Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2010
From: Alex Chernov <alex_stovemaster(at)yahoo.ca>
Subject: Re: Fwd: Polish Piec Kaflowy
To: Dave Misiuk <misiuk(at)alaska.net>, Norbert Senf <mheat(at)heatkit.com>
Cc: Anthony Biundo <abiundo(at)hotmail.com>,
Paul Tiegs <paultiegs(at)omni-test.com>,
Jerry Frisch <lopezquarries(at)verizon.net>, eric(at)solidrockmasonry.com,
Brian Klipfel <b_klipfel(at)hotmail.com>, fishermasonry(at)yahoo.com,
Marcus Flynn <Contact(at)pyromasse.com>,
Eric Schroeder <radiancemasonryheat(at)hotmail.com>, yark(at)uiuc.edu,
tomtrout00(at)hotmail.com, William Davenport <info(at)turtlerockheat.com>,
Antoine Guerlain <wheresantoine(at)hotmail.com>,
"healtap-homespun.org" <healtap(at)homespun.org>
Hi everyone.
Thanks for the info.
Till 1979 we lived in a very small house in Ukraine heated by a cook stove/heater of the design Dave is talking about. Although designs defer, such stoves are very common. Mostly brick, but sometimes can be faced with simple tiles. The cook stove we had had design very common in our area: three-burner cook top over relatively low and long firebox with large grate on the bottom and a tin bake oven insert mounted into brick mass behind the firebox. Firebox throat was above the bake oven with channel to the left that entered channels in the masonry wall centrally located in the house. I don't know what kind of channels they had there, vertical or horizontal, but probably horizontal. We had a by-pass and main chimney dampers in the wall (solid dampers - no holes, of course). For the reason that bake oven didn't have any flue at the bottom and on the side opposite to firebox, it was overheated on one side and was very tricky to bake in. I remember how happy all our women were when first electric insulated ovens appeared on the market. For this reason, the oven in the heater was mainly used for drying stuff.
The heater was built to use either wood or coal. It had a large grate because grate is necessary to burn coal (coal burns in thin layer). Since our city was at the edge of prairies, wood was expensive and we were using wood only to start the fire, dumping a bucket of coal over. Coal was of poor quality as everyone wanted to get it cheaper, so exhaust had distinct smell and we got a lot of clinker. Poor coals may have over 30% of ash content meaning that you can have up to clean up to 40% of the weight you loaded into the firebox after it burned. We used clinker to sand walkways in winters or added to concrete as aggregate. I have pictures of this stove somewhere, but could not find them now. My ancle is using this building as a workshop/storage and still fires this heater in wintertime...
In countries like Ukraine, Russia, and Polans, no one ever bothered with emissions in the past. Main goal was always efficiency. The picture starts to change for Poland as it became a part of EU, but it is still very far away from being in agenda in Russia and Ukraine.
It seems that the Polish time stove pictured has design that is somewhere between design for wood and for coal. Performance most likely suffers from this design for any fuel. Fireboxes for coal need larger grates to have all the load spread over the grate in thin layer and should be much smaller, and firebox for wood should be large without or with a small grate. They have a large firebox with medium-size grate - kind of not good for any fuel they have. (there is probably a mistake in dimensions of the firebox height, it most likely should read 1350 instead of 350 relative to 400 for the door height).
A couple of interesting things in the research to point at:
- Difference in emissions between coal and wood (wood briquettes, but wood nonetheless). Lower PM but higher CO. Mainly for the spikes at the beginning and the end.
- They talk about reducing combustion air at the end for better efficiency and less emissions.
- They show effect of proper operation technique on emissions.
Best,
Alex
--- On Fri, 1/22/10, Norbert Senf <mheat(at)heatkit.com> wrote:
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2010
Subject: Polish Piec Kaflowy
From: Dave Misiuk <alaskastructural(at)gmail.com>
To: mheat(at)heatkit.com
Interesting....I got a wild hair to research the history of stoves in Poland since it right across the way from Sweden, next to Ukraine, Germany, etc.Seems they have/had plenty of tile stoves, brick heaters, and cook stoves and typically used a heated wall from what I read. My grandparents probably told stories to my father and aunts and uncles, about carrying coal or wood when they were kids but what kind of "woodstove" they used was probably lost on the audience.
I found an interesting testing document too, see attached.
D