one. And the people that would actually use them are almost ZERO. I don't know of any stove collectors that actually would put a fire in them. I'm sure there are exceptions, but most of them just have them setting around. Or they put a light bulb in them to light them up. The other thing that's against this stove value wise, is how big it is. Favorite made one that's a little larger than this one, but this one still weighs in at around 575 pounds! And so the collectors like the small baseburners that weigh about half of where this one comes in at! If you are going to have 40-50 of these things around, I can understand that for sure. Plus, these old stoves are fragile and it takes a bit of planning and some help to move one. They do allow for a lot of stuff to come off them, but this one still feels like it's screwed to the floor even then! I would guess it's worth around 4-5 thousand. I wouldn't take that for it because I like the stove and don't feel like going on another hunt for one. And maybe I'm off some on that estimate, but I've seen some pretty nice baseburners show up on ebay for less money than that, and they have no takers.
So all that said, it's kind of a buyers market in a lot of ways for this kind of stuff. But if you are thinking of it as an investment, you may run into some trouble on that one. Restoration is getting to be more and more expensive at a time when there is less and less interest in this sort of thing. So, there are a a few factors putting pressure on these things and antiques in general not gaining much in value in the next few years anyway. How many young people are interested in these things? Or anything old for that matter.