I also bought the heat-powered fan they sell and recommend.
It's the Canadian-made EcoFan CB-800 and it's excellent.
It costs about $70 dollars...
and moves the heat around my tiny little camper very efficiently and almost silently.
The one drawback of this fan, and this would be true of any stovetop fan...
is that it takes up most of the room on top of the stove.
Which makes it tricky to use the stove for anything else.
So for awhile I've been looking at flue-mounted fans as an alternative.
Finally decided to buy a cheaper one and do a comparison.
The two fans are remark similar with a few notable exceptions.
First is the size of the motor.
The EcoFan's is substantially larger.
Second is the thermoelectric generator that powers the fans.
The one on the cheaper generic fan appears to be just slightly larger.
Although it was very hard to measure, and they could actually be identical.
The main difference is the overall size of the units.
The flue-mounted fan is slightly smaller, and employs a four-bladed fan.
While the EcoFan used a larger two-bladed fan to take advantage of its larger motor.
So on with the test.
I lit a fire as I normally would and started a stopwatch.
No surprises, the EcoFan which is sitting directly on top of the firebox is the first to start spinning...
Right around five and a half minutes.
At this point the temperature on the side of the stove
is barely registering at all.
I find the science behind this quite interesting.
Seebeck generators work on the differential
between the hot side and the cold side.
So even if the stove has only reached 100ºF
the room temperature being 40ºF
is what enables it to generate current
and spin the fan.
Just three minutes later and the flue-mounted fan starts to spin also.
The time it takes the fans to start spinning
was just one of the factors I was concerned about
comparing the two styles.
The other is, how much it moves the air.
It's quite hard to tell on camera, but the flue-mounted fan is spinning quite a bit slower than to EcoFan.
The camera makes it look like the EcoFan is spinning backwards
In reality it's spinning forwards, and much faster than the flue-mounted fan.
But let's crank up the fire and see how they do at a higher temperature.
After about thirty minutes the stove is up to an ideal temperature...
and both fans are cranking at full blast.
With just my hand I can feel that the four-bladed fan is not moving as much air.
But the real test is the flame test.
The four-bladed fan blows the flame out
at about six inches away
With the EcoFan I could hardly keep a flame lit within a foot.
So the EcoFan's larger motor, and two-bladed fan is definitely moving more air.
Perhaps most disappointingly the flue-mounted fan stopped spinning
longe before the EcoFan when I turned down the stove
to an overnight slow burn.
But one thing I definitely prefer about this setup is that it keeps the top of the stove free for cooking.
And I can always put the EcoFan back on the top of the stove when I'm done...
to use both fans at once.
The EcoFan is definitely a superior piece of hardware.
But both fans have advantages and disadvantages in their placement.
and it helps you decide which fan you want to keep you warm on a cold winter's day.
or building and making stuff in the forest...
Or if you just got some value out of it, and want to click like or share that's great too.
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