Quote:
Originally Posted by floridatoalaska
My husband and I have been looking at wood stoves for our full sized Thomas. The inside should be about 300 square feet. I’ve seen that most people opt for the miniature wood stoves, but we plan on being parked in Alaska next year and I know the area regularly gets to -20 degrees F. Is a miniature wood stove going to put out enough warmth to be our main source of heat? Should we opt for slightly bigger? Any recommendations?
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From my research about them and my intent to have a tightly sealed bus with 3" of closed cell about everywhere, pains taken to avoid thermal bridging -- you'd need two of those mini-stoves to be comfortable. What are your plans for skirting? For keeping any under floor tanks from freezing? For keeping down radiative and convective losses out of the living area through the big glass in the front? Are you keeping the original windows at all? I'm only keeping the originals in the driving area, the rest are mostly wall and the new windows are triple glazed.
From your description of the temperatures, depending on skirting and wind, you might need two of the diesel heaters. You are about 40 degrees below the coldest I need to plan for in VA as a general rule -- I only see below 20degF overnight about 2 weeks total of the year, and negative F maybe I see that once a decade and -20 never.
I hate to phrase it this way, but can you afford to build a sheet metal box and ducting to enclose a regular wood stove and duct air to it from the bus and back, while protecting over all from weather? Covering the metal and ducting with fiberglass batts? Kind of an external boiler wood furnace but air handling instead of hydronic? I'd want to do that and have the wood stove stuffed to the gills and damped a bit before retiring for the night. Surely if such can heat a 2400sq ft home in WV (the situation I am remembering) with temps regularly in the single digits and windy, it can heat a 300sqft bus.
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