Last year was my first year burning. I often used too much or too little air and usually cleaned my glass once a week. I actually said that my stove's airwash wasn't very good, because even when I was running 600 degree fires the glass wouldn't self-clean very much. I also used questionable wood.
This year I'm burning 4-6 month seasoned pine & 1 year seasoned red oak. I haven't cleaned my glass in 5 weeks - every time it gets a bit dirty, I just run a healthy fire and it cleans itself up nicely. I'm emptying my ash once every 2-4 weeks with almost round-the-clock burning and a medium sized firebox.
And I'm using far less wood and getting far more heat out of the existing wood. Right now I look to my left and I see a firebox at over 600 with almost no visible flames on a pile of pine - except tons of secondaries at the ceiling of the firebox.
The biggest things I learned besides the importance of seasoned wood:
1. The more air your firebox sucks in, the less heat your house retains. Get the firebox at 450-500 with a good load of wood, then shut the air down as much as is healthy for it. As long as it's not smoldering, it's giving off more net heat and consuming less wood.
2. Allow full burn cycles between reloads whenever possible. Let the stove get down to 350-400 before re-loading. Feel free to close the air down during a coaling stage so that heat is retained inside the stove.
3. Use the blower minimally when the stove is heating, and maximally when the stove is cruising or running hot. You don't want to make the stove work hard when it's getting up to temp but you DO want to suck the heat off of it once it's in "the zone".
...
I'm heating a 2200 square foot house with alot of questionable wall insulation/sealing using a 2.2 cubic foot firebox insert in a poor layout/external chimney. And so far, it's capable of heating the house down to 25 degrees outside temp and keeping it "warm enough". And that's been enabled by these learnings.
Joe
P.s. "Warm enough" is 65 in the bedroom/far reaches of the house & 75 in the stove room. I find myself guzzling water when I spend hours in this room.
This year I'm burning 4-6 month seasoned pine & 1 year seasoned red oak. I haven't cleaned my glass in 5 weeks - every time it gets a bit dirty, I just run a healthy fire and it cleans itself up nicely. I'm emptying my ash once every 2-4 weeks with almost round-the-clock burning and a medium sized firebox.
And I'm using far less wood and getting far more heat out of the existing wood. Right now I look to my left and I see a firebox at over 600 with almost no visible flames on a pile of pine - except tons of secondaries at the ceiling of the firebox.
The biggest things I learned besides the importance of seasoned wood:
1. The more air your firebox sucks in, the less heat your house retains. Get the firebox at 450-500 with a good load of wood, then shut the air down as much as is healthy for it. As long as it's not smoldering, it's giving off more net heat and consuming less wood.
2. Allow full burn cycles between reloads whenever possible. Let the stove get down to 350-400 before re-loading. Feel free to close the air down during a coaling stage so that heat is retained inside the stove.
3. Use the blower minimally when the stove is heating, and maximally when the stove is cruising or running hot. You don't want to make the stove work hard when it's getting up to temp but you DO want to suck the heat off of it once it's in "the zone".
...
I'm heating a 2200 square foot house with alot of questionable wall insulation/sealing using a 2.2 cubic foot firebox insert in a poor layout/external chimney. And so far, it's capable of heating the house down to 25 degrees outside temp and keeping it "warm enough". And that's been enabled by these learnings.
Joe
P.s. "Warm enough" is 65 in the bedroom/far reaches of the house & 75 in the stove room. I find myself guzzling water when I spend hours in this room.
