Wood stove in the woodworking shop

[Scott Loven]

I am interested hearing from people who use a wood stove in their shop. I am building a detached gradge that will see some woodworking use. I have a shop in the basement, but can see doing some work in the detatched shop also. I will need to heat it as I live in Iowa, had frost on the cars this morning, April 27th!
Scott

[Paul Downes]

Scott, I would seriously consider putting the stove outside the shop. I heat with an outdoor wood stove; house, domestic hot water and woodshop.(18 x 32, 12 ft. ceiling). I know a few people who have attached a lean-to or small shed to their existing building and heat with a wood furnace. I would be concerned about mixing fire and wood, wood dust with an interior stove. Plus with an outside stove you keep all the bark/dirt/bugs outside the building. You might consider advertising for a used wood funace/stove. I have a friend who did this and had his choice of 8 or so. He uses them for supplemental winter-time heat for his solar wood drying kilns. Nother thing- put lots of insulation in your polebarn woodshop, it always pays off. I'm adding more to the ceiling of my shop this summer, plus going to insulate the house. My 100+ year old farm house is a sieve, and I burn enough wood to heat a small town each winter.

[Frank Pellow]

Scott I have a woodstove in my shop and it is one of the things that I enjoy the most in the shop. See post #270 on page 18 in the thread http://sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=7769 for a picture.

I also have an externally vented propane space heater. In the winter I use the propane to keep the shop heated to 10 degrees (I think that is about 50 degrees F). Then, I use the wood stove to get the shop to temperatures above that. The stove that I have is very efficient and tghe insulation in my shop is good. It takes very little time to warm the shop.

What with construction scrap, project scrap, and contributions from several neighbours, I doubt that I will ever need to buy any firewood.

[Mark Pruitt]

It might be a good idea to run this by your homeowners insurance provider. They might nix the idea. But then they might not see any issues. Better to ask now than later. My .02

[Scott Loven]

Thanks Frank, what do you do to alievate fire concerns with the woodstove in the shop?
Scott

[Frank Pellow]

Thanks Frank, what do you do to alievate fire concerns with the woodstove in the shop?
Scott

The stove is at one end of the shop, in little alcove well away from all my sawdust making equipment. Also, with my combination of an Oneida dust control system and a Festool vacuum, there is not a lot of dust in the shop.

Both the building inspector and my insurance company have no problems with the fact that I have a wood stove.

[Michael Disorbo]

Scott,

I live in Southwestern NY and we have frost on the cars from October to the end of May. I heat my shop with wood. It was an old Kalamazoo coal stove and I used coal the first 2 years I had it in the shop. I used a ton of coal a year and kept the shop plenty warm. This winter I only heated with wood in the same stove. I can't keep it going all night long, but only use it during the day and evening. See the stove is not an airtight and I would be a fool to load it full of wood and leave it. My shop has a concrete floor and is insulated very well. Even with no heat and the outside temp -20 nothing has ever froze inside my shop such as water. It takes about 45 minutes to get it comfortable in there first thing in the morning. I get my wood free from the saw mill. I use slab wood and the mill gives it to me. This time of year all I have to do is start a fire first thing to take the chill off and let it go out and the shop stays good all day. With scrap wood and the slab wood, the heat bill is zero in the shop. Just what I like with the cost of heating fuel going up every year

Good Luck,

Michael

[Steve Clardy]

Woodstove is the only heat in my shop. Very comfortable with it.
Homemade, made out of a 1/4" thick, 4'x5' butane tank. Brick sides and back, with blower attached.

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

Unless you plan on letting saw dust and flasmmibles build up around the thing there is no reason not to.


I don't 'cause I can't figure a good place to run a flue pipe without it being unsightly somehow.

You may have a low-humidity issue in the winter to watch for

[Scott Loven]

I have plenty of wood (13 acres 2/3 wooded) and plan on using it mostly on the weekends. I suppose that I will need to keep things that freeze in the house. I am checking with the insurance company just to make sure.
Scott
Do any of you insulate your garage doors, or how do you keep the cold out?

[Frank Pellow]

Do any of you insulate your garage doors, or how do you keep the cold out?

My doors are insulated (but they are double doors, not garage doors).

[Michael Disorbo]

I have a single garage door in my shop and insulated it with 1 1/2" styrofoam from the local hardware store. Walls and ceiling are well insulated as well. There are times during the winter I need to open the windows, just gets to hot in there when working. But there are days I just like to sit near it, days when my bones have a chill

Michael

[Scott Loven]

Well the insurance company said that they would not cover a wood stove in a garage so I will be looking at overhead LP.
Scott

[Dave Anderson NH]

I heat my basement shop with a woodstove and have now for about 6 years. For safety it is on a 4 foot square raised platform of 4" thick block covered with 6" square quarry tile. The floor around it is concrete. The wall behind the stove is the base of the 1st floor fireplace chimney and is concrete block veneered with half inch thick brick. My building inspector approved the installation even though for some reason my town doesn't require it. The stove is in my bench room and is separated from both my machines and from the oil burner though that really isn't a safety issue anyway.

I love the heat it throws off and often have to open the door to the first floor to cool things off when it gets to 80F on a cold wintery January day. Mine is airtight and will burn for about 8-10 hours if fully loaded and damped down overnight.

[Travis Johnson]

I agree with everyone, both pros and cons, but the reason I chose not to put a woodstove in my shop was because of something not mentioned...the amount of room that a woodstove takes up if properly set up. I know there are ways to reduce the size required, but after losing my parents house to fire two years ago, I am very leery about "cheating" the fire code requirements.

In the end I chose to install a stand up propane unit that gets its intake air from outside the shop. Its footprint is very small as it is thin and narrow, but very tall.

Still that does not mean I am not jealous of the rest of you that can enjoy woodworking around a crackling Beech fire.