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  #11   Report Post  
Terry Spragg
 
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wrote:

The good news is that traditional small iron stoves are being made
again. The bad is they are priced at 10x what they should be and
scandalous. A new tiny cast woodburner the size of a breadbox costs
$1,600 and the one I inspected close-up last week was a piece of sh*t
in terms of good cast stove construction, not worth $50 to a serious
woodburner, there have been many iron toys for children made & fitted
much better to use than this stove.

A small iron stove of good quality - if you can find one - is better
than other ways of burning wood.

For a long time small laundry stoves & heaters were made for bathrooms
in houses, and you may luck out and find one that has not fallen into
the hands of a stove restorer, who will charge you as much or more
money for one as the new repros above. But at least they are made very
well.

For heating a small space well & effiicently with wood, one must do
opposite from what has become popular today for wood burning practices,
and this will also affect the design of stove to use (that is, if you
can find much of a choice these days), as well as its installation.

Adequate supply air is not likely to be any problem on a houseboat or
other boat, but adequate draught (flue height) for efficient combustion
is. The more you can provide, the better. In practical terms it is
impossible to have too high a flue on a boat, and whatever you can
manage will still have you wishing you had more.

No "airtight stove" type burning should be contemplated. It is very
wasteful of fuel to "hold" or restrict a full fire in a woodstove "to
make it last a long time", it will make smoke outside that will be
miserable with its short flue height, and it will foul the flue. A
boat does not have a woodshed for fuel storage and the resulting waste
from such burning will nearly double the fuel requirement.

Only finely split, DRY (meaning at 20% moisture or less) wood which has
been cut to the proper length for the firebox should be burned. Many
hardwoods take 2 years or more of drying out in the weather to get to
this point. Fires should be kindled quickly and burned hot with
correct underfire & overfire air at high efficiency, and resulting heat
"held" in the stove & mass of the space, rather than trying to hold a
cooler fire for a longer period. This means either brief, hot fires
that are permitted go out, or continual ones which are frequently fed
only one or two sticks at a feeding, depending upon the weather. Such
fires produce very little flue smoke after warmup and sometimes none
that is easily visible, when an experienced person is operating the
stove, and they emit a good deal of heat for the size of the thing -
especially when it is in the "clear fire" stage (mostly charcoal & no
yellow flame). All this stuff may seem obvious but firing a tiny
woodstove well is more challenging than one of larger size, and makes
bigger differences in the heating results.

Remember you will have to deal with ashes and more frequently than in a
bigger stove. On a boat a covered ashcan is needed because there is
usually a breeze when they have to be taken out. People are wierd
today too & some may get ****ed off when they see you dump wood ashes
into the water downwind because they have been culturally deprived.

It IS possible to bank a fire with fresh fuel for delayed burning at
night at starved draught - which is not the same thing as the usual
"airtight stove" inefficient operation but has some similarities. It
will also use up a lot of your ashes & cut back on their disposal, for
there is a lot of unburned material in once-burned ash. Allow a clear
fire to almost burn out, with only some remaining coals, and shake or
remove any excess ash around them. Close all air inlets entirely.
Place on top of them the largest piece of dry fuel that will fit into
the stove, usually through its lifted top & often an unsplit round
section loaded on its end (but it must be *dry wood*). Load the whole
firebox with ashes, all the way up to & over the top of the fuel.
Close up the stove & all draughts & dampers as tightly as possible
(this technique depends on having good flue draught height which will
pull tiny amounts of air into the stove anyway). In a few hours,
everything inside the stove will be one glowing mass, and much later
when it has burned out you will be surprised by now little ash is left
in the morning. Throw *this* ash out, don't try to reuse it for the
next banked fire.

One of the best, least messy & easiest to stow fuelwood sources for a
tiny stove is bagged hardwood waste product from a mill operation, such
as cutoff birch dowel pieces and the like. This is kiln-dried material
and it is so easy to handle and burns so fookin hot, that you will
laugh at anyone who derides you for heating your boat with wood.
You'll still need other larger fuel for more balanced & controlled
fires, and it is easy to overheat & ruin an iron stove burning hardwood
waste if you are not careful.

As well, pellet stoves can burn small wood efficiently, with forced
draught. The best pellets are made from waste from flooring and
cabinet scraps. The ash all goes up the pipe. Haven't seen any small
pellet stoves, though.

Terry K

  #12   Report Post  
Paul Tomblin
 
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In a previous article, Terry Spragg said:
Paul Tomblin wrote:
I very much doubt that there are any canoers or kayakers who've put wood
stoves in their boats, so I fail to see why you included
rec.boats.paddle.touring in your posting.

If charcoal burning hand warmers are not wood heaters, perhaps you'd
prefer a New Found Land and Labrador wooden stove? "Gives good
heat, can burn for 24 hours, b'y. Replacement stoves, cheap."


You can't have your kayak and heat it too.


--
Paul Tomblin http://xcski.com/blogs/pt/
Quality Control, n.:
The process of testing one out of every 1,000 units coming off
a production line to make sure that at least one out of 100 works.
  #13   Report Post  
Brian Whatcott
 
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On Tue, 12 Jul 2005 16:31:29 +0000 (UTC),
(Paul Tomblin) wrote:

In a previous article, Terry Spragg said:
Paul Tomblin wrote:
I very much doubt that there are any canoers or kayakers who've put wood
stoves in their boats, so I fail to see why you included
rec.boats.paddle.touring in your posting.....


You can't have your kayak and heat it too.


Good one!

Brian Whatcott Altus, OK

  #14   Report Post  
 
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Terry Spragg wrote:

As well, pellet stoves can burn small wood efficiently, with forced
draught. The best pellets are made from waste from flooring and
cabinet scraps. The ash all goes up the pipe. Haven't seen any small
pellet stoves, though.


Hi Terry,

We don't want to be thinking too far ashore about a boat woodstove.
Even if a pellet unit of tiny size could be fabbed it would require the
complexities of an automated feed auger, electricity-hungry draught
blower, increased maintenance, lower overall reliability, and be
restriced to a very limited type & sources of fuel. Pellets are also
easy to get wet in a marine environment & hard to dry out if they do.

BTW a small shoreside stove of uncoated CI will grow rust aboard a boat
faster than crabs in a Carribean whorehouse, and must be continually
maintained & recoated with stove paint, which is a PITA. Someone with
vision & some capital needs to start spec-ing/subbing overseas &
selling a tiny porcelain-coated well-fitted cast iron woodstove that is
well thought-out for versatility & simplicity at a cheap price. They
would sell thousands of them and make a killing, especially if they may
be exempted from the ridiculous new US EPA woodstove emission
requirements (and their equivalents elsewhere) as the new and inferior
copies of the insultingly overpriced Lunenbergs appear to be. Those
guys need some serious competition, and many people would want one
ashore in small spaces as well. A lot of excellent CI goods are
produced cheaply in Taiwan (along with some very crappy iron too), as
long as the importer specifies good stuff; my Powermatic tablesaw is
Taiwanese CI, and they are still recycling all the ships we've scrapped
there.

I am willing to jump into this project if anyone has the capital and
cajones to do it.

  #15   Report Post  
William R. Watt
 
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I don't know much about wood stoves on boats, other than what I've read
about boats in days gone by, but I enjoy looking at the photos,
descriptions, and prices of wood stoves in a 1979 edition of the
Harrowsmith Sourcebook in my home library. For some reason the stove pipe
on a boat is called the "Charlie Noble".

There are lots of space heaters in the book under $500. The two principal
kinds are closed models and models with glass doors for viewing the fire.
They either have cast iron fireboxes or sheet metal lined with fire brick.
The commentary says it doesn't make any difference except you can break
the fire brick if you aren't carefull putting wood into the stove. The
cookstoves tend to be bigger, heavier, and over $1,000 with one under
$500. That was in 1979.

Selection of a stove for a boat would depend a lot on the space avaiable.
The stoves come in different dimensions. Some have the stovepipe coming
out the back which would require more space than a stovepipe comming out
the top. Some of the samller stoves have long legs putting the center of
gravity pretty high for a boat, from the look of them. Personally, I'd
favour a squat stove with low centre of gravity on a boat.

I think old time stoves on boats tended to burn coal rather than wood. I
imagine coal would take up less space on board for the same heat production.

(dh@.) writes:
Hi,

I have a houseboat that I'd like to take out some this
winter, and I'd like to have a small wood stove to use
in it. All the small wood stoves I've been able to find
have been camping related, so I'm asking for advice
in camping groups as well as boating groups. Can
anyone suggest any stove(s) that they feel are good
and affordable, and any suggestions about use etc?

Thanks for any help!
David

PS in case anyone is interested in what I've found
so far, or wants proof that I've done some looking
on my own as well as asking for people to share
what they've learned, here is a list of some related
websites:

http://www.calarmy.com/tents/
http://www.kni-co.com/
http://tinyurl.com/9pbxv
http://www.aaoobfoods.com/shepherdstoves.htm#2%20DX
http://davistent.com/davisTent/html/WoodStoves.html
http://www.cylinderstoves.com/defram...ovepricing.htm
http://www.walltentshop.com/CatStoves.html
http://www.fourdog.com/page2.html
http://www.army-technology.com/contr...manufacturing/



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  #16   Report Post  
Brian
 
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I believe that there is also a Force 5 stove that burns solid fuel.

Brian


  #17   Report Post  
Cyli
 
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On Tue, 12 Jul 2005 16:31:29 +0000 (UTC),
(Paul Tomblin) wrote:

In a previous article, Terry Spragg said:
Paul Tomblin wrote:
I very much doubt that there are any canoers or kayakers who've put wood
stoves in their boats, so I fail to see why you included
rec.boats.paddle.touring in your posting.

If charcoal burning hand warmers are not wood heaters, perhaps you'd
prefer a New Found Land and Labrador wooden stove? "Gives good
heat, can burn for 24 hours, b'y. Replacement stoves, cheap."


You can't have your kayak and heat it too.



Thank you. I've always loved that joke.

Cyli
r.bc: vixen. Minnow goddess. Speaker to squirrels.
Often taunted by trout. Almost entirely harmless.

http://www.visi.com/~cyli
email: lid (strip the .invalid to email)
  #18   Report Post  
tigerregis
 
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This is the third time I have tried to say this and if it does not go
through then I'll deep six this site. There is a solid fuel heater
NEWPORT by Dickinson. It looks like any other propane or diesel heater
bulkhead mounted. I have one and use sterno which works fine. A friend
has one and uses selfstarting charcoal to start cannel coal, which is a
fireplace coal. We only haul our boats for maintenance and need some
BTU's in the winter months.

  #20   Report Post  
 
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Gogarty wrote:

We
eventually settled on a mix of real charcoal (avoid briquettes like the
plague -- what's in those things anyway?) and pea size anthracite coal.
We had to install a fan on the front of the ash drawer to provide a
forced draft to keep the coal burning.


Try larger coal - less draught restriction - and always coal that is
rounded not broken & flattened in shape (same reason & getting harder
to find). Either way it sounds like a dangerous idea; coal gas with
the inadequate natural draught from a short boat stack offers deadly
possiblitites.

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