Barrel Stove Kits - How Well Do They Work?

[Music] hi I'm Robert owner of north pine Express we're gonna talk today about the barrel stove kit now this is my barrel stove and this is my cabin which is on boys Blanc Island Michigan northern Michigan and when we bought this cabin 20 years ago we were looking for a way to heat it because it didn't have a good wood stove in it and it only had electric heat as an alternate backup so the electric heat took forever to warm up the place and was very expensive so the first thing we did was look around for an inexpensive stove and we settled on the barrel stove kit why because it's very inexpensive we didn't have a lot of money left over after we bought the cabin so the the cost of it fit the bill number two I wanted something that was gonna hold a long burn time now because of the size of the barrel stove it holds a lot of wood and gets really hot if you wanted to and holds a long overnight burn initially when we bought the barrel stove kid and put it in here I wasn't really thinking that we would have it in here forever but after using it for several years we've decided that man this is the great wood stove why get rid of it and put anything else in its place now some might say that boy it's not very aesthetically appealing and I'd probably have to agree with them it's probably not for everybody but if you're looking for an inexpensive way to heat something of burns really well the barrel stove is a great choice in my opinion now this is the airtight version which has a gasket a door it's also available in a non airtight version I highly recommend the airtight version it's only twenty or thirty dollars more and will give you a much longer burn and a more controllable burn well we saw both models at Northland Express and the kit consists of the door the flue collar and the legs you go out and get your own barrel this plate we welded on I made that myself and I welded it on and there wasn't anything available at the time but now there is a hot plate that you can bolt to the top of the stove and it's great for holding the kettle now the really great thing about the the barrel stove kit is number one it heats up fast the barrels are fairly thin metal and like I said I've had this one 20 years now we don't use it year around this is a part time cabin so we use it from September late September through December and then the island is somewhat inaccessible so we don't come up at that time but if you had to replace the barrel they're not that expensive we get a lot of questions of where do I find a barrel well they're available in Northland Express we also recommend you look around locally and see if you can find something for free many times you can people use barrels or companies use barrels and they'll sell them to you for inexpensively or maybe even given to you for free and basically all you need to do is cut out the area for the door cut out the area for the flue bolt flew and the door on and you bolt the legs on and you've got a wood stove that's it nothing else is really needed except the flue pipe and a hearth of course now because they get so hot you're gonna want a good heart now we made this hearth ourself out of real stone and it provides an excellent backing material because they do the barrel stoves do radiate a ton of heat and they've get very hot for young children we recommend a gate or of some sort something to protect them from getting up close to the stove because they do get very hot you can throttle them down pretty well but they're still going to be pretty hot now the other great thing I like about the barrel stove kit as you can see this is my my woodpile here for as to actually go for a couple of days you can put even a log this size in it and that's a good size log unsplit we call those overnighters and the great thing about it is is you can throw a log like that in maybe get one or two of these others in along with it and that will burn all night easily and have good coals in the morning and provide heat all night so again one of the great things about this barrel stove kit is it holds a lot of wood you can get a really long piece of wood in there and you can get a large piece of wood in this door now there's not too many wood stoves that a piece of wood like this will fit into but check this out look at that now we've got another good sized piece of wood another good sized piece of wood see if this one will fit how about this one might get even one more let's see now that's a lot of wood that'll burn a good 24 hours dialed down and low heat now the airtight version has a separate door on the bottom I like to open that up just to get it going and then close that and throttle it down once the fire gets going and then you use these to draft controls here to regulate the air intake along with the damper the new models have a damper built into the collar usually once you get your wood stove burning probably going to want to dial these down almost closed painting depending how cold it is out and that's it if you look at the door on the airtight barrel stove this is a gasketed door this is also a gasketed door providing you with an airtight stove now no air is tight no airtight stove quote airtight stove is 100% airtight they all have little leaks around the air controls and that type of thing but you don't want a lot of leaks around there and the reason is that you're gonna get that air going into your stove and it will provide air for the fire and fire it up hotter than you want it to so having a good airtight seal on there is crucial for a good overnight burn the non airtight version of the barrel stove is really better suited for a garage where you're gonna be in there just a few hours and back out but for the extra twenty thirty dollars the airtight barrel stove kit is the way to go I've had my barrel stove kit well over 20 years and initially we thought we would put this in and then later when we could afford to pull it out and get a nicer wood stove but to be honest with you it's done such a great job that we're very happy with the way it heats it's a very quick heat heats all night holds a ton of wood inexpensive can't go wrong it's a cabin now I'm you know in a nicer home maybe you want something with a glass door but the barrel stove is what it is it heats up quickly inexpensive to install and a great value they're available at Northland Express comm and two configurations the airtight and the non airtight version and we have them in stock so get yours today thank you for watching [Music] you

Channel: NorthlineExpress

Views: 2,482,908

Rating: 4.3892608 out of 5

Keywords: Barrel stove, barrel stove kit, stove kit, wood stove, vogelzang, northlineexpress.com

Id: fhkCc33Dtas

Length: 8min 43sec (523 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 08 2010