Just found this site a few days ago, and really appreciate its information and expert advice.
This is our first experience with a wood stove, which we finally bought to plug up the inefficient pre-fab fireplace in our living room. Our dealer did a site inspection of our home, and recommended the Avalon Rainier insert, which he said could heat our entire house, and definitely would keep the living room toasty (where we spend most of our time). Our house is a newer insulated 1700 sq. ft. home with dual pane windows and 10 foot ceilings. Although we have no previous experience to compare by, this Avalon Rainier insert does not seem to be heating our house as we expected.
We've followed our dealer's instructions on how to build a fire, and start with small kindling and some pallet wood pieces to get the stove hot, then add some splits of seasoned oak when there is a bed of coals (after about a half hour) to get a roaring fire going. However we keep having to add more oak and kindling every half-hour to an hour to keep a flame going, or else the oak just turns glowing red with no flame. It seems to take a while to get any rise in temperature in the living room where the stove is. The living room temperature starts at 59 degrees, and it takes over 3 hours to get even a 4-degree rise in temperature, to 63. Yesterday we had the stove going good for most of the day, but it took about 6 hours for the the living room to finally reach 67, and never got any warmer. We have the living room ceiling fan on low speed to circulate the air, but the rest of the house does not even get warm, and perhaps only increases a couple degrees at most (brr!). We’re considering getting a blower, to see if that might help push the hot air into the room and the rest of the house.
However, since the stove was installed, we've always been hearing a low wooshing noise coming from the firebox, but we just figured that it was a natural convection noise of the fire. Today it has been rather windy and stormy, and the wind noise coming from the firebox is louder - almost like a howling wind noise. When we open the stove door, the noise stops. Is it possible that there is an air leak in the door seal? We feel that we are burning a lot of wood (almost the same as we did in our open fireplace before), and we are getting a lot more ash than our dealer told us we would (we have to clean it out every couple of days).
We appreciate any suggestions or advice, since we are complete newbies at heating with a wood stove. Thank you for your help.
This is our first experience with a wood stove, which we finally bought to plug up the inefficient pre-fab fireplace in our living room. Our dealer did a site inspection of our home, and recommended the Avalon Rainier insert, which he said could heat our entire house, and definitely would keep the living room toasty (where we spend most of our time). Our house is a newer insulated 1700 sq. ft. home with dual pane windows and 10 foot ceilings. Although we have no previous experience to compare by, this Avalon Rainier insert does not seem to be heating our house as we expected.
We've followed our dealer's instructions on how to build a fire, and start with small kindling and some pallet wood pieces to get the stove hot, then add some splits of seasoned oak when there is a bed of coals (after about a half hour) to get a roaring fire going. However we keep having to add more oak and kindling every half-hour to an hour to keep a flame going, or else the oak just turns glowing red with no flame. It seems to take a while to get any rise in temperature in the living room where the stove is. The living room temperature starts at 59 degrees, and it takes over 3 hours to get even a 4-degree rise in temperature, to 63. Yesterday we had the stove going good for most of the day, but it took about 6 hours for the the living room to finally reach 67, and never got any warmer. We have the living room ceiling fan on low speed to circulate the air, but the rest of the house does not even get warm, and perhaps only increases a couple degrees at most (brr!). We’re considering getting a blower, to see if that might help push the hot air into the room and the rest of the house.
However, since the stove was installed, we've always been hearing a low wooshing noise coming from the firebox, but we just figured that it was a natural convection noise of the fire. Today it has been rather windy and stormy, and the wind noise coming from the firebox is louder - almost like a howling wind noise. When we open the stove door, the noise stops. Is it possible that there is an air leak in the door seal? We feel that we are burning a lot of wood (almost the same as we did in our open fireplace before), and we are getting a lot more ash than our dealer told us we would (we have to clean it out every couple of days).
We appreciate any suggestions or advice, since we are complete newbies at heating with a wood stove. Thank you for your help.
