Tuesday, October 25, 2011

The Neptune A-1

So my heating plan is the Neptune A-1 marine woodstove. It is a cooking stove with a small oven and a single eye over the firebox. The tiny firebox. I took it out of storage and gave it a test firing last night out in the yard. I got a good bed of coals going and added 3 pieces of somewhat seasoned red oak at 6PM. At 7:36 PM the firebox just had a few coals in it and by 8PM the fire had burned out. About two hours. The built in flue damper was closed and the fire never took off. That is not a lot of time. The heavy cast iron stove continued to generate heat about 10PM so there is about 4 hours of heat making ability with the little stove. I am going to need to make sure that the cabin is really insulated to hold this heat. My last experience with this stove was not great but I was trying to heat a huge space. The cabin I am building is only 8x16 with a shed roof, 13 feet on the high side. I would guess this is a quarter of the volume of the last cabin (which was very poorly insulated).
I am going to back up the wood heat with a small propane heater...the Mr. Heater Big Buddy running off a bulk tank. This heater has three settings and I hope that the lowest one is not too much. If so, I may buy a wall mount propane heater with a thermostat. Just hate to spend the extra dough since I already have a heater.

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