Wood burner fan

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A very intresting post, esp the video, we have a Workzone fan (Aldi) and its two bladed, sitting on top of our Jotal cast iron stove, and I really cannot feel or detect anything in the way of draught when its running ... I have at various times thought about rigging up a small and quiet electric fan in the fireplace and seeing what effect that has, in fact thats the thing that might work best?
Steve.
Ditto on the first point. We had a room that was two knocked into one, so the stove had to be a quarter of the way from either one end or the other because that was where the chimneys were. A twenty four foot room with nine foot ceilings. We put a ten inch desk fan on one side of the hearth at the front facing along the the room, and a four inch bathroom fan below the coving at the far end blowing out into the stairwell. In the winter it made a world of difference upstairs when left on for a long time - had we stayed in the house I'd have replaced the small fan with a six inch one.

I'm just in the process of putting an insulated six inch duct from a six inch fan in the ceiling a few feet from the stove to the kitchen and the bedroom. Got to be worth a go for a hundred quid or so.
 
Yes I had thought about computer fans because they are small and quiet but we have the room for a regular elect fan,,maybe one of those flat fan heaters could be tucked away somwhere? But Im intrigued by the fan that didnt work at all, fan spinning around but no air movement,,how is that? Clearly somthing to do with blade angles I guess? I bet there is something on the internet about propeller efficiency. It might also explain why the initial post resulted in lots of people saying how well they worked whilst others were certain they didn't work at all!
Ref stratification, in hot climates they have those big ceiling fans, relativly slow moving, and they have a reversing switch, I cannot recall which is which but its one way in hot weather and the other in cold weather.
Steve.
 
We had a new stove fitted a year ago. The top is a 6mm plate sitting on a few pegs to hold it up with little thermal connection to the main body presumably so it doesn't get too hot and therefore to be safe. Guess what! We have two fans on top: one hardly ever works while the other does when the fire is roaring.
Martin
 
Can't possibly make a difference. It just vaguely redirects a tiny fraction of the heat from the top of the stove, but looks convincing.
Google - "Do eco fans work?
Unfortunately no, the Ecofan generates its own electricity through temperature differential. The base must make contact with a heat source of at least 85°C and the top of the fan must remain cooler. The Ecofan needs to draw cooler air from behind in order to operate."
They work fine on canal boats and do make a difference
 
I dug out the anemometer this evening, well truth be told, I couldn't find it and had to wait till her indoors arrived home.

This is a regular occurrence when I am looking for something seldom used.

So after the usual pantomime of locating a suitable battery, with some power left in it, I tested air flow and was surprised to get a reading of 5.63 ft per sec.
 
I dug out the anemometer this evening, well truth be told, I couldn't find it and had to wait till her indoors arrived home.

This is a regular occurrence when I am looking for something seldom used.

So after the usual pantomime of locating a suitable battery, with some power left in it, I tested air flow and was surprised to get a reading of 5.63 ft per sec.

a drop of paraffin oil on a hot spoon will allow for smoke tracing airflow direction without much heat needed. Large volume of air at low speed is a nice combination for heating. Deceptively effective distribution and no dry eyes.

Or you, could just break wind behind the fan and:
1) time delay until scrunch face
2) measure distance to halfway between last scrunch face and first person with no scrunch face
 
I've got a portway stove its welded steel with firebrick its blooming brilliant. I reckon its because its airtight the controls work superbly well allowing very tight control of the burn. the bottom vent is shut as soon as possible. the top vent burns the smoke. when your shut this vent and the flames start slowly shimmering blimey the heats amazing. many cheaper stoves are noticeably inferior.
 
that didn't come out right. what I meant was cheaper stoves aren't as well designed. ps mine was used off ebay. the bloke had a chimney fire (unlined) and his insurance paid for a new stove complete with liner!
 
They work fine on canal boats and do make a difference
Well yes I did go on to say in a later post:
"I suppose it makes some sense in the room shape of a narrow boat. Some of the heat will get wafted through the boat instead of dissipating through the uninsulated roof area near the stove"
 
I think you were benefiting from the "de-stratification" effect I first mentioned. Most of the heat from a convector goes upwards - and tends to stay there (there can be a 5C+ difference in our sitting room between floor height and ceiling height) - stirring it up a bit does help (probably disproportionately if you study the psycho/phsyiological benefits of warmer feet!).

PS I read that some parts of the US mandate catalytic converters in flues to try and mitigate the air pollution (from burning conifers perhaps, or maybe from using inefficient, poorly designed stoves without airbricks!)

stove regs vary state by state. Our stove was a simple slow movement low-stack-temp stove. 70s technology. Most of the EPA approved stoves now have a secondary burn element and introduced air at the top of the firebox before allowing exhaust out. Gas is so cheap here (and I'm in a different type of area now - was rural, now suburban) that it's uncommon to smell a wood stove, even with 350 houses in the neighborhood. The neighborhood has a lot of woods area and 99% of the wood falls and rots. Our neighborhood association is begging people to bring their own chainsaws to the public land and take wood for free.

At any rate, pine isn't commonly burned in my area because wood like cherry and red oak grow quickly (especially red oaks and pin oaks), split easily and dry well. That's all we burned in our house, and when we removed the stove, the creosote in the chimney expanded due to the fireplace temp (the stove had been in a huge stone fireplace and we insulated above the stove, so there was never any real stack temp). Chimney fire resulted. I'm guessing the secondary combustion is desired first for air quality purposes, and second as a request from insurers.

But, we're out of the loop. Big stone hearth and a fireplace opening 5 feet wide describes what you mentioned about air movement earlier - the sides of the hearth would heat up, but the stove was trapped against the wall and it would do its job. It did its job better with the fan forcing new air to come in and sending warm air out. It was also on the opposite end of the room vs. the seating area - large room around 30 feet long - just not well set up to broadcast the heat out and the house originally had two more woodstoves installed, so likely never intended for that spot to supply heat to the house .

Ag extension here (university outposts) tells people not to burn any softwoods known to be pitchy or sappy, though my understanding is that the person who wants to do it can just run stack temp way up for half an hour or so a day and the chimney will remain dry and safe. My dad is so stingy, he never would've "wasted" the heat going up the chimney, thus we ended up with the fire department solution instead. We burned almost exclusively red oak, with walnut, cherry or locust once in a while. usually no bark (we either split it off or if we bought wood, it was from a relative who send wood with bark to "people in town who won't care")

Our stove wasn't an insert, though - it was a long-log stove - half stuck out of the fireplace, half in. About 36 inches long and would burn wood about 32 at the max. The selling point for a stove like that was that you could load it every 8 hours and still heat a large area. Pull the ashes to the front, put in the next load and shut down the air flow.
 
I think you were benefiting from the "de-stratification" effect I first mentioned. Most of the heat from a convector goes upwards - and tends to stay there (there can be a 5C+ difference in our sitting room between floor height and ceiling height) - stirring it up a bit does help (probably disproportionately if you study the psycho/phsyiological benefits of warmer feet!).

PS I read that some parts of the US mandate catalytic converters in flues to try and mitigate the air pollution (from burning conifers perhaps, or maybe from using inefficient, poorly designed stoves without airbricks!)

I don't know what air bricks are, but burning softwoods is not a problem in an efficient stove that has secondary combustion of flue gasses. Still from my perspective, most normal stoves are inefficient and waste a lot of heat through the chimney or because they radiate most of it at once instead of accumulating it so you get large temperature swings. Though the secondary combustion at least mitigates the pollution issue.

The most efficient traditional wood burning designs in the world right now are modern masonry ovens of scandinavian design with passages for the smoke to pass through so the heat from the flue gasses can be mostly extracted before entering the chimney. They can be up to 90% efficient in retaining the heat, they often weigh several tonnes so they can retain the heat and you only need to fire them once or twice a day.

After that we have reverse wood gasification boilers which are probably the most advanced wood burning technology out there and can go over 90% efficiency. Of course with those you don't use mass to retain the heat but water, so it requires a pretty advanced setup and you need 3-6 cubic meters of water ideally or you can't take advantage of it. But with that kind of setup you can keep a whole house and even a separate workshop heated through cold northern winter in Sweden or Finland and you only need to fire them every other or 3rd day.

We have a masonry heater with secondary air for total combustion and burn mostly softwood and the chimney sweep comes every 4-5 years because more often is pointless. When the fire gets going and you go out and look at the chimney you only see a heat haze.
 
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I suppose it makes some sense in the room shape of a narrow boat. Some of the heat will get wafted through the boat instead of dissipating through the uninsulated roof area near the stove
I agree with your first point - it’s a long narrow space but not your second: the average narrowboat is extremely well insulated throughout generally these days with Sprayfoam. Warmer than most houses in this weather!
 
On the subject of which woodstove, we bought a cheap new one off eBay a couple of years ago which is brilliant. Easy to light, burns efficiently. Bought a near identical one from the same firm recently which apparently complies with the latest regulations whatever they are (three air inlets rather than two) and it’s b*ll*cks. Hard to light; has to run fast to keep going so burns more fuel - hardly planet saving emissions then.
 
On the subject of which woodstove, we bought a cheap new one off eBay a couple of years ago which is brilliant. Easy to light, burns efficiently. Bought a near identical one from the same firm recently which apparently complies with the latest regulations whatever they are (three air inlets rather than two) and it’s b*ll*cks. Hard to light; has to run fast to keep going so burns more fuel - hardly planet saving emissions then.
Run small fire fast but stoke more often is efficient in terms of heat production, and cleaner, but inconvenient. It's a trade off.
I burn loadsa rubbish - off cuts, pallets, scrap furniture, sawdust and shavings, which can burn fast like a rocket stove and produce heat very quickly, but has to be fed often to do that.
Big stove with small fire is efficient - plenty of air around the fire for faster burning and larger surface area to conduct heat into the room.
Re fans - this is a chapel conversion and part of it is full height about 24ft. Very well insulated roof, so wondered about bringing hot air back down with a fan and ducting. I wondered if anybody has done this.
I envisaged simply a 24' long box like a wooden organ pipe perhaps 10" square, open at the top near the ceiling, open at the bottom facing out with a fan in the opening.
 
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