Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, February 28, 1994 TAG: 9402280028
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ADRIENNE PETTY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: GLADE HILL LENGTH: Medium
While many people's electricity bills soared this winter, his bill stayed at a cozy $60 per month.
Shunning total reliance on electric power to run his household, Hubbard invented a wood-burning furnace that's been piping out heat and power for 18 years.
In an age when many people can't do without their power or their cable TV, Hubbard shows that a little creativity and self-reliance can save money.
"Everybody just oohed and ahead about it, especially the heating of water and drying of the clothes," he said. "They said, `You must be an engineer.' I said, `No, I'm just a high school graduate, but I guess I've got a little horse sense.' "
His innovative system does more than just keep the house toasty.
It heats the water, kicks hot air into the clothes dryer, controls the temperature in his greenhouse and supplies heat for a cooking chamber - all from one wood-burning stove.
On most winter days, the savory smells of simmering October beans and crackling wood waft from the basement of the Hubbards' house.
It was an invention born of necessity.
During the energy crisis of 1974, his electric bill shot up. Hubbard, then an appliance repairman for Sears, and his wife, Margaret, needed an alternative.
So he set out to build his own furnace.
The system is anchored by a wood stove surrounded by a sheet metal chamber with several ducts jutting from it.
"Throughout the day, I put in a stick now and then," he said. "When I go to bed, it's a different story. I fill 'er up and go to sleep."
Heat blown by a motor-powered fan billows into the house through a network of ducts. A timer regulates a damper that opens at 30-minute intervals. The damper, connected to chains, stays open for about three minutes to get the fire going again.
When it's extremely cold, he sets it to stay open for up to seven minutes.
Many people believe wood stoves generate more filth than anything else, but Hubbard says his system is clean and safe.
He installed a sprinkler system in the basement as a precaution.
Two other ducts run to his 82-gallon water heater and the clothes dryer, trimming his electric bills substantially.
A coil system heats the water, which runs through a pipe into the water heater.
Although the dryer still needs electricity to tumble, the hot air comes from the furnace.
"It'll take about two hours, but it'll dry a load of towels," he said.
When the sun isn't shining on his greenhouse, heat from the furnace streams into it. When the greenhouse gets too warm, a fan set into the wall between the greenhouse and the basement automatically comes on, pulling warm air out of the greenhouse and circulating cool air back in.
The Hubbards are about to move to Rocky Mount; now that they've both retired, they want to live in town. Real estate agents have been shuffling potential buyers in and out of the house, and all of them marvel at Hubbard's invention and the potential savings it would bring.
But Hubbard remains modest about it.
"I haven't invented anything; I don't have a patent," he said. "I just took a couple of things I knew from my trade and put them together to make an economical system."
After leaving the Army, Hubbard had a four-year apprenticeship in sheet-metal work. Then he went to work and eventually opened his own business, Hubbard Sheet Metal Works, which he ran for six years.
He sold the business to his brother, who still runs it.
The stove and sheet metal he used to build the furnace came from his brother.
"My brother was very impressed when he saw it," Hubbard said. "He said, `Do you want to go to work for me?' "
The new house he's having built will not have a wood-burning furnace.
Hubbard wants to devote most of his energy to his stained-glass making and wood-working.
But he can't do away with his wood stove altogether.
He'll have a free-standing one to warm his basement.
by CNB