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Old 10-12-2016, 12:36 PM   #1
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Practicality and efficiency of a wood burning stove

Even though I love the idea and the coziness of a stove, I decided not to use one as I'd have to restock it minimum every 12 hrs in upstate NY, plus bring wood onboard to store it, and go through more than a ton of wood my calculations in a harsh winter. I opted for a catalytic vented propane system. Is there anyone using a wood burning stove in the coldest climates without snow birding down south? If so, what are your honest opinions? Are you regretting the decision?

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Old 10-12-2016, 02:02 PM   #2
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I use one and am quite pleased with it! Most especially in the dead of winter.

This time of year in Northern Ontario is all over the map for temperatures. Some mornings are down near freezing, but then hop up to 22C in the afternoon, so the wood stoves residual heat can be a bit annoying. Opening a few windows usually fixes that.

In the dead of winter it's great. We keep it cooking non-stop while we're home, but if we're away for a day or two the inside of the bus will certainly drop below freezing (no alternate heat source). That hasn't been a real problem yet. We just have to plan for it. At the moment we're using a big, blue jug for water. That freezes, but melts as the wood stove warms up. Some of our cans and veggies freeze. That hasn't caused any issues yet.

We actually use less propane in the winter than we do in the summer. The wood stove is always hot. We can do our cooking and coffee making on it in the winter.

Now, as for wood. We have 48 acres of mostly forested land, so wood isn't a problem when we're parked up here. On the road it's ever so slightly less convenient, but not by much. I bring my 20v Dewalt circular saw and snag oak or maple pallets. An easy thing to find in any industrial sector or farm supply shop. I can cut 3 pallets down in 15 minutes with the saw and store the chunks in the wood storage box I made. That lasts for a week or so.

Anyhow, we like it. It's not for everyone, but I like most everything about it. Harvesting and chopping wood is a fantastic bit of exercise and the flickering of the flame at night can't be topped.

My woodstove install can be seen in my build thread, which is linked to in my signature.

Its my opinion that if burning nearly a ton of wood doesn't sit well with you, then you did the right thing in grabbing a propane furnace. Wood is either going to take up space, or you'll be scavenging pallets all winter.

As a side note: I just finished chopping enough wood for this year and next!! It's always nice to be ahead of the game
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Old 10-12-2016, 02:09 PM   #3
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Pallet wood burns EXCELLENT in a wood stove.. years ago we used to get scraps from a pallet company... the small blocks and pieces of wood give lots of surface area.. with a proper dampering system you can control a fire nicely when you have lots of surface area to burn.. unlike big logs, little pieces put together can keep a core barely burning even when dampered way down.. as opposed to having to run a larger minimum airflow to get a couple big logs to burn.

pallet wood is also usually nice and dry.. even if its outside and been rained on, its pretty seasoned as far as Saps.. its easy to store or carry in tubs or 5 gallon buckets..

Used pallets can often be found near dumpsters of warehouses if you get there before the guys with the over-stacked pickup trucks snag them.

I could imagine a single pallet heating a well insulated bus for a day or two (maybe more)..

-Christopher
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Old 10-12-2016, 02:16 PM   #4
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Yeah, you make a really good point. The pallets are usually made of heat treated or kiln dried wood!

To anyone who is thinking of burning pallets, do watch out for methyl bromide treated wood. It's rather poisonous when burned. You'll be able to tell by the stamping on the pallet. Most pallets will be stamped HT for heat treated, or KD for kiln dried. The bad ones will be labelled MB for methyl bromide.
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Old 10-12-2016, 02:30 PM   #5
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wow I never new pallets were treated.. most of the ones ive seen seem just like splintery bare wood... I didnt realize they pressure treat them like deck wood? I know people have been told for years not to make a bon-fire with an old torn down wood deck from a house..
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Old 10-12-2016, 02:36 PM   #6
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I haven't seen any that are pressure treated in the same way that building lumber can be. It seems that very few are methyl bromide treated as well these days, though it's still worth checking to be certain. Heat treated appears to be the most common.

It turns out that methyl bromide treated pallets are banned in Canada because they are considered a health risk to warehouse workers. That could be why I've seen so few in my time.
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Old 10-12-2016, 03:31 PM   #7
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As someone who used to work in the trucking industry, I can tell you that a lot of shippers, especially those shipping produce, require heat treated pallets because the treatment process kills insects and insect eggs/larvae.

I don't think I ever saw a MB treated pallet the whole time I drove, just heat treated wood or plastic at a few places.
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Old 10-12-2016, 05:45 PM   #8
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My plan is to use the wood stove to supplement my propane heater, for example when traveling & parking grab a pallet or 2 & burn them while awake then load stove before bed & let propane take over after stove burns down,then when setup for boondocking gather wood for longer use
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Old 10-26-2016, 02:46 PM   #9
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I, too, have been wary about purchasing a wood-burning stove. I associate them with hipsters, and I associate hipsters with valuing aesthetics over true value.
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Old 10-26-2016, 03:02 PM   #10
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Marceps View Post
I, too, have been wary about purchasing a wood-burning stove. I associate them with hipsters, and I associate hipsters with valuing aesthetics over true value.
Haha.. wow.. Ever been out of the city?

If that statement holds true than about half of the people I know are hipsters.. And half of that group are between the ages of 60-90 years of age. So I guess you could say that they are the original hipsters?

In this rural area it's generally considered stupid to pay for heat when there's energy standing in your own backyard.

Also, yes, fire does add some nice aesthetics



This reminds me of a little exchange between my girlfriends brother-in-law Brian and his life-long country living 80 year old mother. It went like this:

Quote:
Brian's mom: "What were you up to this afternoon?"

Brian: "Bucking up a tree that fell down in a wind storm at Eden's place in the city."

Brian's mom: "Oh.... ...why? Is there something wrong with their chainsaw?"

Brian: "No Mom. Not everyone owns a chainsaw"
I thought it was kinda funny
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Old 10-26-2016, 04:20 PM   #11
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Arrow

Quote:
Originally Posted by jazty View Post
In this rural area it's generally considered stupid to pay for heat when there's energy standing in your own backyard.
I absolutely agree. In the context of a bus, however, I doubt the merits. It would be nice to hear from people experienced with both wood-burning stoves and the alternatives (propane, electric...).
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Old 10-26-2016, 04:31 PM   #12
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I've used both propane/natgas and wood and greatly prefer the nice dry heat of a wood stove. After using propane heaters last winter I installed a wood stove this fall. On the few nights that its been cold enough I've burned this year.

The wood stove is FAR superior to the propane heater. When I get the wood stove cranking and the interior up nice and warm there isn't any trouble with the excessive moisture that heating with propane usually causes. With the propane heater cranking last winter it would get so humid inside the bus it felt like it was getting ready to rain.

If fuel availability is your concern, you can always buy packs of wood fuel bricks very cheaply. That said, I just scored a GIANT trailer full of scraps from a cabinet company, more than enough for the entire winter and trim out the whole interior of the bus... for free. I'll never heat with propane again. Should have prefaced this with the fact that I grew up with only a wood stove for heat in our house. I also enjoy cutting and splitting wood, so there's that.
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Old 10-26-2016, 04:32 PM   #13
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Marceps View Post
I absolutely agree. In the context of a bus, however, I doubt the merits. It would be nice to hear from people experienced with both wood-burning stoves and the alternatives (propane, electric...).

I've used propane, kerosene, electricity and now wood through various stages of my bus build. Wood is the only one yet where I can have it Sahara hot indoors without thinking about burning dollar bills. If you're always on the road then it can be a mild nuisance because you'll have to keep your eyes out for pallets or other good burnables. I haven't been anywhere yet where it was difficult to find a weeks worth of heating wood. I also don't spend much time in cities with the bus. YMMV

If you have propane it's easy to fill, but you pay for it (of course)... Non-vented propane heaters dump plenty of unwanted moisture into the air. Cheaper vented propane heaters have low efficiency.

Kerosene and diesel are too messy to bother with in a wick style heater, but work well in a Webasto style heater. Same situation as propane, though.. it'll cost money to run.

Electric heaters are only worthwhile if you are always plugged in. They consume far too much electricity to be worthwhile in a solar setup and they're a wasteful appliance to run with a generator.

For some people it's worth the cost to have minimal on-going maintenance with their heater. I personally find operating a wood stove to be a pleasant experience. Again, YMMV.
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Old 10-27-2016, 09:17 PM   #14
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I love the idea of adding a wood stove to our bus and I think that is the route we will take eventually. I think at this point my main concern is how to surround the stove itself. Surely it has to get hot, how do you keep the thing safe on the bus? If we do wood paneling or something on the walls, I don't want areas to burn.
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Old 10-27-2016, 10:00 PM   #15
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#1 You put it at least 6 inches from the walls.
#2 You use fire-rated wall material around the stove itself... it has a name but I can't think of it right offhand. If someone were to call it I would know it though.
#3 Use double piping as a chimney.... the actual exhaust goes up the inner pipe, while the outer one is used just to create buffer space to keep the heat from the inner pipe from making the ceiling too hot where it passes through.

Make sure you size it appropriately.... get too big of a fire going and it'll run you out (and could damage the stove from too much heat), but too small and it won't burn hot enough, which will cause you further problems down the road (creosote, which can cause a chimney fire).

Ideally it seems you'd probably want to be able to stoke it about once an hour to keep it comfortable. Too small of a fire in too big of a box causes the creosote I mentioned before because it's not burning hot enough to completely consume the pitch in the wood.

There are those here who have wood stoves in their buses, I'm sure they will have something to say as well, and more knowledgeable than I for sure.
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Old 10-27-2016, 10:22 PM   #16
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if you have to purchase wood or Eco-bricks its going to cost more than running a propane Dual heat exchanger furnace.. (which extracts the heat from the moisture but doesnt oput the moisture into the bus!

if you have a way of getting your wood for little or free.. then I say go for a wood stove all day long... its warm and comfy and cheap then..

-Christopher
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Old 10-27-2016, 11:02 PM   #17
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...and...real men like real fire! (real women do too BTW)
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Old 10-28-2016, 12:33 AM   #18
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the size of good fire place and the space around it you loose seems to be a big factor for most builds. Temp regulation as well. nothing wrong with opening a window to regulate the temp but that does mean your consuming more fuel than you need to. if its free and abundant that's okay. Ideally it would be nice to always camp were you can drag out a fallen tree and such fro fire wood.

Ive personally never been that much into the indoor fires. They go out nothing is worse than my little toes touching a cold floor to go start up a fire in the morning.

I wonder what the conversion is from wood to propane for say a cool fall some where for a two week time. I could probably make my dickeson heater work on 10lbs for a couple weeks.

survival tells me wood should be there. but practical propane is so convenient. I had though about bringing the Geo out a with a new gassifier on it but I'm sure it would end up running on pellets. I like doing it and using my chunker and filling my bags full of wood. I don't think the desert will have many broken tree limbs to chunk up. I'm getting old i like to turn a key and stuff comes to life any more.

Those of you in coal country that might be better than wood.
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Old 10-29-2016, 01:00 AM   #19
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Well, I'm seriously considering a wood-burning stove now. Thank you, everyone, for sharing your experience.
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Old 10-29-2016, 06:32 AM   #20
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Around here wood is free. Can't give it away. A truck load of wood will cost you around a hundred bucks to DUMP!
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