Portable wood stove for emergency heat? In house, safe, possible?

I found this on the web and thought it was interesting.


This is made completely from scrap. There is a man in the neighbor hood that is into metal work but I was wondering what fellow monkeys think about this design and instructions. It is all from scrap.

Wood stove made from scrap

@Tully Mars , @kellory

 

As long as the material is thick enough for that use, it is a pretty standard design of a wood stove. It is small, so you would have to load it more often. Looks a lot like a miniature of the old stove we have in the hunting cabin. Though ours is on legs, not the dish plate. make sure it is not on a burnable surface.

 

motomom34..that's the type of stove i was thinking of.and if i remember right.their called pot belly stoves.they don't take up to much space.and puts out a lot of heat,when done up right.plus they can be built short enough where a window type chimney can be used with it..but like kellory pointed out...a person has to stay on top of it.when it comes to keeping plenty of wood in it.pluss i think that the ash's will have to be cleaned out more often as well..

 

here's 2 more..in which the one with the window is the one i prefer out of the 2 of them.1st,is i can see when more wood is needed,without opening the door.and it has more cooking surface when needed..

 

Just thinking out loud here:

Up north when I was a kid I saw lots of stove pipes that exited the opposite side of the house from where the stove was. Pipes ran below the rafters, and put as much heat as possible inside the building before exiting. Probably some big building code violation nowadays, but I remember no winter house or barn fires when I was a kid.

I'm on a slab, and on the beach now, so I don't worry much about heat, but if I had to do a wood stove inside I've practiced in sand and firebrick construction of small rocket style stoves that would be piped out a dormer window. Could morph that into a thermal mass heater if I was planning on a long cold spell. The exhaust from thermal mass heaters seems to be a little easier to route outdoors, since it's mostly lost all its' heat to the mass by then.

HD

 

As shown this one DOES use room air for combustion. (That little door at the bottom allows for ash removal and air flow) also look in a matching water jacket for it. It will make your wood go much further, by retaining heat to radiate between fillings.

you will also have a higher cost of fuel for cutting your wood, because every piece will have to be cut smaller.

 

A lot of radiant surface compared to the size of the firebox as long as (like Kellory says) the metal is thick enough to hold up...the little "dimple" up top makes me worry about that.

 

Good catch! I think it is made from a freon can. (Upside down). They are pretty thin, I would not expect it to hold up very long at all.

 

Thanks guys. I saw this and figured I would get opinions. I really don't think it would heat more then a room but I like the recycling aspect of it.

 

I would suggest something with much thicker walls. Perhaps made from steel pipe.a piece of steel water main would do nicely.

 

19" diameter, 10" deep truck brake drums would be nice and heavy. Lots of Australian wood stoves on e-bay that are constructed out of brake drums. Can be had for free most of the time. Try to get a matched set.

HD

 

that is a neet little design.
i think it will hold up just fine ...the thickness may or may not be a problem look how long you have a burn barell or a drum stove they last for a good long time and and most or the deteration is from weather ... {of course depeneding on how close u live to the ocean}
Also a few things tell me this may be a little more than a freaon bottle
The seem going around it and also how the extream roundness of the top and bottom but i may be wrong ...

You could put 100 stoves up here and 50 people will tell you its great and 50 people will tell you it sucks

 

I heat with wood and love it, but I have also been to half a dozen house fires and past the ruins of a lot more. Wood stoves are dangerous and can kill you. I have a hard time understanding why a person will spend $1000 on a rifle and another $1000 for ammo that they may have to use and want to spend $50 on something that you will need. If your chimney does not "draw", the smoke does not go out and the fire goes out if you are luck or the house fills up with smoke that can kill you. The modern stoves, often with a glass door, have a system that allows additional air in to burn the smoke, and control the air flow to control the fire. I have a Papa Bear in the basement hooked up to a classic concrete chimney with stove pipe and damper. It takes the air in through the front and the stovepipe goes straight out the back. I need to run it hot, air in front and damper closed off to prevent the formation of creosote in the chimney that will burn and will block the flow of air. With good dry wood, over 1 year after splitting, and with 20 years experience I can clean the chimney once a year but it is close. The stove gets very hot and radiates heat that will dry out nearby wood and that will catch fire at a much lower temperature than you would expect and I know several people my age, 70 + with some interesting scars they got as kids from wood stoves.

If you are going to heat with wood and have insurance, they will tell what you have to do meet safety requirements and they will raise your rates. If you do not do so, they will not pay for any fire damage. Now for the positives, the new stainless steel chimneys are a lot easier to put in and may be installed on the outside as people have stated and are designed to go through walls or such and the new stoves with a reburn, outside air intakes, and controlled air intake will use a lot less fuel, give you 12 hours low heat, go 5 years on a chimney cleaning, and many have sides and backs that don't heat up and thus can be paced closer to the walls and are less likely to burn children. In NH, a good new stove, entry level, will cost about $1000 and a stainless steel chimney will run about the same. I have known people to buy them used for half or less than that. When I first upgraded from the Papa Bear, I think it took about 2 years for the wood savings to pay for it and less than a year for the difference between the cost of wood and fuel oil to pay for it. In NH many people are burning wood pellets. They are cleaner burning, easier to store, and use an inexpensive chimney that is easy to install. They have the disadvantage of needing electricity and have to be purchase the pellets

If you do it now, you will the savings of wood, the knowledge of how to use it and get through the learning curve before TSHTF. The condition of the wood is also critical. I am working now on the wood I will burn in 2018. I hate to burn anything less than 1 year old and prefer 2 years after it is split. It is a very good feeling when your heat isn't dependent on the oil man and whatever he wants to charge or the electric to run the furnace.

 

I think it is safe and can be used in emergencies. Chimney requires proper cleaning and maintenance for its smooth working. You can hire chimney cleaning long island experts to have annual inspection of your chimney.

 

In the configuration of the stove pipe I suggest having a short portion at least that is horizontal ,it helps to improve efficiency of the burn other wise a lot of heat goes up the pipe.
I have lived on wood stoves most of my life ,and guid things so I can easily do my own cleaning disassyembly and reassembly and provided added support for earth quake.
I have seen in emergency situations where friends simply got a piece of ply wood and put it in place of the open window and allowed for sheet metal to provide a margin of insulation between the pipe and the ply wood.
On the floor they used ply wood and brick to cover the carpet where the stove space occupied and then some for safety and a place to work handling the wood and a couple of feet from the wall to the stove . even adding a piece of sheet metal to protect the wall ,
We've taken the legs off to accommodate some situations and simply set the stove on brick with no problems ever.
The pipe has a damper on the riser and then a horizontal going out the window, clearing the house out side wall by a few feet, so smoke does not contaminate the paint , then with a 1/4" mesh screen ,and that's all.
This is not a permanent arrangement . But in an emergency it can be set up in a day or less depending on having every thing already built to that end. If you wait to the last minuet to build it having the power to run a saw may be a problem.

 

I was just thinking ,
For camping purposes ,
One could use a hibachi or barbecue ,running 4" pipe out of it , and have the best of both worlds.