Firewood Splitters

[mbryner]

A little more off topic here: there's been discussion of clean burning wood and woodstoves on this thread.   If you're interested in really efficient and beautiful cordwood burning, look at masonry heaters.  By far the cleanest burning.   See: http://mha-net.org   It's what we are going to put in our house (if it ever gets built!).

Marcus

[Stan]

A guy here in Kimberley imported an 800 year old "baurn haus) sp?? from Germany.  He built a european type masonary 2 ton stove in it.  Wonderful thing!  He puts a whole load of essentially kindling in it and lets it rip for an hour and then lets it go out and it stays warm giving off heat for the rest of the day.  Occasionally if it's really cold he fires it up a couple of times a day, but not too often.
Stan

[mbryner]

Exactly, such a pleasant heat compared to the forced air heat pump system we currently have.

Jens, yes, the mass is the big problem.  You have to design the house from the ground up to accomodate it.   Your hydronic/masonry heater combo is exactly what we have in mind.   Building codes require some heater besides wood, so hydronic is great because the investment is not lost if you can hook it up to a woodstove or masonry heater.  But they don't have to be custom built monsters: there are some Tulakivi out-of-the-box soapstone models that aren't that heavy.   The wood needs to be fairly small though, because of the short hot fire.

Marcus

[SteveU.]

Hello All

Talk about wood burning IS on topic because it explains the why of all this wood splitting.
Marcus thanks for the masonry heater organization link. A local boy here on their  membership rolls ( Peculla in Battle Ground,WA) does real good work if you need a recommendation. Now that constructions in the toilet some of the guys are really hungry. Keep the wife happy and be sure to include a bakers oven in your design.
Another good site is:
www.woodheat.org
Good pictures and information and they link forward to the masonry heater organization.

rleonard your splitter configuration/capbilities looks almost exactly like my new SpeeCo. Your bigger engine/pump and smaller OD cylinder looks to give a much quicker cycle time than my 15 seconds. I'd guess yours as 10-12 seconds?

Regards All
SteveU.

[Stan]

That site for the masonary heaters assoc. had some great pics on heaters.  My wife and I were poking around the town of Buchs in Switzerland and thought we'd found a small castle that was supposed to have tours.  It turned out it was just some guy's house but he gave us a tour anyway.  The hallways were at least 15 feet wide and each room had a gigantic tiled masonary heater approximately the size of a VW Beetle, that was fueled via a small door in the hallway so the servants could keep you warm without bothering you.  Pretty neat I thought.
Stan

[SHIPCHIEF]

rleonard;
I'm admireing your splitter.
I have a Northern Tools 37 tonner which is very similar, but cheaper in every regard.
It has one thing that you might find useful: It has a fitting that surrounds the knife when it is retracted, so wood that is stuck to the knife is stripped off as you retract. Not frequently used, but on a previous machine I used that did not have one, we had to beat the stuck wood off the knife with mauls, and it sometimes took quite a while.
Scott

[lowspeedlife]

Great splitter rleonard, twin cylinder wisconcin!! lots o' power fer splitin' I like it. Just sold my splitter, went to wood pellets 'cause I coulld make twice as much money working as it cost to buy pellets, or used to cost to buy pellets.  price just jumped from $260.00 to $330.00 a ton, because the saw mills aren't sawing wood.  It's still a lot less work. open bag, dump it in, once a week vacuum out the combustion chamber, push button your burnin again.

 Scott r.

[Stan]

We've paid $197 /ton consistently for the last 4 years.  I guess we're due for a price increase though.  Lots of folks are going to pellets.
Stan