The Oil Drum | Use of USA Forests for Home Heating

119 comments on Use of USA Forests for Home Heating - Can this Sensibly be Expanded?

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lilith on February 22, 2009 - 4:27pm

If wood stoves were refined to use the best available technology, including condensing heat exchangers as found on high efficiency gas furnaces, I think the improvement would greatly increase the utility of the wood resource.

It would be interesting to know also how much further wood usage could be extended if rocket mass heaters were encouraged or became more popular. They use less wood and burn it more efficiently. They're also relatively inexpensive to build. Theoretically, anyway - I haven't tried it - yet!

lilith

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vtpeaknik on February 23, 2009 - 1:36pm

Rocket stoves are a type of masonry stove. That may be good technology to avoid the need for iron/steel and the machines that are used to construct metal stoves. And people who have masonry stoves seem to love them. But I cannot believe the efficiency claims for them. There are so many BTUs in a pound of (dry) wood, no way around that basic fact. The range of possible efficiencies is from 0 to 100%. Good iron stoves are up around 70%. The theoretical maximum can therefore only improve that by a factor of about 1.5. And I have no reason to assume the masonry stoves are anywhere near 100% efficient either.

Masonry stoves do have the characteristic of having a high heat-absorbing mass, which means that they keep warming the house for many hours (even days) after the fire is out. But that also means that it takes a long time to warm them up. And if the weather turns unexpectedly warmer after the stove is hot, then the heat (and wood) is wasted.

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119 comments on Use of USA Forests for Home Heating - Can this Sensibly be Expanded?

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