Wood cabin woodstove suggestions

[ducabi]

I think it's too much hassle and given how often I would be tempted to use it it's better to stick to 2-3 bbqs a year.

[Mr Gus]

I think it's too much hassle and given how often I would be tempted to use it it's better to stick to 2-3 bbqs a year.

That's how I got my stove cheap, a "decorative" wbs owner in posh leeds flats who never bothered to learn the rules of fires / wood.

Tarred up cold choked model plate on the back had to sell it for 1/6th the cost new delivered on a pallet.
Learning to make & maintain a good fire is very rewarding, & easier to work with than shrug off & push against.

( useful heat in 10 minutes from one match lighting, ..knowledge applied)

[Oldgreybeard]

The problem with filters is that they need to be very, very fine. The extremely harmful and toxic stuff is invisible, mostly down in the PM2.5 range, so particles around 2.5µm made up of carcinogenic and toxic waste products. To put that size into perspective, the droplet size of very fine fog is typically around 4 times larger, about 10µm.

We filter the air coming into our house with the finest commercial filter available, a grade F7. This keeps out about 50% of the 1µm particulates out, about 70% of the 2.5µm particulates out, and about 90% of the 10µm particulates out. This means about 30% of the really toxic stuff still gets into the house (we can smell smoke in the house despite the filter, for example) but it would be impractical to fit such a filter to a stove, it would clog up in minutes, unless very large indeed, as a stove emits a massively greater amount of flue gas than the ventilation for our whole house.

The hotter a wood stove burns the lower the large (around 10µm and above) particulates it puts out, but burning hot and clean doesn't do much to reduce the volume of harmful very tiny particulates. Being invisible to the naked eye people are often fooled into thinking an apparently "clean" burning stove is safe, the reality is that it's little different to any other in terms of the most harmful pollution products.

The intake filter on our MVHR was due for a change a couple of days ago, just got around to doing it this morning and have taken photos of the old filter (been in there 6 months, the black, lower, one in the photo below) and a new replacement (the white, upper, one in the photo below), to give an idea as to what we would be breathing in if it were not for the filter. Bear in mind that we live in the countryside, miles from any major road, our lane is single track and has maybe a dozen vehicles a day down it, if that, so what's being caught in the filter is mostly particulates from a neighbour up wind of us, and a fair distance away, that has a fairly clean burning wood stove. Draw your own conclusions as to whether you'd want this in your lungs:

MVHR F7 filters - new and used.jpg (125.5 KiB) Viewed 4306 times

[AE-NMidlands]

Thats after 6 month's use through the summer. It makes yer think, dunnit? (was that from Mel and Griff?)

[Countrypaul]

What makes you so sure it is mainly particulates from your neighbours WBS?

Since the filter has been in 6 months surely there would be a large amout of pollen and spores in there which given the warm damp start to autumn could easily have created some of the black deposits for example. I presume you have not had it analysed to find out exactly what is in it!


Either way, I totally agree, you dont want to be inhaling that if you can at all avoid it.

Any idea how much it restricts the airflow, we noticed poor performance of our unit and I discovered I'd missed changing the filters so hey had gone a full year at the end of last year.

[Oldgreybeard]

Thats after 6 month's use through the summer. It makes yer think, dunnit? (was that from Mel and Griff?)

I checked it around 2 months ago and it was fairly clean, just a few cobwebs that I sucked off with a vacuum cleaner, so pretty much all that black stuff is from the last couple of months. Summer dust etc is very light in colour (mostly fluffy seeds and cobwebs), the filter only turns black in the heating season.

[Mr Gus]

How much are replacement filters for your respective units?
Do they go in black bin bags to landfill or is it better than that for recycling purposes?

[Oldgreybeard]

What makes you so sure it is mainly particulates from your neighbours WBS?

Since the filter has been in 6 months surely there would be a large amout of pollen and spores in there which given the warm damp start to autumn could easily have created some of the black deposits for example. I presume you have not had it analysed to find out exactly what is in it!


Either way, I totally agree, you dont want to be inhaling that if you can at all avoid it.

Any idea how much it restricts the airflow, we noticed poor performance of our unit and I discovered I'd missed changing the filters so hey had gone a full year at the end of last year.

As above, I gave it a vacuum to get the dust and cobwebs off a couple of months ago and it wasn't black then. The MVHR has a filter alarm, it detects an excessive pressure drop (I think) and flashes a warning on the controller screen. That warning had been on for a couple of days, but I only found time to change the filter this morning.

[Oldgreybeard]

How much are replacement filters for your respective units?
Do they go in black bin bags to landfill or is it better than that for recycling purposes?

They work out at around £20 each if I buy them in bulk from Jasun Environcare. If I buy them as one-offs from the manufacturer's agent I think they are around £50 a pop! I get rid of the old ones by drilling out the pop rivets that hold the frame together, pulling the paper element out and then sticking the filter in the paper recycling and the metal frame in the metal recycling.

I have been searching for a retail source for the right thickness pleated F7 filter material, as I think it should be easy enough to make one end of the steel frame removable, with screws. That way I could just slide out the old pleated paper filter and slide in a new bit, which would probably be cheaper than buying the complete units with the steel frame.

[Mr Gus]

OGB, Sounds like the market neets to produce a hinge version that fits & clips a piece from a perforated roll to cut & fit without waste.
I imagine buying by the roll would make the whole thing cheaper to the consumer in the long run.

Not green trashing the complete unit which might even be deemed specialist waste in original form, so the sort of thing I'd like to see european rules set, before it becomes another bulk hold up in the chain.