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COLDDDDD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Paul Downes said:
"Got up to 39 degrees today and I've been wearing shorts all day!"
Well Brent, I got up to 39 degrees IN THE HOUSE!! (well, maybe it was 43 degrees) yesterday morning, seems the outdoor wood boiler isn't quite up to snuff. Kids weren't very happy. Going out today to get a pellet stove. ran the gas oven in the kitchen to keep ahead of the cold. The boiler problem is the heat exchanger. it is only good for 150,000 btu's and when it gets below zero it can't keep up with the sieve I live in. Even though I sealed some windows and put in 12"insulation in the attic last year.

Not really a big problem. I believe that some hardship builds character in kids. Besides they are half Finnlander half Irish. The Finns are used to the cold and the Irish (my side) are too dumb to get out of it. Heck they run around outside without shoes on, even with snow on the ground! We have crates of shoes laying around and I can't get them to put a pair on.
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allen levine said:
paul, my house temp has been dropping steadily since last night when wind chills went to zero and below.
this morning, my back room, on a slab, was only 59 degrees. Heat cant keep up with 3 zones.
I got my house to 65 today, great for me, not sure if my wife and daughter are going to be happy tonight.
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Our place will get down to the 50's overnight. Haven't turned on the electric heat yet this year, but have been going through the firewood and pellets pretty good. On the colder days we'll start the fireplace and the pellet stove and that will take the house up to t-shirt temps in a few hours. Replaced the front door earlier this year and I think that's helping a lot.

Usually stop the pellet stove in mid afternoon once my office area gets up to the upper 70's
 
John, the water temp is set @ 180 but often goes too 200. Pushing the limits as far as i can there. The problem is that the stove is a hand-me-down from the Father-in-law and only $500 at that. It is too small for the heat demands I put on it and very inefficient. I'm guessing only 50% at best. It is a yooper built clone of the earliest designs.

I am going to look at pellet stoves today. Probably going to get a multi-fuel. The idea is to get an alternative heat source going so I can have the option of pulling the old girl and putting in a new stove. I have had a design for a wood gasification stove rattling around in the noggin for about 8 years. I did some extensive studies of outdoor wood boilers and have built some. I will build a 1/2 scale model to experiment with and when I figure out a few things, build the big stove. I am planning on somewhere between 500 and 800 gallons of water in the new system. (the current model has about 140, you just can't get more btu's out of that little water. increasing water velocity only adds erosion problems, and the heat exchanger can only put out so much)

The new stove will have a variable wood gasified flame so heat output is controlled and this eliminates the need to store the heat in bulk water. Other than that simplified explanation, the idea is patentable and until I get all the ducks in a row I am keeping things close to the chest.
 
One tip for a pellet stove is to put it on some kind of ups (battery backup). If you have it running and the power goes out, things can get smoky in the house.

I haven't had it happen to me, but I have had a friend that it happened to.
 
Paul, yep, my damper opens for air at 140 and closes at 175 (plus or minus 5 degrees, we changed it last year installing a new digital readout panel). Mine has over 500, think it is near 700 gallons of water. I put on a single piece of pipe for the flue last winter, it is starting to choke with creasote. Waiting until this summer to put on the double wall pipe I bought at a sale. Good luck on the build of a new stove. Look forward to hearing about it.
 
Vaughn McMillan said:
Allen, you took the words right out of my fingers. :rofl:

Of course, we do have a member who moved to Minnesota for the warmer weather - Barry Stratton - but he was living in Alaska before then. :D
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During this cool spell, the nights have been absolutely beautiful! I took a walk around the lake the other evening after watering the chickens. Absolutely fantastic with the stars and moon reflecting off the snow. Simply beautiful. Checked the temp when I got in....-23 with a wind chill of -45! Yes, that is cold but isn't too bad if properly dressed. Get out and enjoy it before it warms up and you are complaining its too hot!

Someone mentioned pellet stoves.........we use a Countryside Magnum and go thru 4 tons a year and around $150 of propane a year. House is around 3200 sq ft.
 
Barry Stratton said:
. Checked the temp when I got in....-23 with a wind chill of -45! Yes, that is cold but isn't too bad if properly dressed. t.
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man o man, that is dangerous weather.

Ive had a tiny leak coming out of my heating system, one of those small continuous hot water systems. I had the guy over this morning to look at it, and we noticed the computer was only getting temps maxed out to 170, 175, so he bumped it up to 190, 195, and within 3-4 hours, all the zones in my house made it to 70. We ve had problems getting the house temps above 65 the last few days, and today was just as cold.
seems that 20 degree water temp bump was all we needed.
(I went downstairs a moment ago and turned the target temps down to 68, my bills are high enough)

barry, I wouldnt be able to function in that cold.
 
Yesterday I was walking out to the truck from work and thought "hey it must be warming up, not even really cold with my coat open", looked at the temperature and it was 28F, nope just getting used to it.
It was always cold[1] in the winters when I was a kid up in B.C. But then I live 10 years in Phoenix and 3 in Hawaii and the cold tolerance all ran away for a while.

[1]: Cold like where Barry is cold and maybe a bit colder. Coldest I ever saw was -60F, but (thankfully) only for one day. We always hit -40 or below every year though. At -30 with the sun out on the sunny side of the haystack you could pretend it was warm for an hour or so mid day (that was about how long the sun would be out/up on a good day midwinter). Don't really miss that.
 
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