Burnin' Wood ( and other fuels...)

[kide]

URRRHHHHHHH!! So I'm down to the last lap on the big project - outside hydronic furnace. (sounds cooler than wood burning hot water heater -eh ??) and I need a handy box for the high-low fan speed switch I'm putting on the inside furnace (now reduced to being an air handler full time) . I'd made a run to the local True Value 'bout 4:00 PM, since I didn't think I had one in stock. About 9:00 PM, I start putting the box inside the furnace and knock the slug out of the bottom to put in the cable clamp. Take the locking ring off the cable clamp and find out that the slug I'd just knocked out isn't 3/4", it's 1" (actually it's 1.111) . I look the box over and all of the knockouts are the same size. Now I've been wiring for about 35 years and I know that knockouts come in various sizes on things like service panels and even some larger handi-boxes, but when in the h..l did a common small handi-box start coming with 1" knockouts?? 1" cable clamps are ridiculous in a standard duplex box. This was a Raco... my suspicion is that it's not 1.111, but 28 MM - are we converting to metric standards on this stuff? I finally went back out in the shop and dug up a new one (Steel-City) that I bought last year from.....Walmart.. and it had the good old 3/4" knockouts in it.

KentucK - I'm just gettin' warmed up - I've been cookin' on the digital TV mess again (anybody got the voucher from Uncle Sam for their "free" converter yet??) Annnnd which of the 15 TVs in your house you gonna use it on, Bunkie?? Arrrrgh !!!!

 

[kweaver]

Kendell - You do know (I hope) that you only need to switch to digital tv IF you are using an over the air antenna.
http://tinyurl.com/2o6lzz

You need a supply of "reducer washers" like I have for those big knock outs.

So when you gonna have that outside "cooker" doing what it was really meant for and let me try some of that running indoor Michigan 'shine ?

 

[theaton]

Kentuck, your thoughts, Bon Scott or Brian Johnson? AC/DC songs I gotem all, never been to a concert though

 

[kweaver]

Todd - SCOTT ! ... but AC/DC is still my #1 music. I was sitting here @ 5am thursday with it cranked up

 

[kide]

KentucK:
I still primarily watch OTA - flatlander thing, we don't need cable /satellites as much as mountainous areas. I can get about 15 stations OTA right now. My blood is up for a number of reasons:
1: No backward compatibility - 500 million TV tuners , in everything from that two year old plasma set that still was sold with nothing but an analog tuner, to little Sally's TV in her bedroom all are going to be non-functional after Feb of '09. I gotta buy crappy adapters (bigger than a DVD player or pitch every TV that's not hooked to cable or satellite (and, yes, I've got a number of 'em) - workshop, basement, motor home....).
2: We do have Dish, left DirectTV after they kept jacking the prices up. I've gone back to mostly watching OTA, because most of the cable programming is as bad or worse (watch some of those thrilling reality shows on cable or satellite channels that have to do a recap of the last 5 minutes of the show after every commercial - JHC - do they think our attention span is that -oh,ever mind (hey - look at that chicken.....)
3: This is the biggest money churn since the "power crisis" in SO. Cal... Make all of the existing sets obsolete, so that Uncle Chen's electronic factory can crank out 500 million new ones with a guaranteed market...Move the operating frequency of OTA television broadcasting and sell off the now freed up bandwidth so that some more fat cats can sell you another bunch of RF based "services" that you reallllly need. (and I gotta ask again, do you really need to see all of those 70 year old actors in High Def = the face lift scars are visible at 320 x 180, let alone 1020 P .. ??)
4: Again, if you've experienced digital OTA, it's like any other digital stream, there ain't no gentle degradation - when the signal goes poor (like maybe during severe weather) you won't just get a snowy picture (that might still show you where that tornado is going, or who won the World Series...) it'll give you a picture that looks like a dozen Rubik's cubes driven over by an asphalt roller - and with matching squawks from the audio.

Ahhhh-never mind..... the American public's gonna roll over on this one and never get a kiss, a check in the mail or a call in the morning.

 

[kweaver]

Aint it about time fer ya to hibernate for the winter ?

I'm not so sure my 42" Plasma is digital ... pretty sure it's NOT since it's an EDTV ... but what burns my A$$ is that if you want HD you have to pay Dish more for it ... hell you already recieve a digital signal from the sattelite !!
I could do a write up on what I've dealt with from DISH but that's a page worth !

I've got a 31" / 32" / 13" / 42" in the house that are analog and a 13" out here plus the 4 TV carded PCs. Garage TV crapped out long time ago and there's no place to put one of the big tubes out there.

 

[kide]

Hibernate ??? I'm not half way there yet ...

Gotta run - fire up the new furnace today (Pics later.....)

 

[kweaver]

Kendell - I take it you're still trying to light the furnace ?

 

[kide]

Yup, got it fired, no leaks, had the first crisis yesterday (had the draft set too far open for mild weather and actually boiled water off) and have the solution mostly made for that. BTW - first use of Little Blue on the whatsit in the last pic - no stack of dimes yet, but the pulse feature sure is nice when welding fishmouths on 2 1/4 inch exhaust pipe. I'll post a couple of good pics of the project as soon as I get a chance - my wife took the "first fire" pics and didn't get a full shot of it.

The "whatsit" will go on the draft fan and shut off air into it when the blower is not running. Dayton's idea is a movable disk that you slide across the inlet - really cuts down the air flow when the blower is actually running

 

[kmcconaughey]

Kendell, that's a neat project, keep the photos coming. Sometimes I wish I had opted for an outdoor boiler instead of just replacing my old Monarch forced air wood furnace with a new model. I do like the Clayton 1600G that I put in, but it would be nice if I didn't have to haul firewood into my house and ashes out of it. But on the other hand it's nice to not have to go outside early in the morning to stoke up a furnace when it's below zero.

 

[kweaver]

I've got sidetracked with other links from the below link but ... I think a sand filled "house" with the water pipes plumbed through it and the firebox in it would give the best/longest lasting heat. I've held onto that idea since I first saw that HAHSA add in the '79-'81 era.

If the EPA wouldn't get ya you could burn anything that'll burn is the best part about outside heat.

 

[kweaver]

From what I'm reading they say a HAHSA needs a gassification system to be more efficient.

We'll have to see how Kendell's performs ...

Anything to get away from OPEC is gonna be a PLUS !

EAT BEANS and CARRY A MATCH !!!

YAHOO! Group

 

[kweaver]

This looks pretty good, they have a video that you might want to watch ... 25+meg.
GARN

 

[rchristensen]

Ken My dad said in the early days in Montana they didn't have any insulation so they tried sand between the outside wall and the plaster. Didn't work at all, transferred the cold right through the wall. They had to remove the sand and did better with just the hollow walls.

Maybe with the heat pipes in the sand would work if you had a good barrier on the outside wall, other wise as much heat going in would be going out.

 

[kweaver]

Richard - Sand as an insulator in the wall wouldn't give any R value as you would be eliminating the air pockets needed as the barrier. I know you know fiberglas batting looses it's R value if it's compressed = no air pockets.

Yes the building full of sand would need to be insulated to keep the sand's heat from being wicked out to the elements.

I know from welding cast iron that when it is put in sand to cool on it's own it'll stay hot/warm for hours.

 

[kide]

Sand would actually act as a heat storage media, with the insulation outside of it, it'd be an interesting combination - sand's desirable feature is the ability to fill every nook and cranny of the heat storage area. Back in the day, the idea for solar or wood was to use something like barrels of water to store heat.I even remember the old Mother Earth News articles that would have you bury a large (like 2000 gallon) tank to act as a "flywheel" for your solar,wood heat. Our first wood stove ('bout 1979-80) had a 55 gallon drum as a plenum. The stove was an old Cleveland-Dornback with a vertical pot and couldn't hold a fire all night, as it wasn't big enough for full time wood - it was really meant to be a coal burner. I filled the plenum almost full of field stone - there was enough space in between for the air to circulate on through. It was always a strange smell in the fall the first time you lit a fire and cooked the moisture out of those rocks (probably radon too), but those rocks would help keep heat going most of the night.

KentucK - I'll start a new thread tonight, so we get it outa the Rant one - I bet there's some interest in the wood heat subject now. (And my 129 has <u>always</u> been a major part of our wood heat work around here )!

 

[kmcconaughey]

 

[kweaver]

Kraig - Ya know after analyzing Kendell's first pic ... I think he's gonna need more wood to develope any heat.

 

[kmcconaughey]

KENtucky, good point!

 

[kmcconaughey]

Kendell, need wood?