Can you really over fire a newer "modern" woodstove to the point of danger?

To answer the original question . . . just with my personal experience in the "business."

Anything is possible . . . so yeah, I suppose overfiring the stove . . . especially on a regular basis . . . could lead to a bad fire . . . most likely it would not be a case of the woodstove melting or splitting apart and spilling out a load of hot embers on to the hearth, but rather exceeding the ignition temp of nearby combustibles . . . just a guess on my part.

As surmised . . . chimney fires, combustibles too close to the stove, improper disposal of ashes, bad burning practices, etc. are more likely to result in a fire . . . I would say chimney fires and improper disposal of ashes being what I have seen mostly in my career as the leading cause of woodstove related fires.

And . . . as many, many members have said . . . to me . . . my biggest concern with overfiring would be turning my $2,500 heating appliance into an over-priced boat anchor by damaging it to the point where it could not easily be fixed.

Hey! You scratched my anchor!

firefighterjake said:

my biggest concern with overfiring would be turning my $2,500 heating appliance into an over-priced boat anchor

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That would be a drag.

I had an over fire in a late 90,s secondary combustion steel plate stove ( no different than current models couple secondary pipes with insulation board above) The stove itself never turned red or the paint white but the double wall flue pipe to the ceiling transition into a class A was glowing a very faint red that you could only see with the lights off ( in a trailer home) . An inspection at a later date showed that the top of the fire box had warped and cracked . This being internal and not readily accessible with out cutting the outside top of stove loose. to get at it. The intense heat blistered the paint on the adjacent walls ( corner install to spec.) Scared the living h out of me. It was also when I found out that these things were not air tight as opposed to the marketing description of the time as closing both dampers did little for a good 30 minutes or so. So in answer to your question , Yes, I believe it is possible, although it would be very rare, many conditions would have to be just right . still have that stove, not in service, on bucket list to repair.

branchburner said:

The worst-case scenario I can think of, as far as max temps, would be a full stove with the ashpan door left open.

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This previous post comes to mind: https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/overfire.102759/#post-1324118

GENECOP said:

Curious about the testing that the manufacturers perform. They must have to test for a meltdown limit.....it would make an intersting video...

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Interesting, but has anyone ever seen a manufacturer's test results in print for any EPA stove's meltdown limit?

If they would fore go the expense and time to test a stove to the max limit, then I would think they would publish those results in the stove's manual. No?Yes?

Even if they did test their stoves I don't imagine they would want to put that info out in public for liability reasons.
People would think,"hey I can get this thing up to 2100* before I start to worry."

I know a guy with a coal burning insert who told me when he turns the lights out to go to bed on a cold night he can see the front glowing dark red.

Wouldn't it be great to have the job of running products just to see how much they can stand? Getting paid to break stuff. Heck I do that most weekends over the summer.

TradEddie said:

Personally I'm not worried about burning my house down, I'm worried about irreversibly damaging an expensive stove.

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+1

I think if your stove/gaskets/chimney are all in good shape and working properly, it shouldn't happen.

But you could have an air leak and not know about it, which is why stovetop thermometers are so handy.

Panic is what happens when you are in the kitchen and hear the magnetic thermometer you have attached to the stove pipe 4 inches above the stove top clanging to the hearth due to loss of magnetism from an overfire. This was due to the fact that I had forgotten I left the air wide open while restarting a fire. Opening the door wide open doesn't seem like the right thing to do when this happens as the fire will really roar and you will singe your eyebrows from the heat that comes out, but it actually cools the temperature down enough that you can close the door again with the air shut down. Somebody here probably knows what temperature causes a magnet to fail.

And these stories make me even happier that I modified my air inlet to allow me to completely close the supply if i ever needed to. I did it only to reduce air/heat loss when it's not in use, but it's nice to know I can snuff out a fire if I need to.

TE

BrotherBart said:

UL cert testing pretty much does that. Stoking it till hell wouldn't have it. Think 1,400 degrees here to see what the clearances need to be in a worst case.

https://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/articles/stove_wall_clear

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Still, when you gonna find us the link for the video of testing...That's what I want to see, the stove that looks best at 1,400 is the one I'll get

I'm an absolute newb to burning wood, don't even have a stove yet. But this question intrigues me a bit.

But I think if you can fire an electric oven at 500 degrees for an hour with wood cabinets butted right next to it, one would think wood stoves would be safer, if clearances are met. Both items have the sole purpose of getting hot and cooking/burning things.

It's amazing to me, we worry about wood stoves, when cooking ovens probably cause many more fires per year.

You don't have to get the melting point of cast iron to have a fire issue. Warpage bending and breaking of components can occur at a much lower temperature. So it's unlikely that your stove will actually melt. You will definitely cause a dangerous situation of you use flammables in the stove such as lighter fluid, kerosene, or other accelerants. Other than that I think under normal operations, you'll be ok.

As a hobby welder, I've been very close to molten metal and caught various things on fire with just heat and not flames. It takes a lot of heat at very close proximity or even contact to actually start something very burnable on fire. A tile surface, several inches away, not easy at all to burn.

It is however very easy to melt your stove and damage it from overfire.

MJFlores said:

Hi all, this is just a reality check question and not meant for anyone to get careless as a result of the answers, or to fight with those of differing opinions. I'm very careful during the whole process of wood burning, and last night as I was getting the stove ready for a long burn until am I began wondering. Can you really over fire a stove?...and I mean really to the point of a dangerous melt down / house fire as a result? My gut says yes you can, but again are these stoves of ours able to handle far hotter temperatures than what we think they can? I know cast iron does have a melting point, and you can easily damage internal parts due to running a stove too hot but, has anyone heard of anyone having a house fire due to a stove melt down? I can honestly say I haven't. All the house fires I've heard of were a result of chimney fires, or careless disposal of ashes from the stove while cleaning. Part of me thinks that as long as the door is securely closed, and the air is cut back, you're at least safe from anything too crazy happening. My comfort burn range in my Fireview is 500 to 550...when it gets over 600 I begin to get a little worried, the very few times it got near 700 I was very worried and was turning the air down to nip it in the bud. It's funny how simple numbers of a 10 dollar stove top thermometer can make you get nervous....but is the nervousness really founded? Again, I'm asking,...in a modern woodstove with the door securely closed and the air cut back (not wide open) can an over fire happen that would result in catastrophic stove melt down? Has anyone ever experienced this first hand?

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MJ, we have the same stove as you do. Rest easy. We regularly run our Fireview between 600 and 700 degrees and there is never a problem.

But I have to tell you a story that I've told on this forum before. One day I came home to find my wife standing by the stove and looking really worried. As I walked into the stove room, she opened the bypass and then watched the thermometer. Then she closed the bypass but stayed right there. I naturally asked what she was doing.

As it turned out, the stovetop thermometer was going to 700 degrees and then she'd open the bypass until the temperature dropped and then would again close it. I looked and sure enough, the draft was fully closed. I told her to open it and she about flipped! She thought that would really send the stove into spasms. So, I calmly set the draft to 1 and told her to watch the thermometer. To her amazement, the temperature dropped to about 660 or thereabouts (don't remember for sure the actual temp). She had simply forgot that it is not good to close the draft.

The way the Fireview will work for you is that the further you close the draft, the hotter the stove top will get (natuaraly providing there is enough wood burning). However, if you were to use an IR gun, you would find that if the stove top was at, say, 650, the sides and front of the stove would be much cooler.

Many times you can reach high temperatures in this stove with very little draft. We've got our stove to 700 with no flame showing at all! But, if you run the stove so that you have flame, then the stove top will be a bit lower but the sides and front will be hotter. So, for example, when we are having below zero temperatures, we tend to run with a bit more flame in the stove which gives us more overall heat.

So fear not, running your stove at 600 or 650 will do it no harm at all. If you want maximum heat, give it a bit more air. If you want a slow cat burn, then dial it down.....but not too far. On our stove, we find about .75 or a little below the setting of 1 gets us a nice steady burn. Yours could be the same or slightly different depending upon the installation and the fuel.

There are some extremely dumb people out there so i say yes anything is possible given the right type of person. I've seen people do some really stupid things including burning old plastic type flooring in their wood stoves. Darwin's theory of evolution is alive and well. Ha ha.