I hate my Napoleon 1450... suggestions for replacement

I think its your wood also. If the wood has too much moisture your gonna burn at too high of setting to compensate or the extra moisture.

Plus your gonna with the not so good wood burn the stove open longer time to get the fire going then when you close down the air you have little amount of the wood left to produce smoke gases to burn the secondaries.

Its the burning of the smoke gases that make the stove put out the extra heat that its rated at. Your not getting the stove up to heat fast and quick so as not to be burning up the main wood for a long burn that is hot , hot as your burning more smoke than burning the wood. Wood has to burn slow then the smoke produced from the slow burning wood is burned from the secondary tubes up in the top of the stove. If you get the stove top up to say a 700 temp then you cut the air back to let the main logs produce smoke and burn slower , you should see good secondary burning , its this secondary burning that helps the stove maintain stove top temps to sustain secondary burning at high temp as long as the logs can produce smoke gases.

What you need to do is get a stove full of hot coals, rake the coals to the front of the stove, so you can load a big split in the back of the stove all the way to the bottom of the stove so as not hot coals are under it. Then load another split on top of that back split so that the wood it almost up to the secondary air tubes but leave at least and inch or two of space. Then load a second row of splits one on top of the other like the back row but this second row maybe sitting on coals depends on how far forward you can rake the coals but thats fine its that back row laying all the way on the bottom that gives you a longer burn.

So now that you have 2 rows lets say 4 splits loaded, there should be a space up front of the stove in which you could load a third row of splits on coals but dont , what you want to do is load some small kindling on top of all the coals raked to the front . load small kindling and lots of it as much as you can with out it falling out the front if you open the door. Also if you want after the kindling for a better heat up put some rolled up news paper knots on top of the kindling. Thats taking a full page of news paper and rolling it up so you end up with a longs tube of the thin newspaper take this long tube bend it and tie it in a loose knot , this makes a newspaper knot that will burn very hot and fast to quickly heat up your flue and creates draw so as the stove gets more air. Those small kindling with the coals below them and paper on top should start to burn hot and fast to bring your stove up to temp very fast.

The idea here is to get the stove hot fast so as not to sit there waiting for ever for the stove to reach high temps. THus having still your full load of wood to smolder and create smoke to burn. Plus this kindling getting the stove very hot will enable you to light off the secondaries by backing down the air little bits at a time.

Remember this important point that its the stacked wood up to the secondaries that reduces the space up there and this reduced space is a smaller space in which to build the high heat in which to ignite the smoke gases.

What I do for an added effect is once the stove is hot and the kindling is burned down in front of the stove I will put another log on the third row space up by the door. that I left open for the kindling. I only do this if the stove is really hot as I dont want to open the door and kill my secondary burning. Its the really hot stove that lets me add another log up front. Then get the stove a rockin then slam it down for a slow burn.

Remember you want to get the heat up fast and quick so as to not spend time burning or using your main load to get the temps up especially in your case if your wood has moisture in it I would get the stove up to a hotter temp quickly to compensate.

Great!

scooby074 said:

It works!!

Thanks BKInsert

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Coupe of things:

1) if you want heat you need to load the stove - that pic shows 2 splits in there N/S?
2) are your baffles pushed all the way back? on ours the baffles tend to creep forward and I found each time I was getting a little cooler response I had to push them toward the back.
3) ave you checked that your thermometer is working? The magnetic ones are notoriously inaccurate by 100's of degrees. It may simply be too far off to be working for you at all. Either use the boiling water, over or get borrow an IR gun to check the accuracy.

I think we can figure this out and save you a bunch of money on a new stove.

With a decent load - I'd say at least 5-6 good sized split - fill it up on top of a nice bed of coals. Leave the air open all the way until it gets going nice - s/b 1/2 hr to 45 minutes. Once the stove top is between 550 and 600 turn it down to 1/2 for about 15 minutes. Stove top should probably get hotter an the secondaries should start spewing flames. Turn it down to fully closed and see if the secondaries are still spewing flames. At this point the top should get even hotter. Take pics at each stage and post.

On a separate topic - do you have a small fan blowing air into your stove room? It really does help circulate warm air out to the rest of the house. It takes a while for the air currents to establish and work, but in the end it really does work well. We have 1800 sqft upstairs and our far bedrooms keep a nice (actually a little too warm for sleeping sometimes).

Lastly - I saw that deal at CT and bought one of those meters - just haven't used it yet.

KB007 said:

Coupe of things:

1) if you want heat you need to load the stove - that pic shows 2 splits in there N/S?
2) are your baffles pushed all the way back? on ours the baffles tend to creep forward and I found each time I was getting a little cooler response I had to push them toward the back.
3) ave you checked that your thermometer is working? The magnetic ones are notoriously inaccurate by 100's of degrees. It may simply be too far off to be working for you at all. Either use the boiling water, over or get borrow an IR gun to check the accuracy.

I think we can figure this out and save you a bunch of money on a new stove.

With a decent load - I'd say at least 5-6 good sized split - fill it up on top of a nice bed of coals. Leave the air open all the way until it gets going nice - s/b 1/2 hr to 45 minutes. Once the stove top is between 550 and 600 turn it down to 1/2 for about 15 minutes. Stove top should probably get hotter an the secondaries should start spewing flames. Turn it down to fully closed and see if the secondaries are still spewing flames. At this point the top should get even hotter. Take pics at each stage and post.

On a separate topic - do you have a small fan blowing air into your stove room? It really does help circulate warm air out to the rest of the house. It takes a while for the air currents to establish and work, but in the end it really does work well. We have 1800 sqft upstairs and our far bedrooms keep a nice (actually a little too warm for sleeping sometimes).

Lastly - I saw that deal at CT and bought one of those meters - just haven't used it yet.

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How do you move the air to the far bedrooms?

we have a floor fan blowing air on low speed facing into the LR (where our insert is) and the rest is warm air currents naturally moving to occupy the space the cold air is moving out of. It took a while, but I finally had the epiphany that you simply can't move hot air, yo have to move the cold air.

KB007 said:

we have a floor fan blowing air on low speed facing into the LR (where our insert is) and the rest is warm air currents naturally moving to occupy the space the cold air is moving out of. It took a while, but I finally had the epiphany that you simply can't move hot air, yo have to move the cold air.

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Interesting that 1 fan does the trick of moving the hot air all the way to the back bedrooms.

I was checking one of your earlier posts on this stove?

https://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/forums/viewthread/68205/

Looks like that stove has alot of head room make sure you get wood stacked up high in that stove to reduce that head room, With a 18" by 18" fire box stack your wood north south.

If you have a good bed of coals with a box that size you can rake the coals over to one side of box for a north south load so lets say rake them right then load the left side of the box all the way up to the about 2 inches from the top of the stove. Then after loading the left side rake the coals to the left towards the center up against the wood you just loaded, as now your gonna load the stove on the right side all the way to about 2 inches from the top of box. So now you have wood on the left and right with some open area down the middle in which to pile alot of small kindling. to burn hot and fast and quickly raise the temp of the stove. you can throw some paper knots on top of the kindling to get things cooking fast.

My Performer stove gets too rockin at a flue pipe temp of 400 and the stove top temp will shoot up to 700- 800 once it gets going in about 15 minutes with a good load of small kindling on top of hot coals. Make sure you dont block your dog house air thats in the bottom of the stove usually in front of the door middle , below the door. So rake coals away from it a little. Once I reach those temps I will shut it all the way down in increments of 1/3.

Your loading this stove full and adding wood once your back to coals as just adding a log here of there is not good like your pics only has 2 logs in it.

I came home this afternoon and my son couldnt get a fire going as he loaded just 2 logs on a bed of coals. Too much open box space to build heat , you need the heat up in the top so you have to fill the box up to about 2 inches from the top to reduce that head space. If its north south like i described in this post you got most of the box filled on the sides with some space down the middle where all the coals were raked.

Lastly you can keep some space inbetween the logs say 1/2" to 1" will help air flow.

So the last pic looks like you're getting some nice secondaries (the flames spitting out from the centre towards the sides. It's hard to tell, but is that firebox stuffed full - it looks like you could have thrown another couple of splits in there, but it looks like a pretty good load none the less.

Where are you taking the STT? I used to take it about 6 inches in from the front left corner. Seem to recall a post about using that location. Is that a probe or surface thermometer on your stove pipe, and how high up from the top do you have it?

With a STT of 768 and the blower on low/med you must have felt some better heat? Did you get a chance to check the room temp after that (I know you said you were heading off to sleep...)

And I think I can probably speak for a good majority, we love pics (at least I do...)

Looks like your getting the hang of it. Some fine tuning, would be try and burn less of your big wood to get temps up by having an area of just coals to lay kindling on up the middle. Add to that you got to have the areas to the left and right sides that the wood is not on the coals. As if they are on the coals , they will be immediately burning. Thats not what you want. What you want is the burn to start up the middle for a north/south burn and the burn has to move from center to the outer sides but it will take some time as those outer splits are not on the hot coals and they are like 3 splits high. If you can get a perfect load setup with both sides loaded to the bottom no coals and most if not all the coals raked to the middle then on top of those coals stack a bunch of kindling to create this intense small fire burning up the middle with very little burning going on of those left and right side loads of splits. What you will see is that small area up the middle will heat the stove up rather quickly if its good dry kindling and lots of it. Its better to waste small kindling than your all night burn burn bigger splits. THis small area up the center North south is just that a small burn chamber area of intense heat that will get the secondaries going quickly. The loads of splits on the left and right side will starting burning on their surface facing to the inside up the middle and on their top surfaces up by the secondary burn when it gets going good. Your objective is how fast can I get this little burn chamber up the middle of the stove burning hot and quick , with out burning nothing more than the inward facing surfaces and top surfaces of those larger splits. Then your load will burn outward slowly all night and with the wood stacked high up to the secondaries and the small area up the middle it will be easy for the stove to maintain high heat and secondary burn temps in those areas. An important aspect is that the kindling has all the hot coals under it and no obstruction above it so it can burn really fast. I noticed putting bigger stuff on kindling slows down its ability get up to temp fast.

I 'm with kb007 that you could have got a couple more splits on their.

I get the feeling you have no small kindling, take some of your good dry splits that looks like they will split easy with a hatchet as they are straight and no knots. Make kindling of 1" or less. This will save you wood in the long run as you wont burn up the big splits trying to get the stove up to temp and with the longer burn times of the stove , will also save you wood.

I really doubt it's the wood. Some of my wood will sizzle a little and my stove heat this old drafty house just fine. Your stove gets up to temp so I don't see the wood as a problem.

Sounds more like the house just loses more heat than you were expecting. How is your attic insulation?

Did your pipe temps drop after you adjusted the air down from 1/2 to 1/4? You were over 500 on that pipe temp which is sending a ton of heat up the flue. If your pipe temps are running on the high end you may want to consider a pipe damper to keep more of the heat in the stove.

scooby074 said:

FirewoodMan said:

I really doubt it's the wood. Some of my wood will sizzle a little and my stove heat this old drafty house just fine. Your stove gets up to temp so I don't see the wood as a problem.

Sounds more like the house just loses more heat than you were expecting. How is your attic insulation?

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I have to agree about the wood. I should have my moisture meter tomorrow i hope.

Attic needs more insulation. There is probably 6" up there now. There are some government programs to improve your insulation. i plan on applying for some grants in the new year. I know im losing heat through the attic. I build up some major ice dams over the winter.

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I just added ~1000ft of 9" (R30) of unfaced insulation over the 6" I had up there in the attic, did this over the last two weeks.

Hintingdog1,
That was interesting how you set up the load.
I have just put 4 really small splits in the center and two big ones..one on each side n/s on my coals when the stove was almost out..my fault for not paying any atten.
Open air all the way and burn those up..by-pass open.
Then when they are just about burnt up spread the hot coals around then load the night load ..burn hot till my temps are up again and then shut the by-pass..adjust t-stat to where I want it ,then go to bed.
I think I'll try your way to compare..pretty cool.

6" of fibreglass prolly R20-25 maybe a bit more. I added a whack of cellulose couple of years ago up to R50 and it really helps retain the heat. How are your room temps with that thing running at 700+ STT?

It would usually not stay at that high temp for very long. Normally it should get up that high, then drop off to cruise at say 500+/- after a while once the air is closed off. The secondaries will burn for a while and eventually slow to give you a nice cruise. With a nice full firebox we were gettin 4-6 hours of good cruise out of the 1450, then it would drop down once it got to the caoling stage, but would still go another couple of hourse around 350-400, still making some nice heat.

To heat the other rooms you really need a fan blowing air into the room, this really does work! It takes a few hours to get other parts of the house warm, but it's the best way most people have found to easily move air.

I had a Napoleon 1400PL (same basic design as your 1450) and had a similar experience.

After reading the reviews I thought it would be a good stove to heat my house (a well insulated 2000sq ft. open layout ranch). I've had several non EPA wood stoves in the past so I wanted to try one out and the Napoleon sounded like it should do the job.

After a thorough evaluation period and trying several varriations (wood type, size, moisture content, load size, air control, etc.) I decided to go back to my tried and true Nashua non-epa woodstove which does a better job with out all the hassle.

The Napoleon stove just didn't deliver the amount of heat needed for the space I had. It took a fairly long time begin putting out heat. The secondary burning only occured in the first third of the burning cycle and didn't seem to help the heat output. The burn burn times weren't all that great (reloading was needed every 3-4 hours). For me new wasn't better.

So I'm very happy to have my old Nashua back again keeping me and my house very warm.

Damper Dan said:

I had a Napoleon 1400PL (same basic design as your 1450) and had a similar experience.

After reading the reviews I thought it would be a good stove to heat my house (a well insulated 2000sq ft. open layout ranch). I've had several non EPA wood stoves in the past so I wanted to try one out and the Napoleon sounded like it should do the job.

After a thorough evaluation period and trying several varriations (wood type, size, moisture content, load size, air control, etc.) I decided to go back to my tried and true Nashua non-epa woodstove which does a better job with out all the hassle.

The Napoleon stove just didn't deliver the amount of heat needed for the space I had. It took a fairly long time begin putting out heat. The secondary burning only occured in the first third of the burning cycle and didn't seem to help the heat output. The burn burn times weren't all that great (reloading was needed every 3-4 hours). For me new wasn't better.

So I'm very happy to have my old Nashua back again keeping me and my house very warm.

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Its funny, all of the non EPA wood burners who have upgraded to an EPA stove from a Nashua have a hard time giving up that stove. That must be a beast. Good thing you held on to yours.

Yep...once I tried the Nashua I knew it was going to be hard to beat it...and considering that I bought it for $50 this one's a keeper.