Hi,
My apologies in advance for breaking any newbie rules. I appreciate any help anyone can give. I'm not even positive this is a '69-'88 stove.
I just rented a house in the foothills with a wood stove in the living room, and I'm having trouble both identifying and operating it correctly.
Here's the stove:
The decorative piece at the bottom says "Mountain Fire", but I can't identify it. I've looked everywhere on the thing and can't find any other identifying marks. There's no ash pan and no flue damper. The firebox is lined with bricks, and there's a simple baffle below the flue opening.
The stovepipe goes straight up to the ceiling where it connects with the rest of the chimney system, which, as far as I can tell, goes straight up with no bends. The final exhaust seems to have plenty of clearance from the rest of the roof, and the stove seems to have no problems at all on this end.
The door shuts very tight, but the fire always extinguishes itself when the door is completely shut. The intake lever/valve/handle (?), which is on the rear of the stove seems to be doing nothing (though I certainly may be doing something wrong). Here's a view from the right-hand side at the rear:
You can see it in the "L" position, but even at the "H" position (or anywhere in between), and even when the stovepipe is hot (above 200˚F), the fire always extinguishes itself when shutting the door tight.
I've been leaving the door open a crack (with a fireplace gate around the opening) to allow a fire to burn, but it burns hot and fast with seasoned hard wood—way too fast to be economical, it seems. I have a CO detector that's never gone off, but—though I enjoy the smell of a fire and no smoke is ever visibly coming out of the cracked door, the strong smell of the fire makes me a bit nervous. I haven't left a fire smoldering overnight because of it.
Does anyone have any idea what kind of stove this is and perhaps why the intake isn't helping?
My apologies in advance for breaking any newbie rules. I appreciate any help anyone can give. I'm not even positive this is a '69-'88 stove.
I just rented a house in the foothills with a wood stove in the living room, and I'm having trouble both identifying and operating it correctly.
Here's the stove:
The decorative piece at the bottom says "Mountain Fire", but I can't identify it. I've looked everywhere on the thing and can't find any other identifying marks. There's no ash pan and no flue damper. The firebox is lined with bricks, and there's a simple baffle below the flue opening.
The stovepipe goes straight up to the ceiling where it connects with the rest of the chimney system, which, as far as I can tell, goes straight up with no bends. The final exhaust seems to have plenty of clearance from the rest of the roof, and the stove seems to have no problems at all on this end.
The door shuts very tight, but the fire always extinguishes itself when the door is completely shut. The intake lever/valve/handle (?), which is on the rear of the stove seems to be doing nothing (though I certainly may be doing something wrong). Here's a view from the right-hand side at the rear:
You can see it in the "L" position, but even at the "H" position (or anywhere in between), and even when the stovepipe is hot (above 200˚F), the fire always extinguishes itself when shutting the door tight.
I've been leaving the door open a crack (with a fireplace gate around the opening) to allow a fire to burn, but it burns hot and fast with seasoned hard wood—way too fast to be economical, it seems. I have a CO detector that's never gone off, but—though I enjoy the smell of a fire and no smoke is ever visibly coming out of the cracked door, the strong smell of the fire makes me a bit nervous. I haven't left a fire smoldering overnight because of it.
Does anyone have any idea what kind of stove this is and perhaps why the intake isn't helping?
Hopefully once I can borrow a vacuum, and if begreen (below) is right about the thermostatic air control, this should solve the mystery of air intake at least.
