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I love my Generator
We've had several outages of 5 days or more, always in the dead of winter. Our 14kw unit just won't cut it. I was hoping to upgrade to something that would run the heat pump this year, probably 30kw or so in size. Not sure if it will be in the budget but it's at the top of the list.
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We've got a couple of fireplaces that were going full blast, but they just can't keep up given the size of the house. They're fairly efficient for fireplaces but not as efficient as a modern woodstove. We looked at outside wood burning stoves but they smoke too much.
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Mark, you really get 100k BTUs out of your woodstove? Wow. We rented a 2500 sf house that had one. It put out so much heat you couldn't stay in the same room, but even with the A/C fan on the nether regions of the house stayed cool. A lot of that is airflow though.
When we built this house we went with Heatilator manufactured fireplaces. They have doors, blowers, and bring combustion air in from outside but they don't put out nearly the amount of heat the woodstove did. After our fireplaces were in place a bunch of river rock was installed on the hearth and walls around the fireplaces. I'm very reluctant to rip all that out but I'll stop by a woodstove place to see what they might be able to do. Thanks for the suggestion.
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Our house is three stories, 3600 sf with an insulated but unfinished basement. The fireplaces are in the basement and main floor great room. A real hot woodstove would drive us out of the great room. If I replace the basement fireplace with a woodstove insert maybe it will pump out enough heat to help warm the rest of the house, especially if I get the heat pump fan operating off the generator to circulate the air. Sounds like a good idea to check in to. I wish there was an easy way to start the main heat pump - our genset could probably run it but it could never provide the startup juice.
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I'm liking the idea of replacing the basement fireplace with a woodstove. Even though the basement is unfinished the masonry guys did a river stone surround, but it's smaller and easier to deal with than the one on the main floor. We have about a dozen air returns throughout the house, more than half on the the top floor and a couple in the basement, so hooking the HVAC fan up to the generator would allow the fan to draw air from the warmest parts of the house and recirculate it throughout. Plus we can stack a couple of cords of wood right outside the basement door under the deck where it will stay dry in the winter. This is sounding good. Now I just need a day off to go visit a couple of woodstove dealers with our info to see what's available. Thanks for the pointer Mark!
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Not yet. I'm in major crunch mode right now trying to get a new product ready for introduction at a trade show. Hopefully things will loosen up by the end of the month. I really have to get the wood stove (or some alternative heat source) in by winter.
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Randy, we should have installed something like that from the start instead of this POS WaterFurnace ground source heat pump. Unfortunately we don't have any room left in the mechanical room for a setup like that. I'm looking for something to either work with or replace the downstairs fireplace.
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Probably something in the 75k btu and up range. After discussions with my wife it will probably go in the fireplace on the main floor so cosmetics are important too. I took this week off to do a bunch of work around the house and plan to shop for a woodburner this week. Colder weather is coming on too fast for me.
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I've decided to install the woodburner insert on the main floor. With the hvac fan recirculating air it should help a bunch. I've been wanting to also install radiant floor heat on the main floor from the unfinished basement. Didn't make it this year but maybe next. Between the two of those I'm hoping it will be fairly comfortable even during power outages.
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The literature for our existing manufactured fireplaces says they're rated at 60,000 BTUs. It seems a 25% increase in heat from inserts wouldn't be worth the $4-5k cost so I'm still looking for a workable and cost effective solution.
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The ratings for wood burners are confusing. Although the Heat & Glo EM-48 fireplace we have is rated at 60k BTUs it never seemed to put out much heat. The seemingly knowledgeable guy at the fireplace store said that the 60k BTU rating was the rating of the firebox and *not* how much heat it would deliver. That would explain why it didn't seem to heat as much as a woodstove we had in a previous house. So it looks like we'll be having a Quadra-Fire 5100i woodstove insert installed which supposedly can deliver up to 75000 BTUs of heat and is rated as the primary heat source for a house of up to 3500 sf. Any experience with Quadra-Fire stoves here? They seem to be very well built.
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Murf, you're right but in our fireplace we've burned maple, cherry and oak and never gotten much heat out of it (although the hardwoods are definitely better than fir).
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Murf, we don't have an insert yet, it's just a manufactured fireplace where 90% of the heat goes up the chimney. That's what we're trying to fix. I'm sure the hardwood will make a much bigger difference in the insert.
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Gas Generator Weather Protecti
04-16-2007, 22:16 
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