My greatest joy this winter has been getting our old wood Stove into
our "new" place! Yes, we dragged our darling Jotul from Virginia then
let it sit in the corner for two years before installing. Instead of
boring you with the vacillating in the middle, how about I skip to the
happy ending?
Rather than building a new room or piercing a non-leaking roof, we
opted for a through-the-Wall kit. My top takeaways from this project:
- Despite warnings on the internet, a horizontal stove pipe didn't mess with our draft all. The stove starts and runs just as delightfully as it did in Virginia.
- Heat output with the wood stove in the middle of the room is even
greater than we saw with the same stove in an alcove. Our little Jotul
easily heats the open central half of our trailer (about 400 square
feet) while burning on medium or low.
- Creosote is more tricky. Make sure the horizontal part of the interior stovepipe isn't really horizontal and instead slants slightly down toward the stove so you don't end up leaking black goo in unwanted places.
- The price tag was higher than expected because Amazon's through-the-wall kit requires triple-walled stovepipe once you get through the wall. It might be worth paying the higher price for Lowes' through-the-wall kit so you can use slightly cheaper double-walled stovepipe (available locally) instead.
- On the other hand --- safety first! We're very pleased to find
that the outside of the thimble (black part that goes through the wall)
isn't even warm to the touch.
Are we glad we did it? The cats and I are basking in the radiant heat,
our inside temperatures are 15 degrees higher than the minisplit
managed, and the electric bill is $100 less per month. At that rate, it
won't take too long for installation to pay for itself.
(Short answer: yes!)
This post first appeared on Walden Effect: Homesteading And Simple Living, please read the originial post: here