Bill Seeley on tue 25 jan 05
Melissa,
Your comment about using your kiln as a heater reminded me of a
grandiose "Gedankeninvenzion" that I toyed with for years before finally
building my outside propane kiln. The plan was for a hybrid kiln/furnace
in my basement that would be used for firing pots and heating the house in
the winter. As I recall it was a conventional downdraft kiln with a flue
exhausting to an extended horizontal segment consisting of a finned
stainless steel heat exchanger running through a chamber with forced air
blowing over it and into the duct work. A real Rube Goldberg. The idea
was to fire it continuously to keep the house warm and then cool it down to
the highest human tolerable temperature for loading and unloading ware.
That way you wouldn't waste the residual heat between that temperature and
room temperature. But what about the summers you ask? My scheme also
called for doing all the firing in the cold months, thus requiring a whole
array of compact roll-out storage shelves for holding 6 months worth of
ware during the warm months.
The capital outlay would have been pretty exhorbitant, but the ongoing
savings would have been enourmous! For some reason I never got around to
actually implementing this scheme.
Bill
Eleanora Eden on sun 30 jan 05
Hi Bill and all,
I can hardly believe that somebody else did that too! When we
started building this house 20 years ago I had the idea of building a
kiln just outside the basement and directing the heat in the
not-so-hot phases into a heat sink under the basement floor. The air
would be funnelled all through the area in big terra cotta pipes and
then would have to filter back through the rock to a separate flue in
the chimney. Built it all and never used it. We are finally going
to buy some kind of blower to force hot air into it and utilize the
heat sink.
Later I learned that there is a Korean model that works on this same principle.
I had followed the same thought path as Bill, figuring on doing all
the firing in the winter and heating the place with the excess. We
did put a propane burner up to it once so I do know it works.
Eleanora
>Melissa,
>
>Your comment about using your kiln as a heater reminded me of a
>grandiose "Gedankeninvenzion" that I toyed with for years before finally
>building my outside propane kiln. The plan was for a hybrid kiln/furnace
>in my basement that would be used for firing pots and heating the house in
>the winter. As I recall it was a conventional downdraft kiln with a flue
>exhausting to an extended horizontal segment consisting of a finned
>stainless steel heat exchanger running through a chamber with forced air
>blowing over it and into the duct work. A real Rube Goldberg. The idea
>was to fire it continuously to keep the house warm and then cool it down to
>the highest human tolerable temperature for loading and unloading ware.
>That way you wouldn't waste the residual heat between that temperature and
>room temperature. But what about the summers you ask? My scheme also
>called for doing all the firing in the cold months, thus requiring a whole
>array of compact roll-out storage shelves for holding 6 months worth of
>ware during the warm months.
>
>The capital outlay would have been pretty exhorbitant, but the ongoing
>savings would have been enourmous! For some reason I never got around to
>actually implementing this scheme.
>
>Bill
>
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