Wood Stove Question

Which would be the most bang for the buck to get more heat from the stove: heat reclaimer, stove top fan or pipe baffle/rings?

What’s wrong with a regular box fan? That’s what we have around our wood stoves. Simple, cheap, and moves heat around good. Various sizes to fit your needs.



Owl

You gonna loose a little heat, but you are gonna save a lot of trouble if you just run your pipe straight up.
Put a tiny fan behind it to move the air a bit. Just my opinion.

Zim

An inline manual damper.

I've heard those magic heat fans do a good job, I have no personal experience with them though.

Baffles and stove top fan didn't do much for me.
Those fans are really cool looking though.
Never tried a heat reclaimer.

Kiln bricks even out the heat a lot.

Magic Heater work really good, but insurance companies don't like them.

I have one in my fur shed.

Stove top fan. Doesn't use any power, quite and moves more air than you think!

I currently use a box fan. It's ugly. I have an in pipe damper. I also have cinder blocks around it on 3 sides to increase thermal mass.

Those fans do look cool. I love the concept. Just not sure if they work. Seems that they don't.

What brand do you use? An early comment said it didn't work very well.

Pulling heat out of the flue gas going up your stove pipe makes creosote problems a lot more likely. The best option is the right size stove for the space you want to heat.

the magic heater cools the flue temp too much for some chimneys and that makes creosote and that makes fires.


I have an old fan before the safety grate

a ceiling fan is ideal moves the air in the whole room and you might already have one


I am getting around to getting a ceiling fan in the living room where the stove is

I use a Eco Fan brand. I have it setting on a 120 year old cast iron potbelly stove, out of a train caboose, in my little off grid cabin. One of the highest rated. Right around $100.00 its silent and I don't know how I did without it. I was using a 12 volt cab fan for construction equipment. It was noisy and needed a battery. The Eco fan is cool, after a while you know exactly when to add wood as the speed slows.

The one in your pic looks just like a Eco fan, they are many types on Amazon. Eco fan had best ratings. But I found it cheaper at Tractor supply and no shipping.

If I got a ceiling fan in here I would get a haircut each time I came in.

I'll check it out.

^this

In regards to needing more wood you can also tell when the stove is too hot.

9 foot ceilings without a fan to move some air I can have it hot against the ceiling and cold on the floor , the living room is over a crawl space that is not insulated.

it's a good house for me , I have been in 7 or 7'6" houses and I go to put a shirt on and drag my knuckles on the ceiling

I think the fan is the best option for your money. We have one, moves some air and easy to tell from afar how stove is doing. Would skip the magic heater flue thing. Looks like a creosote magnet.

I grew up with an Earth Stove that had a fan and it kept the whole house nice and warm

My neighbor had a thing like that magic heater flue gizmo. It was a creosote magnet. Pain in the neck to clean it and the flue pipe as well. He got rid of it and went back to a normal flue pipe.

A little bit of air movement moves a lot of heat. It helps if your house is set up so the heat can move in a somewhat circular motion from room through room.

My first experience with a wood stove was a small Earth Stove I installed in our first house. That was one terrific little stove. The combustion air came in from the rear and was controlled by a thermostat on the stove. It did a great job of controlling the heat output. The only issue was if you opened the stove door too quickly the inrush of air could produce a fireball right up in your face. I "trimmed" my mustache and eyebrows a few of times checking that stove in the middle of the night when not fully awake.

I put a 2x3 foot filter in the ceiling above mine and then ran a squirrel cage fan to pull the heat from the ceiling and push it into the plenum on my furnace. That fan is run with the cooling side of a thermostat. If the room gets above 72 degrees the fan kicks on and pushes heat through the existing ductwork. Cost me about 50$ for materials. Hands down the best way to distribute heat from a internal wood burner.

Thanks for all the collective wisdom guys. I went with this.

Thanks for all the info I’m going with this


https://www.amazon.com/HY-C-MH-6R-Reclaimer-Burning-Appliances/dp/B00O2R21K4