Overnight Burn Adjustments

Great question, I have thought of this a few times myself. Kinda waiting here to see what the experts might recommend.

For me, it really depends on my heating needs. Colder outside, the hotter I run the stove overnight and the shorter the burn time, but, the house stays up to temp.

When it's more mild out, I shut it all the way down, get about 9 hours out of it and decent temps inside. Usually go to bed with a 74 degree temp in the house, and wake up to 68 or so.

Just have to remember we're heating with wood and constant temps are hard to come by

I think it's kind of a balancing act and each load will be different. There's lot of variables like outside temp and how much wood and what type. you want to burn clean and hot but you also want hot coals in the morning.

My method, keeping in mind my 7X11" flu and a soapstone stove with a cat combuster, I like to have a nice coal bed in there before loading for the night. I save some big pieces of red oak during the day on the inside rack to use as the "over night wood". I place it in there and get a good flame roaring off it, engage the cat, and turn the air down to just under 1 on the dial...lever is perfectly horizontal. When I'm loading the stove for the evening it has a surface temp of around 350 to 500. By the morning when I wake up I turn the coffee maker on, go over to the stove and reload it. It usually has a surface temp of 200 to 300 degrees unless it was very cold out. Last night it got down to 7 degrees, so when I woke this am the stove had cooled to just under 200...maybe 175. It didn't take long to get it back to 400. This system works for me, but it took a few season of experimenting. The stove is a Woodstock Fireview. Merry Christmas!!

If your chimney draft is good, and the wood is dry, I would think that you would mostly be able to run on minimum air overnight, especially if it is very cold, and have a nice coal bed in the morning (8 to 10 hours later) for a relight. What you are struggling with sounds like what I was struggling with in my first and second year when I thought my wood was dry enough but it really wasn't. You may find that over time you have to fool with this less.

I'm tired of waking up to a bunch of coals in the morning. I think I'll try opening up the air more and being better about creating an air tunnel.

with my summit, now that winter is on, I keep the air control at about 25% and the damper in my pipe at about 25% open too. it seems to work pretty good for me. i'm burning 24-7 now and after the house gets up to temp, it stays pretty stable even if the fire gets low.

My thoughts are to adjust the stove to give you the burn time that you want between reloads. If the heat output falls a bit short, so be it.
There is nothing wrong with the furnace coming on briefly once or twice during the night to fill out the required heating needs.
The brief time that the furnace has to run will have little effect on your heating bill since the stove is doing most of the heating anyway.

I try and keep mine between 500 and 600 degrees for an overnight burn and have good coals in the morning. I think if you are seeing 600 or 700 degrees that is probably to hot for a long overnight burn. But I have no experience with your brand of stove.

I might suggest having a hot quick burn with your maple in the evening and then reload with all oak and locust on the coal bed. Pack the stove tightly with a round and a big split. Try to keep it below 550 and see what happens.

I hate for the furnace to come on at all. if it does, I start the second stove that is upstairs in the living room and go downstairs and throw a couple more chunks on the one downstairs.

JA600L said:

Merry Christmas all,
I am getting very good overnight burns but I am trying to dial it in perfect. If I all but kill the air I get coals in the morning, and if I don't wake up earlier the heat pump kicks on. If I leave the air half way open I get a great all night burn, warmer temps, but most of the coals are gone in the morning. I am thinking that I am better off burning with the air half way open. I reload at the point of waking up and going to work.

Even if it burns a little bit quicker I think I am getting more usable heat. Any thoughts?

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I don't like either way. Draft closed usually is not good. Draft half open should give too much air to the fire. More normal would be to have the draft open about 10-20% after the fire is established.

Dustin said:

Just have to remember we're heating with wood and constant temps are hard to come by

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my wardrobe in the stove room--short sleeves for the hot part of the burn and a warm sweater handy for the cool down!!