How Hot is too Hot

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sappy

sappy

Member
Jan 30, 2011
95
Vermont upper valley
I reloaded my stove today which was 20 degrees out and had good hot coals. I have a double wall pipe and it quickly got up around 500 outside temp. I did not have my 4 medium pices in there prob 7 minuets. I quickly turned in down to around 1 on the air on my fireview. Usually I get around 350 or so for the same outside temp on the doublewall pipe. It smelt plenty hot- I guess any pipe clleaning in a mute point-lol. The pipe soon came down to 200 after I engaged the cat, which is normal for me. Just thought that was supersonic for just baily sticking the wood in there.
 
Flue temps can get away pretty easy in the bypass mode. If I have a good bed of coals I usually don't need much air to get her going again on reloads.
 
Yea Todd I will have to keep that in mind next time. The stove top was still at 350 when I reloaded. I usually do at 300 or less. It was cold so there was a good draw.I usually am at 300-350 outside the double wall pipe just before engaging. My sweep tells me to add 100 degrees to this to see what the inside temp really. Does all this sound correct? A couple times I have smelt very lite creosol smell outside. I don't see anything in pipe but greyish-brown color and some flakes on he wall of the pipe on examination. Just trying to be safe and running things right. Gone through maybe 60 to 70 percent of a cord so far.
Thanks for any help.
 
Treacherous said:
Wow!... I dont' think I have ever seen my double walled more than about 200 degrees on the exterior. I was pushing pretty hard to get that temp as well.
Click to expand...

Theres a thread going on I have about this one...
My flue gas temp was about 950, and the exterior of my DVL pipe was about 200... My class A exterior was maybe 140-150.

If you in fact do have double wall pipe, I can only imagine what the inside must be! If it's a linear format your flue gas temps would be in the 2500 range. (500 = 2.5*200, 950*250)
That's highly improbable... especially since class A pipe is usually only rated to 2100 for 15 minutes @ chimney fire temps.

Are you sure you have double wall pipe?
 
sappy said:
Yea Todd I will have to keep that in mind next time. The stove top was still at 350 when I reloaded. I usually do at 300 or less. It was cold so there was a good draw.I usually am at 300-350 outside the double wall pipe just before engaging. My sweep tells me to add 100 degrees to this to see what the inside temp really. Does all this sound correct? A couple times I have smelt very lite creosol smell outside. I don't see anything in pipe but greyish-brown color and some flakes on he wall of the pipe on examination. Just trying to be safe and running things right. Gone through maybe 60 to 70 percent of a cord so far.
Thanks for any help.
Click to expand...

Wow Sappy, that should have woke you up! lol

Methinks your sweep is sadly wrong on his temperature estimation. Generally the figure double with single wall pipe. If our flue reaches 400 we are either dialing the draft down or engaging the cat. On cold starts we reach 400 we turn the draft to 50% and wait for the stove to reach 200. On reloads at 400 we engage the cat.

Reloading at 300 is not bad. During the cold of winter you'll probably be reloading around 350.
 
Wow all different takes on temps. Right now 4 hours later outside of double wall pipe at 150 and if I hit with poker all coals will be left and stovetop is at 287 with gun. If you go by manuel it says 10 to 20 minuetes usually I never go more than ten when reloading as to char off and get rid of any residual moisure. There is no way that this stove even dialed down to 1 would ever stay at 200 or less pipe temp as mentioned-hell it is almost that now and it is out for all intences-just coals,well 50 away anyway. My point is if waiting by manuel to season wood briefly it will get to 200 right quick, exp at the end.my stove reads 200 outside dialed down long after it has been set with combuster. I am speaking of reloading and cold starts. With that said it regularly will hit 300 plus outside which has worked good. 500 I have no idea why that got away butt 200 or so is what it cruises at always. Just saying
 
I dont think you are seeing different takes on the temps, if hass had 200 exterior and 950 probe and you had 500 exterior thats way too hot, one of you has screwy temps.
 
Get yourself a probe thermometer for that double wall pipe. The external temps will be slow to react and not very precise. It will also give you a more accurate way to know when you reach cat light off temps instead of waiting on the soapstone top to come up to temp.
 
oldspark said:
Hell 500 is getting up there on single wall pipe.
Click to expand...

Yeah, sounds hot but in the bypass mode the flames have a straight shot up the flue and she will rise quickly. I've seen 700 external temps a few times on my single wall before shutting her down. If he were to see a 500+ external temp on double wall while the cat was engaged I'd say there's a good chance of a chimney fire.

Reloading on an already hot fire doesn't really require long in the bypass mode, a few minutes may be all you need with good dry wood.
 
Todd said:
Flue temps can get away pretty easy in the bypass mode. If I have a good bed of coals I usually don't need much air to get her going again on reloads.
Click to expand...

I can see this on my Keystone in bypass mode. In my case, I am exiting the stove horizontal with the double wall stove pipe run into the chimney. I measure the surface temp of the stove pipe on the top of it, about 15ish inches out. Just from experience, we try to keep that temp at 300 deg or lower. In cat mode, it falls to about 200ish degrees. I've seen it shoot up to 450 degrees in bypass mode if I'm not paying attention. I hear a little crackling like a bit of creosote is lighting off, but as soon as I damper down or engage the cat, the temp falls quickly. When it hits 400 degrees, we get a bit of smell from the pipe. I try not to go there.

Bill
 
Bill that sounds about right. Normally I am around 300 to 350 sometimes tops in temp.my stove also goes to 200 while cruising with the cat engaged as well. Io will stop into woddstock soapstone tommorow as I run erronds and double check with them as well. Thanks for all ur help.
 
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