Having grown up in Northern New York, I remember keeping my butt within six feet of the wood stove pretty much all winter. Wood stoves heat up a house well, if unevenly. To better distribute the heat, Caframo makes the Eco-Fan Airplus Heat-Powered Fan for Wood Stoves (Model# 802CA-KBX). It’s a small (10.5″ x 5.2″ x 12.5″) and lightweight fan that sits on top of the stove and starts moving automatically when the surface temperature reaches 150 degrees F. As the temperature rises, the fan speeds up, and vise versa. Online retailer specs say the fan withstands up to 650 degrees F.
Besides being electricity-free and quiet, one bonus with the Eco-Fan is that when the blades slow down, it’s an indicator to put more logs on the fire. Other folks use these for gas and other stoves as well — as long as it evens out the heat, right? However, online reviews are split. Some of the reviews say it’s great, while others say it doesn’t work at all. Have any Toolmongers tried these stovetop fans? What are your thoughts on their effectiveness?
Pricing starts at around $129, or $79 for the original version of the fan, which is about half the size. You can also find various sized versions with either nickel or aluminum blades.
Ecofan Airplus Heat-Powered Fan for Wood Stoves, Model# 802CA-KBX [Northern Tool]
Street Pricing [Google Products]
Ecofan Airplus Heat-Powered Fan Via Amazon [What’s This?]
Caframo Eco-Fan Original, Black Via Amazon [What’s This?]
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11 Responses to Hot Or Not? Eco-Fan Heat-Powered Wood Stove Fan
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I have one on the diesel heater on the boat, works great.
There are two versions of this sort of fan. One type uses a Peltier thermoelectric device:
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_cooling )
…and the other, older, more expensive type uses a little Stirling engine:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_engine
http://www.google.com/search?&q=stirling+stove+fan
This one looks like a Peltier unit. It’ll probably work OK, but not as well as a Stirling fan. The Stirling fans are also famous for lasting a long, LONG time; I don’t know how long the Peltier versions can be expected to survive.
Hot. Many a friends’ boat have these, and they work great for circulating the air around the heater. On a boat electricity is precious, so being heat-powered is great.
They’re also very geeky (yay physics!), which makes them awesome on their own.
My best friend’s ex-girlfriend’s folks have one of these (not this exact model, but an older one that looks less like an angry raptor) on their wood stove in the kitchen. Works great.
About the only way one of these things can fail is if it gets so hot that the Peltier junction solder reflows. Simplicity is good.
I believe I may have heard of a Stirling engine version of one of these, too. That’d be a fun demonstration, and theoretically even more heat-proof than the thermoelectric-based versions.
cl
why are these so expensive? havent read into how they work much but would love to get one when i finally get around to having a wood stove in the garage/shop.
Seems a little pricey but not considering the non-electric functionality. I love the geek factor as well as the idea that a wood stove should not have to need electricity to function well.
> I may have heard of a Stirling engine version of one of these
Yes, they exist, for example http://gyroscope.com/d.asp?product=VULCANSTOVEFAN
If you can make a fan turn by making electricity with one of these, could you also run wires (rated for high temp) to power a light???
You can power any electrical device given enough heat and enough Peltier devices. The problem is they aren’t very efficient. NASA uses them with radioactive heat sources to power deep space probes. Electric coolers use them in reverse. When you pass a current through them one side gets hot, the other side gets cold.
I’ve seen get-ups using peltiers on motorcycle exausts and I’ve seen a peltier solar-powered project or two (using heat from the sun instead of directly converting photons to electrons). To anybody who’s interested, all a Peltier really is is a stick o iron between two copper wires: the difference in current carrying capacity means that heat moves when electricity is present (flowing from positive to negative) and electricity (electrons) moves when heat is present.
My in-laws have one of these (smaller and older, but still peltier-powered). It works well in that it spins when the stove is hot, and spins faster when the stove gets hotter. However, it just doesn’t move much air – unless the stove is really cranking (hotter than it usually needs to be to warm the house), you can barely feel the air moving from more than a few inches away. I assume (and hope) that the larger models with more cooling fins and larger fan blades move more air.