OK, BLAZE KING PEEPS!
I am here with some really basic, inane, "She's been running this wood stove for a couple of years already, why is she asking these questions?" questions with some comedy in the middle.
True story.
But questions first:
1. This is our first season burning a wood stove full time for heat. (Yes, we have an HVAC system but we have dried wood, which is cheaper than our coop supplied electricity and/or propane for the back up gas furnace.)
How often do you clean your stove if you are burning continuously?
We are at a full week and several days of full time burn here. It gets down to the 30s overnight, up into the 50s or even the low 60s during the day, but as always, wind chill is a factor as well.
The house is well insulated, so letting embers burn down in the floor of the stove is more than sufficient on many days.
So far we've had enough embers at the end of the day to simply add wood, open the bypass if the CAT is not fired up, and open the throttle (thermostat) until the new wood catches. As soon as the indicator shows "CAT range," close the bypass. We soon have a nice burn and we can turn it down to low before bed. The next morning, if the house is chilly, repeat. If not, cruise on coals in the bottom of the stove.
Yesterday I was thinking it was time to clean the stove because we had a couple of inches of ash and embers/coals in the bottom. I raked it out, it burned down some more, and it didn't seem like that much ash in the bottom of the stove. It still had good embers so I decided to hang onto that ember-rich ash for at least another day. Hey, BTUs are BTUs, right? And in this shoulder season, we can get by with adding so few to the house.
So I raked it out, put new splits on top, and I did have to add some newspaper and light the newspaper to get the new splits lit. Once they lit, they caught fire well. The remaining chunks in the ash bed lit up, and the ash bed lit up, and splits lit up, and soon the whole load was burning merrily away. So, at bed time, we turned it down to low and went to bed.
This morning I awoke early because I had to drive into an appointment in town.
CUE COMEDY HERE
Walked out into the living area, took a look at the stove, CAT temp was below active, so I opened the bypass, opened up the thermometer, and gave it a few minutes. Wandered back by a few minutes later, ashes and ember bed were lit up, the remaining pieces from last night's splits were lighting up, needle was pretty close to the active line for the CAT. I fetched a few splits from the porch, slooowly opened the loading door, added the splits, closed the door and latched it. The needle hadn't hit active CAT range yet so I left the bypass open. I left the thermometer opened all the way as well.
I walked to the back of the house to get ready to leave the house. All of the sudden, ALL HECK BROKE LOOSE.
Every fire alarm in the house went off. All at once.
I ran back out to the living area and smelled smoke. The stove was still lit, it was burning. The door was closed and latched. (The gasket is fine.) So where was the smoke coming from?
As best I could determine, it was coming from the stack seams. It was leaking out of the stack and sort of billowing up around the ceiling.
The firebox was lit, but there was a LOT of smoke in it.
????
The smoke alarms were still screaming, and I had to get the smoke out of the house. So I opened up all of the exterior doors and turned on the HVAC fan to move air. Thankfully there was a breeze coming off of the water and it blew the smoke out of the house in short order.
That in progress, I could *not* figure out what was happening or why. The first thought was chimney fire- I guess my brain went there because that's typically the greatest and most immediate fear. Wasn't likely- we cleaned the chimney before we started burning this year, we haven't been burning long enough this year to build anything up in the chimney, we open up the thermostat (plus a couple of doors) and do a "burn off" at least every couple of days because we realize we are burning on low a lot during this shoulder season.
All of the above transpired in a matter of moments, and unable to figure out why smoke was leaking out of the stack, not being able to figure out what was going on, I ran outside into a freezing morning with frost on the grass, barefoot in my flannel nightgown, to take a look at the chimney.
Dark smoke coming out of the chimney, no steam, no sparks, no fire. That was good.
My feet were cold.
Anyway, shortly thereafter, the new splits in the firebox lit up good, the chimney warmed up and started drawing, the smoke cleared from the firebox and stopped leaking out of the stack. Egad.
My guess is that there is/was too much ash in the bottom of the stove and, for lack of a better description, I had more of a smolder than an active fire at first. As soon as the fresh splits lit up enough to warm the chimney, the stove started drawing and everything was fine. The wood is very dry- 11% or below.
I had enough time to open the throttle and burn the stove on high for several minutes before I had to turn it down to leave for my appointment. The stove stabilized well and ran as expected. Everything was fine when I got home.
Tonight will not be so cold, so we are letting the coals burn down overnight. I'll shovel it out tomorrow.
Thoughts?
2. Bypass opens smoothly but I notice that when I move the handle to close the bypass, it feels just a wee bit "sticky" or balky right in the middle of the sweep of the handle, when the handle is pointed straight up. Continuing to move the handle through the sweep, the bypass "clunks" into place like it always has, the CAT engages like it always has. The movement of the handle through "high noon," right before the bypass closes on the latter half of the sweep, just feels a bit "sticky" to me. Maybe it's always been that way and I'm just now noticing it.
Thank you for reading through all of this.
Any cause for concern that you can see from any of the above?
