Bob do you know if there is a detail of what you are describing to look at anywhere?
I could paste a pdf if I could figure out how to do that

Mahwhinney, I am jealous - I would have loved a timber frame using my own timber, but I don't have a mill, and the cost of transporting logs back and forth made the cost prohibitive. Maybe in another lifetime...

I heated my old (very leaky) house for several decades using a catalytic Hearthstone soapstone stove. Though it has more mass than a metal or cast iron stove, it is not what I would call significant enough to make a difference in heating a house. Maybe the thermal mass would be more effective in a tight house. The stove IS a thing of beauty.

My feeling is that the only workable and ecologically sound way to heat an energy efficient air tight house with wood, is to have a quick fired wood burner to heat a large mass of water and use the water to heat the house. On the other hand, given a massive supply of wood, any good quality wood stove would work, as long as it has its own air supply, because if it is too hot in the house you can just open windows to achieve the temps you want. After heating with wood for 30+ years, I decided I had had enough with the dust, smoke and dirt that are part and parcel of heating with wood indoors. I still want to figure out a way to heat water for the radiant floor, wood fired, outdoors, combined with a bread oven. grill, smokehouse etc.

Where and how you place the air duct would depend on where you are putting the stove. If near a wall, the air duct can come through the wall. If somewhere else in the house, then design it into or under the slab so it comes up through the floor, were ever you are placing the stove.

Look into frost protected shallow foundations.

-Rosalinda

Posted By rmawhinney on 28 Jan 2013 12:31 PM
Thank you Dana, my 99% outside design temp is -2 F. Increasing the insulation to 6 on the walls and 8 on the roof gives me right at 20K btu/hr with the rvalue of xps. I really love the look of some of the stoves you mention with the soap stone but my budget definitely wont allow me to spend 5k on a stove. I will start looking though. ICF I was thinking that about going under the slab any ideas on where to go with it when it comes up out of the ground?

As a DIY installation you don't need to spend anything LIKE $5K on a stove, venting and combustion air kit included! On a recent project a ~55KBTU/hr soapstone stove was retrofitted into an open hearth fireplace came to about $5K WITH the full mark-up and contractor installation.  That included a stainless steel flue liner and retrofit blown rock wool between the liner and pre-existing tile flue that you probably wouldn't need on new construction, plus the materials for the homeowner's DIY build-out of a slate covered hearth extension to get more of the stove into the room and still meet code.  Phase-II on that project will include insulating the exposed exterior of the masonry chimney next summer.  Quick infra-red thermometer readings on the exposed brick during last week's cooler weather showed 20-40F+ delta-Ts between the exterior of the brick and the outdoors. I'd love to see an infra-red imaging view of just how lossy that is! But I digress...

The price difference between a US built 35-40KBTU soapstone stove (eg Hearthstone Tribute) and a comparably sized cast iron stove of decent quality is usually less than $1000- the rest of the installation materials & costs would be the same.  The difference is the price you'd be paying for the (lack of) flash-heat comfort and to some extent the overnight burn time differences, and for some people the visual aesthetics are meaningful.  Some of the kewl-looking european soapstone stoves can be budget busters at full retail.

To be prudent, the combustion air intake terminus needs to be above any potential snow depths.  I believe most building codes spec 1" clearance to combustibles along it's path, but if it's sub-slab that's less of an issue than if penetrating a wood-framed foam-clad wall.  Running it on standoffs exterior to the siding to something like a foot above the record snowpack for your area seems like it should work, especially if protected by roof overhangs (under the rake is preferable to under the eaves, to avoid  roof-avalanche berm depth & eave-cornice fall issues.)

Here is a nice stove you can cook on:

http://www.esse.com/range-cookers/ironheart/

You could also look at the masonry wood stove which can have tubing in it to take heat to the floors. We have done that in a number of houses.

Wow you guys thank you so much for all the help! I think I can figure out the stove part now it is just finding the right stove. I didn't realize the building code here is actually R 49 on the ceiling so 8 inches of foam board still isn't enough......10 is so expensive and now your talking 10" fasteners.....those babies are not cheap

MikeSolar that is the most amazing stove I have seen yet that's the stove I want, hands down, look no more, wait whats the price................$5,600 if I had it I would do it no questions asked!

Come up smack dab in the center of the sill plate so you can run it up the wall. It's best to come up where there is a good eave so the outlet gets some protection from rain, blowing snow, etc.

An alternative is to make a little add-on by the side of the house to store things in like a side shed or a little bench in which the top lifts up for storage.

insulationdepot.com (framingham, ma) sells used polyiso - most of it is from commercial roofs. they love large orders & will give you a good price. We bought one load; most was paper faced so you may want to buy new (unless they have used) foil faced for the top layer so you can tape it.

Bob I saw their sight online looks like I could get what I need from them for about 5 grand. That is do able. Would you lay 10 inches and then screw all the way down through that? It would take at least a 12 inch screw. For outside air I think I will run the outside air under the slab come up in the utility room and go out the wall there somewhere.

Posted By rmawhinney on 28 Jan 2013 09:13 PM
MikeSolar that is the most amazing stove I have seen yet that's the stove I want, hands down, look no more, wait whats the price................$5,600 if I had it I would do it no questions asked!

It's a cutie fer sher, but like the Vermont Bun Baker series, it does not come with an outdoor combustion air option.  The VBB is an appropriate ~30K max firing rate stove, and the no-soapstone cladding version runs under three grand. The fully clad versions running about four, but the extra-massive version is a whopping ~$7KUSD- which seems like a lot to pay for prettified-thermal mass.  You can probably do better  using slabs of local granite for raising the height of the stove.

But the outdoor combustion air issue is still an issue in a tight home, even for a relatively modest 30KBTU/hr burner.

BTW: R49 is code min for between the joists attic-floor insulation, but IIRC with cathedralized ceilings or above-the-roof-deck insulation R38 still meets code in ME. (cood b rawng, offen am.)  With as little as R25 above the roof deck you could legally fatten it out to R49 with fiber insulation under the roof deck without interior vapor barriers (but air-barriers yes) without risk to the roof deck. (For far northern ME, bump that to R30 of exterior foam.)

Posted By rmawhinney on 29 Jan 2013 09:36 AM
Bob I saw their sight online looks like I could get what I need from them for about 5 grand. That is do able. Would you lay 10 inches and then screw all the way down through that? It would take at least a 12 inch screw. For outside air I think I will run the outside air under the slab come up in the utility room and go out the wall there somewhere.

There are several other southern-New England competitors in the reclaimed roofing iso game. Search the Boston or Worcester MA craigslist materials section for "rigid insulation", and you'll often find a couple of them. Most will ship in truckload quantities, but for small lots you have to come to them. Insulation Depot will ship nation wide- I'm not not sure about the range limitations for the other players.

we've been buying long screws for our deep energy retrofits - they're not cheap, but are available. Fasten Master has several lines including "log hog" in long lengths.

Posted By rmawhinney on 28 Jan 2013 09:13 PM
MikeSolar that is the most amazing stove I have seen yet that's the stove I want, hands down, look no more, wait whats the price................$5,600 if I had it I would do it no questions asked!

I had phoned the UK a couple of years ago and I was able to get them for about $3k + shipping. Unfortunately, I never did get it but I still want one.

So most European stoves I see don't have OAK hook ups they apparently just run outside air to its proximity. Any thoughts on that? I did see the Vermont BB and would probably go with that and get granite from a friend of mine who has a quarry here (that's where my countertops and shower surround are coming from) Thank you Dana for that R-Value info. That puts me back down to 10" screws which I am fine with. I can see that my local building buddies around here really don't know much about this type of building. I have a LOT of 5 inch screws I wish I could find a way to use those besides just a few on the first few layers. As far as inside goes I was planning on 4 foot O.C. rafters sheathed with tongue and groove (all of which I will be milling) so I would like to keep all the insulation on the outside. Insulation depot is selling truck loads of 2.5" ISO so three layers of that would be plenty. I will use true 1" rough sawn for vertical strapping that will allow me to use a 10" screw. MIKE did you call them directly? If I could get one for that price and make it work I would consider it.

Also do you guys think a small stove like the Vermont would need more than what the HRV could supply? My father deals log hog screws I think through permachink you just brought that to my mind thanks Bob! We used them with cedar d-logs.

Posted By rmawhinney on 29 Jan 2013 10:11 PM
Also do you guys think a small stove like the Vermont would need more than what the HRV could supply? My father deals log hog screws I think through permachink you just brought that to my mind thanks Bob! We used them with cedar d-logs.

Depends on the HRV system, and any other potential exhaust venting that might depressurize the house. 
If you have a clothes dryer or bath/kitchen exhaust fan the HRV can usually act as the makeup supply for those, but the risks there are much lower than with combustion appliances like wood stoves.

Code sez in an unobstructed room with a makeup-air grill on an exterior wall you need 1 square inch of open grille area per 4000BTU of burner.  If it's in a doored off room taking combustion air from an adjacent room you would need  1-inch per 1000 BTU.  An HRV is system is probably going to be even more restrictive, but even if it were equivalent to an interior wall, the 30KBTU/hr Vermont Bun Baker would need a 30 square inch hole, which is bit bigger than 6" in diameter (bigger than the port size on an HRV sized appropriately for a house this size.)

If you counted both the intake and exhaust ports as makeup air cross section, two 4" holes would still be a bit too small at ~25 square inches, even without the flow impedance represented by the filter & heat exchanger.

Most piped-in combustion air kits for stoves under 50KBTU/hr would be  only ~3" in diameter, or ~7 square inches, but they're hooked up directly to the fire-box of an air-tight stove, which isn't interacting with other things that are pressurizing/depressurizing the house, and can't backdraft much into the house with the gasketed firebox doors closed under conditions less than tornado-force winds. 

Sealed combustion really IS the right way to go with tight houses, and I personally wouldn't install any burner that wasn't sealed combustion in a house I lived in. YMMV.

I'm not crazy about gas ranges/ovens either, since turning on a kitchen exhaust fan requires action by the operator.  I have such appliances in my current house, and even without ultra-tightness and lack of bloodhound sensitivity I can tell by the itch in my nose the second I walk in the front door if someone has been running them without the fan running (even the tiny-BTU warming oven.)  In a kitchen renovation I'd be leaning toward induction-range and electric oven options.

I would have loved a timber frame using my own timber, but I don't have a mill, and the cost of transporting logs back and forth made the cost prohibitive.

I guess it depends on how far away the mill is, but I only spent about $350 to send a truckload of logs to the mill. A self-loader comes and picks up the logs and transports them to the mill. That covers about three hours.

You need to specify a few sizes of timbers you would like, starting with the largest, but also including some smaller cuts as some of that is unavoidable. After milling, the mill usually has a tilt flatbed to return the timbers. You negotiate with the mill for the milling fee and the return transport. When I do it, they take a portion of the logs as payment. In ages past, the cedar by-cut would pay for the milling, but you can't do that anymore.

Once you get the timbers back, you can re-mill them to smaller sizes using a beam saw.

Is there any credibility to this?
The Outdoor Air Myth Exposed

this part is, where he explains why fossill fues are not welcoome in very tight houses:

1. Smoke leakage can occur, even when the appliance has tightly sealed doors. If an exhaust fan like a kitchen range hood depressurizes the room to a level greater than the draft produced in the chimney, combustion gases will leak from any available opening, such as gaps in gaskets and the joints between factory-built chimney sections (illustration below). Because air flows to zones of lower pressure, a tightly sealed combustion/venting system will spill a smaller volume of smoke into the room than a leakier system, but it will still leak unless it is perfectly sealed. Perfect sealing is not a realistic goal because it would be difficult to achieve at the time of construction or installation and is unlikely to be permanent.

the writer also says that direct air does not improve the efficiency of the appliance - but the reason for the direct air supply isn't directly about the efficiency, but about the amount of air the appliance uses, which is not available in atight house.

Is there any credibility to this?

On the whole, very little. It is a collection of half-truths cobbled together with failed logic.

I wouldn't be surprised if the wood stove installers and salespeople I talked to had read this article, because I heard some of the same notions out of them. For example, it does touch on something which I think the local guys were trying to say, but were unable to communicate. What you DON'T want to have, is for the combustion air duct to become an alternate flue for the fireplace or stove. In theory, that could happen with wind pressure on the regular exhaust opening, or some kind of suction on the combustion air vent opening. If this happened, hot gases from the stove could travel back along the supply duct. I guess that is a good argument for the precaution of making the supply duct metal if it isn't already required. What they were telling me is that the supply duct couldn't terminate above the fireplace. I think they were accustomed to putting mobile home supply ducts in and getting it from below the floor like the article mentions.

If you have a quality stove, I think internal construction makes this sort of backdrafting unlikely, however, I would not have a chimney flue and supply duct terminate at the same level. For example, my chimney terminates 35 feet above ground and the combustion supply air vent is located 12 feet above ground.