As youse guise know, I like to tinker with things a little.... Been burning wood for decades and have never been happy with the way it was being done, the stoves, the maintenance, the 'care and feeding', etc. So I designed and built one:
The combustior running at 1,450 degrees. You can barely see the combustor itself but it is the red thing in the view port.
34" wide (will take 30+ length wood (easy boys!) with ease) X 24 deep X 34 tall. Big stove. Top loader with three doors; I usually only use the small door so no smoke gets into the house but occasionally when something large goes in there, the entire top is also a hinged door. A fire plate 8" above the base plate with a 7" tall ash bucket, also 32" long (needs emptying three times per cord of wood and can be removed / re-installed while the stove is running). The "V" section in the front is a stainless steel water container that holds 2.4 gallons of water to keep the humidity in the house w/in reasonable bounds. It is part of the stove and welded in place. There is a combination draft door / fire staring door under the fire plate on the left hand side of the stove; to light it, I just throw in logs (no kindling needed or wanted) and then roll up newspaper and slide it in the access door (easy again boys!). Light the newspaper and burns length- wise and sends all heat up through a 6" X 6" hole on the other end of the stove directly against the wood. Very fast, easy starts and it sounds like a wind tunnel. The stove is quite user- friendly.
But still, it needs some time to light the combustor, requires some attention and just does not hold enough wood. And come to find out, we are all burning wood upside down. The correct way to burn wood is to pyrolyse it and burn the gas.... who knew? So I designed and built one of those. Looks like this:
Two doors on the sides, a draft inducing fan on top and the firebox itself is a stainless steel box with holes cut into it so the fire path is through the stove then down and out the 'basket' that holds the actual fire. The process is called gassification and it is really cool to watch. And it burns about as clean as natural gas; there are NO visible emissions. Once the fire exits the burn pit, it goes up the triangular colums on each side but only for three tubes at which point the passage is blocked and the exhaust gas has to pass through the tubes, go up the other side three tubes and repeat the process. This transfers the exhaust heat into the room and keep the exhaust temps down in the sub- 200 F range.
This is what it looks like running at about 1/2 throttle:
Note that the wood is above, the fire is in the middle (in the bottom of the firebox which the wood feeds into) and the exahust, flame and ash are moving straight down.
It all worked pretty well except for one pesky thing: when low on fuel, the box above (which is 60" tall) fills up with smoke and eventually enough oxygen to ignite.... inside the magazine portion of the stove. It does not explode but it most certainly does 'sneeze' in a spectacular way blowing out smoke / flame through every place possible, mostly the chimney which is spectacular if not a little dangerous. I never put it in the house as it never got to the point of having nice 'house manners'. What it needs is a sliding plate to block off the magazine's volume and follow the wood column down as it is consumed. Never got around to that but am kicking around the idea of putting in a plate 1/2 of the way up the magazine to see if that is sufficient to calm the problem down. Of course the stove has to reverse draft (burn 'up') to start a fire so whatever plate goes in there has to have some type of airtight door. All a big pain in the butt.... which is why I have not proceeded with it.
Brian
As I said before, I used to heat our house exclusively with wood too. I've gotten back to that with the cold we've had lately, plus being retired and home all day helps too.
My stove isn't as large as yours but it also has a catalytic combustor. I don't know how large the firebox is but it'll hold a lot if you pack it right. My stove will also burn coal but since I don't have a source for coal I've never used it.
When it's zero outside, Bosco knows where the best seat in the house can be found.
[smg id=626]
It may not look like it but the top of that stove is 1,000f.