Sort of new, need some advice...

So, after the masonry chimney caught fire last year, I decided to upgrade from the Timberline something or other to a QuadraFire Isle Royale. Also had to have a stainless steel flue installed. Had to pay $1K deductible for the chimney, and about $3400 for the stove and install. Due to a shoulder injury, my firewood processing was limited to finding 'standing dead' oaks to cut and split about a month before the cold hit. Anyway, long story short, I was having trouble with the stove running away. Using a flue thermometer, I was getting surface temperatures of over 900 degrees (thermometer only went to 900, and it was buried). Judging by other threads on here, that's not an uncommon occurrence for this stove. I did all the checks (dollar bill test, incense test) and came up with nothing. Called my dealer, and they sent out a tech who did all the same tests. To his credit, he seemed to know what he was doing, and seemed very knowledgeable. We built a fire and of course since he was there, it burned like a dream. His explanations were as follows: 1) my wood was too dry. I had a moisture meter and was getting readings between 5-10%. He said I should be shooting for 16-22%, otherwise the stage in which the wood is normally offgassing, it's already burnt. Kind of makes sense. He said that two years is too long to season. Pretty much the "sweet spot" for oak is between 9 and 18 months. Also said 2) wood was split too small. Most splits were about 3-4" in diameter. He recommended loading splits between 4-6" in diameter. Again, seems to make sense, but this severely limits the amount of wood I can load into the firebox. However, I have noticed that three 6" splits seem to burn about the same amount of time as 5 or 6 four inch splits. He added that the 3) flue thermometers typically aren't known to be accurate. He said that he's seen them as much as 400 degrees off on a fairly regular basis. Not sure I buy this one, but maybe. Anyway, I guess my question is does this sound right? I've never heard of wood being too dry. I understand that anything will burn under the right conditions, but should a $3k stove be that finicky?

On the same path, how much heat should I be able to get out of this thing? This is the largest stove QuadraFire offers, and I was expecting quite a bit of heat output. The old smoke dragon I had down there was going through between 6-8 CF of wood a day and kept the house at about 70 degrees. I'm burning just about the same amount (maybe more towards the 6 CF end) and I've yet to get overheated. Now, the house isn't the best for heating. There are three distinct sections of house. The one on the far east side is three stories (basement, main floor, second floor) at 500 square feet each. The stove is in the basement. The middle section is one story 30x32 on an uninsulated crawlspace. The far west end is 12x24 on an uninsulated crawl. And the wall and roof insulation isn't very good. There are plans for a deep energy retrofit across the next few years, during which everything will be upgraded. My concern is that the old "bad" stove seemed to push out quite a bit more heat than the EPA "good" stove. I've read just about every thread I can find with the words "Isle Royale" and I've seen everything across the spectrum from some people that can't seem to get any heat from them and others who claim they run them out of the house. I get that all applications are different, but does anyone have any pointers that they might be able to share? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

OK, so this sounds ridiculous even as I type it, but I've got a feeling I need to work on my burning "techniques". Honestly, I hadn't been doing much more than waiting until the fire burned down to coals and loading the next load on top. If the coals were really low, I'd open the air all the way until the charge was fully engulfed, then damp it back down to low air for longer burn times. To answer questions above, I haven't re split and re checked the moisture. The stuff I'm burning now was standing less than 20 days ago. I'm checking moisture on the cut ends and center of the split. The chimney is 26'. I don't have a key damper in the flue. Which reminds me this was actually something Billy (the tech) had mentioned as a possibility if I couldn't get it under control with better wood. Wanted to see if an alternative could be an outside air kit... wouldn't it basically do the same thing as a key damper? Slow the rate of air through the stove? Given that the basement is more or less open to the crawl with not much more than a bat of R13 between the two, I'm worried that the combustion is drawing in cold air from under the house. On a side note, what are the 'best burn practices' for the Isle Royale? The website and owners manual didn't offer much more than "open door, insert wood. Repeat as needed."

So, I found as dead standing oak to split, getting between 12-16% on the meter. And I split most of them at about 6" across. Seems to have calmed down the the fire, but I'm still not getting quite the heat I expected off of this stove. Now it seems that I can't get the surface temp over 350 (according to the magnetic thermometer. I can't find an IR that measures over 400 at any of my local stores.) And I did notice that I'm not getting any secondaries until late in the burn, probably about two hours in. With the last stack of firewood (the old dry stuff) they were firing almost immediately. That being said, the stove was usually getting reloaded with a surface temp of almost 600 degrees, and I'm reloading now at almost half that temp. I tried getting the temps up faster by opening the air, but didn't get a lot of reaction to the air controls until about two hours in, once the charge was already fully engulfed. Really starting to get discouraged here... really hoping that I'm doing something wrong. Any suggestions?

Thanks Dog! I'll give it a try. Also, thanks for the link. Ordered it last night. I've come to realize that if Amazon doesn't sell it, I probably don't need it. Someone else had suggested that in order to get the best burn, to not load a full charge of wood except when loading for over night. He recommended throwing in just one or two pieces (which would give me at most half a firebox full) during the day, and only loading it full for over night or extended burns. He claims this keeps it a small, albeit hotter fire, which keeps the stove temps in the "comfort range". He's using a somewhat modified old box stove, but the logic seems legit.

Thanks everyone for the input! I've been burning a mix of very seasoned oak with some stuff that is ranging between 20-30% moisture. I assume I may be expecting too much by thinking I'm going to be able to "cheat" ideal performance without having ideal fuel. I am getting better burn times and temps than I was, but still no where near what I was expecting when I purchased the stove, although I'm a lot more optimistic about getting peak performance if I can get some good seasoned fuel. One thing that does have me concerned is that I'm not getting sustained secondary burns. When I reload, I usually keep my primary air wide open and secondary tube damper open until the temp hits 500-600 (which I'm able to measure with my new IR thermometer from Amazon, thanks again, Dog!) and then I'll close up the tube damper and close down the air until the secondaries start shooting out the tubes, usually about 75%. I'll come back in 15-30 minutes and if the temp is still rising, I'll pull it down to 50%, and down to 25% if it's still rising 30 minutes later. What concerns me is that anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour after I "stabilize" the temp, the secondaries will go out. Temp stays fairly stable, dropping steadily (sometimes quickly, sometimes it takes 4-6 hours to get below 300) but I rarely see any secondary burn after the first hour or two of burning. Is this something that will change when I'm able to get some decent fuel? Or am I still not getting the air right? Again, I understand and accept that I may be expecting too much out of my hodgepodge of fuel (firewood, if you can find it, is up to $200 a cord in VA), but if there is any way to maximize performance that I'm not already doing, all ears are open. Thanks again!

Aaahhh! What am I doing wrong? I went ahead a bought a load of seasoned firewood thinking with "good wood" I could figure this thing out. I haven't. The load I got is all oak and locust, mostly measuring between 10-20% moisture, cut at 18", split to 4-6". When I start in the mornings (bout 4:30), the surface temp of the stove is down to less than 200, sometimes as low as 100. There are usually enough coals left that if I throw on some smaller splits and leave the air fully open with the secondary damper open, I'll have it up to 300-400 in about 20 minutes. If it's a work day, I'll load it about 75% full, leave the air almost fully open,close the damper and leave for work. My wife usually gets down to check it around 7:30, and it's rarely above 500, but still has a good bed of coals and maybe a few chunks of fuel left. From this point, she normally struggles the rest of the day to keep the temps above 500, although I don't think that's entirely the stove's fault. I gave her (another) tutorial yesterday on the air controls work, and when she should adjust them. On days I'm home, I follow the same basic routine, but I leave the air open and damper up until it gets to at least 500. Then I load it about half to 3/4 full, and set the air to 75%. 20-30 minutes later, I'll check it and if the temp is over 600, I'll damp the air down to 50%, so on and so forth. My aim is between 500-600 surface temp, which, as long as I'm down there every hour or two, I can maintain that. My concern is 1) I'm burning the same amount of wood as I was last year on the old smoke dragon and 2) seeing less heat. That is extremely discouraging considering I've got over $4000 invested in this set up, and I sold the old one for $200. Not to mention, on the old box, I used to load it full every morning, turn the dampers open 2 turns, and nobody looked at it again until lunchtime, when my wife would usually reload it full, close it back up, and it wouldn't get looked at again until I got home from work. And we were WARM! Now, I've feel like half my day is spent babysitting the stove, with no visible gains. I've done a lot of watching, and noticed that very rarely do I get more than one secondary (actually, tertiary according to Quadrafire) burn tube burning at one time. The only time I've ever been able to get more than two burning is about 20 minutes after a reload, when the new fuel is fully engulfed, if I throw the air way down to about 5-10%, the secondaries will really kick in. Normally, though, leaving the air closed that much chokes the fire down so much that the temps drop down to about 300, and the secondaries will stop. Other than that, the most I ever see burning is one. Also did some chimney watching as well. During start up, getting a lot of heat and some smoke coming out, which I assume is typical. What worries me is that when I hit my operating temp, the chimney is still blasting heat. It looks like the backwash of a jet engine coming out the top of my house. Granted, no smoke, no ash, but a steady blast of heat. I WANTED THAT IN MY @#$&%! HOUSE Is that where all my heat is going? Because I'm getting no where near 72000 BTU's inside the house. How do I get it back? I assumed since my surface temps had gotten back down where they belonged, I'd figured out the proper burn cycle, but apparently that's not the case. I started checking my flue temps, and noticed that they normally match the stove temp about 6" from the stove, and drop about 150% as I travel up the pipe to the elbow out of the house (about 3 feet). Is that normal? Here are some pictures. First one is just the set up in the basement. (I know, the wood cart is too close to the stove. That's some not so seasoned stuff I'm trying to dry. My regular supply comes from a wheelbarrow out of frame). Second pic is after my morning start up. I'm at 533 degrees, so, loaded half full, closed primary air down to about 50% and flipped the baffle down. I don't know if I've got a camera that will pick up the heat blast out of the chimney, but I'll try.

Grisu, that's exactly my concern, that I'm producing the heat, but blowing it out the chimney. The chimney is 6" stainless steel flex pipe surrounded by about an inch thick blanket that looked like fiberglass, but I assume was some something more heat resistant. Then surrounded by the existing masonry chimney. From the floor to the top is just about 29', minus about three feet for the stove, so, about 26' from the back of the stove to the top of the chimney. About three feet of pipe out the back of the stove to the elbow, which connects to the SS liner. I've never had a problem with draft. If anything, I've got too much (see beginning of this thread). I've tried damping down the air, but it always seems to choke out the fire. At the advice of Northwinds, I even tried taking the air down in 10-25% increments so as not to "shock" the fire into smoldering, but by the time I get down to what should be a stable burn (10-25% open), I've burned through most of my wood and need to reload. I'd considered a key damper about a foot above the stove to slow down the draft, but I can't really find anything published that says this is a good or bad idea. I also considered installing an outside air kit and putting the key damper before the stove. Figured this could benefit twofold, slow down the draft, and keep the combustion air from drawing in the cold outside air in our leaky old house. My concern, isn't that what the primary air control is for? Shouldn't that take care of "overdraft?" Any thoughts?

While I'm thinking about it, other IR owners, are you only supposed to open the baffle when loading from the top? While convenient for quick top offs, I've found that trying to do an overnight load from the top usually doesn't work too well. The baffle gets in the way of getting wood to the back of the box. Same if I load from the front. I can't get a good size piece of wood past the baffle without flipping it down. Is it OK to do a front load without flipping the baffle open? So far, I've not had any real problem with smoke spillage... I guess it's one of those "whatever works" situations, but I was curious what everyone else did.

I'm starting to think my moisture meter might be junk. Everyone says that the readings I'm getting are almost impossible. And just for curiosity's sake, I stuck it in some stuff that I cut and split back over Christmas leave. Read 30%. This was stuff that had green leaves on it in October, I cut and split in December. I know sap stops running in early fall, but would it be dry to the tune of 30% already? I burned some of it a few weeks back, and got a lot of hissing and popping, and it finally smoldered out once the seasoned stuff burned off. More or less what I expected. This was a $20 meter I picked up at the local big box. Only one I could find without going online. According to the built in calibrator, it's good. But... I don't know if I ever knew a piece of equipment to tell me when it was wrong. Anyone recommend a more reliable one? For a budget minded individual....