Howdy Gang! Second-season burner here learning the ins and outs of my Hearthstone Shelburne. Wanted to share some experiences, then ask a couple of questions at the end.
Temps FINALLY got down into the 20s this last weekend and I got to play around with some 24/7 burning for 3 straight days. My wood pile reserve (oak and pecan) started seasoning in spring of 2015, so I know the majority of my wood isn't near ready for good burning yet, but it's all I got, so I'm dealing with it.
Here's what I've been doing. Purchased a bunch of the Redstone eco-bricks from Tractor Supply, and I'll occasionally purchase some wood bundles from the gas station down the street. From all the great posts on here, I've gone the traditional loading route. On cold starts, I'll "pre-heat" the stove with some pieces of pallet wood, which usually gets it to about 150-200 degrees. Once all burned down, I then load 'er up...a nice big split of my slightly seasoned wood in the very back of my stove. Then I've usually got room for 2, maybe three more wood splits of varying size, then at the very front (and across the top if room permits), I stack in 2-3 of the eco bricks. Let it roll with air supply fully open. After about 45 minutes it approaches 350-400, then I start damping down. Around 60-75 minutes I'm at 5-10% open and my stove top is around 500. Tends to peak around 600.
Being that my regular wood isn't dry enough, I've found that having the much dryer eco bricks at the front and top of the stove allows them to catch first and really get a nice roaring blaze going through my secondary tubes before I start damping down. This allows my secondaries to kick in around the 450 mark and start burning the smoke and gas coming off of my wetter wood at the back of the stove. By the time the bricks have run their course on giving off a lot of heat (about 2 hours in and at peak heat on that load), the wetter wood has had a chance to dry out, and it slowly burns out as my stove gradually drops from 600 to 300 over the next few hours.
What I noticed on my 24/7 burning is that when repeating this from a warm start, the stove is pretty consistent at giving me 1 hour in the heating up phase at or below 400, about 3 hours in the 400-600 range, about 2 hours on the downswing in the 300-400 area, then, at about 8 total hours, things are pretty much burned up and I'm reloading at about 200 degrees. My load times have been at 7am, 5pm (after work, and a smaller load so it burns down by bedtime), and 10pm. Overall, I'm happy with the system, and I think performance will improve a little more as the quality of my wood improves over the years.
An unfortunate learning is that my stove has wound up being a little undersized for my house. The space is around 1400sqft at 2 stories, but it's very open (which makes it drafty) with tall ceilings and interior walls are all exposed brick...it's 18 inches thick of brick all the way around, but it's the only thing insulating the house. Last year I never had the confidence to burn 24/7, and I was ignorantly peeved when my nightly cold starts wouldn't get my house all warm and toasty after a 3 hour burn..."Hey, I bought a 1900sqft heat capacity stove and it's not heating my 1400sqft house!" Wah wah. Having the stove running 24/7 makes a huge difference...things in the house gradually start to absorb more of the heat, and with good air circulation, my upstairs heater set at 68 didn't kick on until about 4am in the morning when it was 25 degrees outside all night. While those results aren't mind blowing at all, I feel like I'm getting good performance from the Shelburne given the conditions that it's operating with.
Which, after much wind, leads me to a couple of questions. Everyone says it's best to let a load of wood burn out completely before reloading...
A) Is there any HARM in adding more wood mid-cycle? For instance, I'm home Saturday and Sunday all day and it's 15 degrees outside. While I'm awake sipping coffee and watching ESPN Gameday (Go Razorbacks!), I want more hours of heat in the 400-700 degree range. The only way I can do that is throwing on a split or two every 1-2 hours when the stove drops to about 400. Harmful in any way? Too much demand on my stove to operate at high temps for long periods of time?
B) I keep reading that creosote buildup is worse at temps under 400. That means that when burning 24/7, anywhere from 12-15 hours out of the day are going to be at temps under 400. Oh poop? Is this par for the course? Should I do something regularly to help combat this? Such as running my air supply open and really heating up my chimney liner at least once a day? Every time I reload?
That ends my journal entry for the season...hopefully some newbies will be able to glean some usable information from it. Burn on, brothers!
Temps FINALLY got down into the 20s this last weekend and I got to play around with some 24/7 burning for 3 straight days. My wood pile reserve (oak and pecan) started seasoning in spring of 2015, so I know the majority of my wood isn't near ready for good burning yet, but it's all I got, so I'm dealing with it.
Here's what I've been doing. Purchased a bunch of the Redstone eco-bricks from Tractor Supply, and I'll occasionally purchase some wood bundles from the gas station down the street. From all the great posts on here, I've gone the traditional loading route. On cold starts, I'll "pre-heat" the stove with some pieces of pallet wood, which usually gets it to about 150-200 degrees. Once all burned down, I then load 'er up...a nice big split of my slightly seasoned wood in the very back of my stove. Then I've usually got room for 2, maybe three more wood splits of varying size, then at the very front (and across the top if room permits), I stack in 2-3 of the eco bricks. Let it roll with air supply fully open. After about 45 minutes it approaches 350-400, then I start damping down. Around 60-75 minutes I'm at 5-10% open and my stove top is around 500. Tends to peak around 600.
Being that my regular wood isn't dry enough, I've found that having the much dryer eco bricks at the front and top of the stove allows them to catch first and really get a nice roaring blaze going through my secondary tubes before I start damping down. This allows my secondaries to kick in around the 450 mark and start burning the smoke and gas coming off of my wetter wood at the back of the stove. By the time the bricks have run their course on giving off a lot of heat (about 2 hours in and at peak heat on that load), the wetter wood has had a chance to dry out, and it slowly burns out as my stove gradually drops from 600 to 300 over the next few hours.
What I noticed on my 24/7 burning is that when repeating this from a warm start, the stove is pretty consistent at giving me 1 hour in the heating up phase at or below 400, about 3 hours in the 400-600 range, about 2 hours on the downswing in the 300-400 area, then, at about 8 total hours, things are pretty much burned up and I'm reloading at about 200 degrees. My load times have been at 7am, 5pm (after work, and a smaller load so it burns down by bedtime), and 10pm. Overall, I'm happy with the system, and I think performance will improve a little more as the quality of my wood improves over the years.
An unfortunate learning is that my stove has wound up being a little undersized for my house. The space is around 1400sqft at 2 stories, but it's very open (which makes it drafty) with tall ceilings and interior walls are all exposed brick...it's 18 inches thick of brick all the way around, but it's the only thing insulating the house. Last year I never had the confidence to burn 24/7, and I was ignorantly peeved when my nightly cold starts wouldn't get my house all warm and toasty after a 3 hour burn..."Hey, I bought a 1900sqft heat capacity stove and it's not heating my 1400sqft house!" Wah wah. Having the stove running 24/7 makes a huge difference...things in the house gradually start to absorb more of the heat, and with good air circulation, my upstairs heater set at 68 didn't kick on until about 4am in the morning when it was 25 degrees outside all night. While those results aren't mind blowing at all, I feel like I'm getting good performance from the Shelburne given the conditions that it's operating with.
Which, after much wind, leads me to a couple of questions. Everyone says it's best to let a load of wood burn out completely before reloading...
A) Is there any HARM in adding more wood mid-cycle? For instance, I'm home Saturday and Sunday all day and it's 15 degrees outside. While I'm awake sipping coffee and watching ESPN Gameday (Go Razorbacks!), I want more hours of heat in the 400-700 degree range. The only way I can do that is throwing on a split or two every 1-2 hours when the stove drops to about 400. Harmful in any way? Too much demand on my stove to operate at high temps for long periods of time?
B) I keep reading that creosote buildup is worse at temps under 400. That means that when burning 24/7, anywhere from 12-15 hours out of the day are going to be at temps under 400. Oh poop? Is this par for the course? Should I do something regularly to help combat this? Such as running my air supply open and really heating up my chimney liner at least once a day? Every time I reload?
That ends my journal entry for the season...hopefully some newbies will be able to glean some usable information from it. Burn on, brothers!
