Blizzards and useless chimneys

Did you see how he called it a wood stove and not a fireplace.

 

Who is 'he'? Vladimir Putin? Rasputin?

When I searched them on goog, I searched "Russian Heater".

 

The person you responded in the post I quoted do you not know how to have a conversation in English?

Also I looked up the definition of stove and it's not specifically for cooking something it's for heating whether you use that heat to cook food or warm your house the thing creating the heat can still be called the stove.

 

Yes, your houses are much better suited to a colder climate!

Oddly, we have a lot of masony houses here too .. a legacy of you guys, no doubt. They actually do a better job in the heat, as long as they're 'double brick'. The downside is that they don't easily shed retained heat at night. Timber houses are great at night, but rubbish on a hot day.

 

That’s a nice set up. My neighbor has one. I’ve thought about putting one in but I don’t like hot water heat. I need an object in my house that’s 500° to back up to when I’m cold! But having the mess outside and the option of larger pieces of wood is definitely appealing.

Definitely need backups. That’s why the dead folks mentioned in the OP are dead—they didn’t have backups.

Having your own wood is great as well. All mine comes from my field edges and dead trees in my creeks and waterways. It’s enjoyable work in my opinion. Someday I’ll probably get too old to split wood but I still do all that by hand as well. There is something oddly satisfying about splitting wood by hand.

 

Probably works. If there was a lot of creosote you may risk a chimney fire though. Then it comes down to how well insulated your chimney is from structural flammables. At the end of the day that’s what is most important in my opinion.

If you were building your own I wonder if you could build a separate small fire chamber near the top of the unit with an airtight door. You could burn some kindling in the small chamber and that would pre-heat the main flue creating a draft. Then the main unit below could be started and there would already be a good airflow/draft from the very bottom of the unit to and through the main flue.

Yep, mess outside sounds good. But like I told gnoib I have to have a very HOT unit to back up to when I come in out of the cold! Just can’t live without that.

 

Do you have any experience with rocket mass heaters? That’s the secret to their efficiency but they have their own set of problems. Someday I tell myself I’ll experiment with them but probably never will. LOL

That’s an interesting beast in the picture. I’m odd I suppose, but I like it cold where I sleep at night. Our bedroom is not heated and on the north side of the house. Water will freeze solid in my bedroom when it’s below 0°F outside! But a short after-meal nap on a hot bed of bricks would be nice.

 

I know about rocket mass heaters, but I wouldn't attempt one. They're notorious for filling the room with smoke before sufficient draft builds, and the drum thing doesn't look great!

I get it .. I'm a cold sleeper too! We never heat bedrooms, for that reason. I can't stand a warm room at night. Ideally I like a bedroom between -5c (23f) and zero, but I can be relatively comfortable up to about 15c. After that sleep quality starts to deteroriate.

 

We use all the power we want. The sun comes up every day and gives us all we need.And the sun never bills us. We even make a few bucks selling our excess back to the grid. I'm about as far from a tree hugger as it gets... but our going solar was a great investment.

 

The shortcut draft is a very good idea.

I like the idea of the heating unit being by the door. My stove is on the porch so if I’m losing feeling in my fingers doing chores close to home I can step in and thaw them out without getting out of my coveralls and boots and traipsing through the house. The disadvantage of course is rooms on the other side of the house are a bit chilly at times. LOL

 

I grew up in New York and lived in New England for years I decided long ago never to live anywhere it snowed. San Diego was great weather-ise but the wacky libs, taxes, Draconian gun laws and more were ridiculous. Living on the Texas coast isn't Malibu... but its fine.

 

I grew up with Kacheloefen.

Masonry heater - Wikipedia

 

Ah .. that explains it. You're on the grid! We're not, so we don't have easy backup.

 

We're opposites. I decided long ago never to live anywhere that doesn't experience a decent winter (as in temps down to and below zero).

 

With solar you don't NEED backup. We never take any power FROM the grid, we only sell it TO the grid. The sun never fails.
Now, we already had a GENERAC, so if in some strange circumstance the sun doesn't come up, we do have a backup in case the sun dies.

 

I remember digging the family car out of the driveway as a kid... not fun. I remember sliding sideways down the highway... not fun.
I remember sliding down the sidewalk... not fun.
We spent 20 years in San Diego before retiring. A neighbor moved in from Buffalo and had a yard sale. He had a snowblower for sale. No one bought it, but families came from miles around to show their kids what it was.
When I was a Cadet at West Point, the period from the Army-Navy Game (Thanksgiving weekend in those days) until approximately April ... was called "Gloom Period". It was almost always gray, drizzly and chilly... miserable. It actually was quite depressing.
In San Diego, year-round, its almost always warm and sunny. If you ever got in a bad mood, all you had to do was walk outside into a beautiful day and your attitude improved.

 

True in the sense that the sun is eternally providing power .. but you have to have the hardware to collect it and store it. We work with the minimum we could get away with, because the entire point of the exercise was to spend as little as possible. We can only do this by staying fairly frugal with our usage. If we wanted to live like we were on grid, we'd have to double our capacity.

 

That makes sense. When I think of snow I think of our snow, which is never more than about 30cm. More often it's only about 10cm. So it LOOKS pretty, but doesn't cause any great inconvenience. IE:

 

I hear that. But electricity will only get more and more expensive and the sun's rates will stay the same... zero. The equipment is definitely a significant investment, but it increases the value of your home. We used to pay an electric bill and that money was just... gone. Now our monthly payments are for the solar equipment and every payment means more equity. And, like I said, we sell the excess back to the utility company. So as the cost of electricity increases, we'll make more dollars per month.

 

Pretty.

 

Of course we get this kind of thing in our alpine areas, but that's to be expected. And there aren't really any towns in these locations, just ski resorts.

 

It is. Enough snow to enjoy the atmosphere, but not enough to give you the sh!ts

 

This is how it looks at my farm every winter. At least 1 meter of snow on the ground for a few month and temps down to -25C.

Since December 27 we had over 1 meter of snow, the very wet and right it is snowing like crazy, again. Just came in from feeding the live stock, wet as a dog.
I hope that this could be my last winter up here and then no more snow. 35 years of real winterland is enough.

Probably need all day tomorrow to plow my way out, 1/2 mile road. Even heavy farm equipment has a problem with this wet stuff.

 

I hate nature... too many years in the Army. Ever since I woke up under a foot of snow in my "fart sack" (sleeping bag) in Germany, I hate snow. Ever since I found myself crawling on my stomach in the middle of a sandstorm in Iraq, I hate deserts. Ever since I slept in the crook of a tree one night in Panama to avoid the flood below me, I hate jungles. Ever since I went through a 26 mile "road march" with full pack, weapon, and helmet at Fort Leonard Wood, I hate hiking.

A Marriott with poolside service is as close to nature as I ever again want to get.