Heating with a cast iron fire wood cook stove

[chickenjoe]

Is it possible to use one of these stoves for heating. I would just use it to heat my basement I figure it would be a nice back up plan if the power goes out I use it to cook on also.

 

[Joel_BC]

I lived for five years of my life in a compact cabin in a southern-Canadian mountain valley with snowy winters. There it was usually not too awfully cold ("cold snaps" would occasionally get down to -10* Farenheit, but the temps were often just around freezing point during the day). The cabin was about 160 sq feet on the main floor, and had a sleeping loft above. I had a wood cookstove and a very small wood heating stove.

The cookstove could provide room heat, both from its own surfaces and from the stove pipe's surfaces. However, unless I was using the oven, most of the heat from the cookstove was radiating from the top surface of the 'cooking deck' (where you place the pots or pans). That heat was directed more upwards than out into the room. Yes, it could be significant heat, but the design of the unit was basically different from a heating stove (or "wood burner" as they're often called), where the intent is to send radiant and convection heat out into the surrounding room.

In a basement, the cookstove's characteristic of sending the heat upward might be okay as a way to get some heat up into the ground-floor area. Not sure it would be the most efficient use of your fuel wood, cord-for-cord, though. But, of course, the cookstove also offers a good option for preparing meals. I'll mention here that in my cabin situation, one option was to open the oven door to get some more heat flowing laterally.

Another point: In the cabin situation I described, the cookstove was one that was probably made in the 1940s. I'm sure that efficiency has been somewhat improved in succeeding decades - meaning less heat would simply go up the stovepipe and chimney in the cookstoves being sold today.

 

[~gd]

They now have fans that are powered by differences in heat. My brother has two one clamped to the stovepipe and one he can set on the cook top, he loves his.

 

[Beekissed]

The only problem with that kind of stove is that it has a small firebox that is designed for quick and immediate heat but not so much for dampering down for long term warmth, and so it would keep you running to replenish it enough to keep steady heat, unlike a regular wood stove with a larger firebox that one can stuff full of logs and damper down for a steady and longer lasting heat.

 

[chickenjoe]

It sound like I should go with my first though an purchase box stove with the 2 cook spot on it.

 

[Joel_BC]

it has a small firebox that is designed for quick and immediate heat but not so much for dampering down for long term warmth, and so it would keep you running to replenish it enough to keep steady heat, unlike a regular wood stove with a larger firebox that one can stuff full of logs and damper down for a steady and longer lasting heat.

There's an obvious nail I forgot to smack. You hit it square on the head, BK.

 

[Beekissed]

They are nice...I heated with a boxwood stove for the past 6 years or so and it wasn't a large one...heated a whole 2 story farm house with ease and had to be dampered down most often. Good, even heat.

I had one just a tad larger than this one...I think the one pictured is the smallest they make. I had the medium sized model...

 

[chickenjoe]

They are nice...I heated with a boxwood stove for the past 6 years or so and it wasn't a large one...heated a whole 2 story farm house with ease and had to be dampered down most often. Good, even heat.

I had one just a tad larger than this one...I think the one pictured is the smallest they make. I had the medium sized model...

http://www.crodog.org/garage/woodstove.jpg

I think that what I'm going to get. My parent had one like when I was younger. I remember my father one time load it right up to the top, I got about 80 something degree in the house. It was hot enough we were sit in t-shirts and shorts sweating. I think we might have cooked on it once when the power went out.

 

[Hinotori]

That's the type of stove we're talking about putting in the shop once we get it built.