Save the Queen: Three level chess and stove installation

Three levels of regulation exist in the stove business: a) building codes, b) fire prevention, and c) plumbing issues if you convert a sedore furnace into a boiler. And a fourth independent division of homeowners insurance and their regulations.
Many local municipalities are stuck in yesteryears strictures and by and large coal and wood stoves had only masonry without liners. Liners are standard and readily available today. Your Sedore stove comes with instructions and six inch slow drafting multi-fuel Sedores require smaller openings and less drafting volume than conventional stoves of the past.
Recently a customer complained of an all consuming or dwindling flame in his Sedore bought in 08 from VisionStone. He had 8K invested between his stove and his new masonry chimney. The builder told him that "his chimney was not designed to be lined" and that wood stoves required a 8 inch opening according to code enforcement. I equipped my customer with the knowledge that the Sedore stove is designed for a 6 inch flue. That two inch difference on a square chimney is significant especially with mighty winds blowing consistently outside. My suggestion was to put a 6 inch round 24 gauge straight pipe liner into his terracotta chimney liner. "Bob, I just spent eight thousand dollars. I don't have that kind of money for a stainless insert!!!"
I explained that for predicability and reliability of a Sedore you need the stove manufacturers specifications of a six inch and that an extra 8 to 10 feet height was simple and easy to achieve for maybe only $5/foot and self installation. Could be added in 2 foot add on sections. Add 5 feet for every elbow and to quote Bruce Wolfe, "drafting has many variables and is not an exact science.." but there are rules of thumb to follow.
Also since one of the specialities of the Sedore stove is junk wood I encouraged him to throw some unseasoned hardwood into the stove to slow down the dragon down and let the stove consume the biomass solid fuel with less intensity.
With the Democrats in power, we can expect an attempt to solve problems with more regulations and people who flash the badge and are sticklers for antiquated applications not relevant for newer innovations, my suggestion is reference federal law. It trumps state law and local ordinances. National building code says that for underwritten ULC stoves the stoves is to be installed by standards included in your manual. So if you follow those instructions you should be okay. Clearances to combustibles are printed right on the stove's rear double wall panel.
An insurance representative may not be competant or even care about national building code but he probably has a clue for instance, if the 18 inch clearance from the double wall back panel is up against wood or unburnable cinder block wall. It is mostly CYA for them.
But do it right. Most inspectors want to know if contractors are licensed and insured. Some contractors might be offended when you make improvement to their work. All those with a badge want dignity. When they are on your premises treat them like lesser deities because they are fallable even though they may very well know more than you.
My encouragement to all you potential Sedore customers is stay in the learning curve and be proactive especially with regard to safety!!

Preheating hot water

We are successfully preheating our hot water with our current Sedore (the new one is to be shipped this week :) ) There is a coil in the burn chamber that is hooked up to a water tank behind the stove a few feet. That then feeds into our electric hot water heater. For a few weeks we just preheated our hot water. Now we are leaving our elecric heater off and using the water as it is coming off the stove. It is working fine for during the day. Sometimes if we have a few showers or baths to go through in an evening for our family we will turn on the hot water heater for an hour or so to heat the water up a bit more. Not sure what we will save out of this but we seem to have been spending about $40/month on the hot water heater. This should go down substantially with this new system.