Too Hot!

you could swap your stove for my crappy pellet stove.

Uhhhh, I'm sure I speak for all men (including your husband) when I say "wear less clothing".

I'm guessing if it's too hot, quit burning
Could cut vents above your doorways to let the heat migrate away from the room it's in.

I personally don't worry too much about flue temps. Last night my burner top temp was 700, and the flue temp was somewhere around 350-400 (as far as I could get my IR gun pointed).
I'd burn it for a couple weeks then check the chimney.

I do not know much about your stove but first thing i would do is turn the ceiling fan up higher.

Is that an old stove or newer? When it warms a bit, i try and get long burn cycles. Load the stove in the AM, get it cooking, close damper/bypass, cut air back to get good secondary burn, eventually cut air back all the way and let it go for a long while - like it was an overnight burn. Or you could just do one burn a day.

As for you chimney ppipe, not sure why it is so cool. is it single wall or double wall? And where are you taking the temp?

That's part of the "art" in woodburning, you are now the thermostat in your house. You got to anticipate your heating needs
based on the outdoor temperature, wind, sunshine, etc.. Some days you only need one short hot fire, some days you have to
let it blaze all day. If you have one hot room and the rest of the house is cold then you have a whole different issue. Try a floor
fan blowing from the cool end of house towards the stove.

Definitely blow cool air towards the stove. Set up a convection loop - best results from having the fan pretty far away from the stove but pointed in its direction.

We move our warm air w/ a ceiling fan over the stove and a box fan on the floor in the next room - both on low.

Oh and... uh... what Crash11 said. :cheese:

My stove is a bit oversized for my house. I'm still trying to perfect operating it so that it doesn't bake us out too.

Heating with wood won't give you nice even heat like a gas/oil furnace will, and rather involves wider temperature swings within the house.

You can control heat output a few different ways...

1) Burn in loads. Load up the stove, light it, and let it burn. Don't add a split or two here or there. Let the entire load burn down to coals, and let the stove start to cool some before reloading. Don't reload until you need to add more heat to the house. As you continue to operate your stove, you'll get a better feeling for what the temperature in the stove room needs to drop back to before you reload.

2) Vary the size of the loads according to what you need from the stove at that time. If you don't need a lot of heat, build a smaller fire. A smaller fire won't burn as long, and will put less heat into your house. If you pack the firebox full, you'll get a lot of heat, and a long burn. This might be OK for an overnight burn when the stove room won't be occupied. The higher temp will help the house coast through the night until you can reload in the morning. During the hours that you'll be in the stove room/kitchen, you'll want smaller fires.

3) Adjust the size of the splits that you're using. Another thing you'll get the hang of over time is how large/small to make your splits when you're processing or ordering your wood. It's hard to build a smaller fire if you only have large splits, and it's hard to get overnight burns if you have small splits.

4) Different types of wood will put out different amounts of heat. For instance, Oak, Black Locust, or Osage (to name a few) are pretty dense. They produce a lot of heat, and burn for a long time. Softwood like Pine burns hot, but burns quickly, and per load, will produce less total heat energy. There are many types of trees in between. With some trial and error over time, you might find that certain types of wood work best for you.

5) Quality fuel is also important. Unseasoned wood can cause two problems... on one hand, if you NEED lots of heat output, you wont get as much heat out of green wood as you do good dry wood. Some energy will be lost to boiling out the excess moisture in the wood. On the other hand, green wood also will make your stove harder to operate. You'll have to burn your stove hotter in order to keep it from smoldering so that it burns as cleanly as possible. It has been my experience that burning green wood reduces the total range over which you have control of the stoves output.

In the end, the answer will come back to experience. Different house designs, different stoves, and different chimney systems make each stove operate a little differently. Over time, you'll get used to how your system works. Even varying weather conditions can impact how your stove will operate from day to day.

Experiment with your stove and see how it does! It will probably take a couple seasons before you really get it down to a science.

-SF

Welcome to wood burning and all that you will learn.

My first insert was too small and didn't meet our heating needs on days below 40*. I got rid of it last winter and replaced it with one that is much bigger and can easily heat us out of our 'insert' room.

I much prefer having one that is too large.

I have learned how to build smaller fires that heat things up and then the coals burning down keep us in the mid-70's all day until the evening when I build another smaller fire. ( BY smaller I use about 3 or 4 smaller splits that burn hot - 600* - for a couple of hours and then begin to cool down.) This I do on days that are in the 40's on up..

On the colder days I load up the stove and let it burn and reload when insert temp. is in the 300* range. Burn times vary depending on the wood and the temps., both inside and outside. I put a small Vornado fan in my daughter's room at the far end of our house. It is facing the front of the house and it gets the air circulating to the back of the house though it still is pretty cool back there due to doorways and hallways. The fan keeps the insert room temp. in the mid-70's too.

IF it gets too hot I have the advantage of turning down the blower on my insert which prevents the warm air from blowing into the room - more of the heat goes up the chimney.

Good luck. I am sure once you get the hang of burning and heating with wood you will be very glad that your stove is 'too big'.

;-)

Nothing wrong with a doorway fan. That is what i turn on when my downstairs in my split level gets too hot. I don't even need to put the fan on during the coldest spells. The ceiling fan on higher will definitely move more air. I know folks say to just move the cold air to the warm but i think it is best to try and figure out the natural air circulation in the house - perhaps whatever the ceiling fan is inducing - and go from there. BTW - the ceiling fan will create a different dynamic when blowing up V blowing down, if you have the option.

As for stove pipe temps, I would figure that single wall pipe would get hotter than 200?? The single wall pipe is part of the reason the room is getting hotter too. Double wall would be a bit cooler for the room.

AS for the stove operation, keep searching and reading and you will learn how to operate that thing a bit better. Wood is critical as mentioned above.

I hear silk has a cooling effect on the body. You could have got some for free from your hubby had I given you this information prior to 2-14

Ha . . . I think many of us have been in your proverbial shoes . . . I remember the first night or two that the weatherguessers were saying it would be dipping down into the 40s so I loaded up the woodstove with well seasoned (i.e. standing dead for years) maple, cranked the stove as hot as I could get it and kept feeding the fire all night long . . . and in the morning it was about 84 degrees in the living room, my T-shirt was soaked from sweat and we eventually had to open the window to cool down the place.

Nowadays with experience I have learned some valuable lessons in how to regulate the temps in the house so that the living room is in the low-to mid-70s and the room next to the living room is typically running 66-72 degrees which is about par for the rest of the house (obviously the temps get a bit lower the further away from the stove).

BeGreen, BlueFrier and SlyFerret have offered some excellent advice . . . most of which I will just be echoing.

* If the room with the stove is way too hot and the rest of the house is way too cool try using a fan. It seems that the general consensus here is to run a fan (I use a simple table-mounted fan on the floor) from the adjoining room (or room further away) and "push" the colder air towards the stove using the principles of thermodynamics -- cold air sinks, hot air rises . . . heat always seeks the cold area.

* If you're cold in the room be aware that it may take a while to really heat up a room and move the heat in the room and to the adjoining rooms. While I will be toasty warm right next to a recently lit fire, going only 20 feet away or into the next room can be a bit cool until the stove has a chance to heat up the place.

* If the outside temp is relatively warm (i.e. high 30s, 40s, 50s for me) I have learned to either light one big fire to really warm things up and then let the fire die . . . or in the case where the temps are expected to drop later on (i.e. it's warm in the afternoon with temps in the high 30s, but will cool down once the sun goes down in a few hours) I will simply make smaller fires by not loading up the firebox all the way (which means more frequent reloading, but better temps.)

* If the outside temp is relatively cool (i.e. sub-zero) and/or the winds are howling I will need to keep the fire stoked and will load 'er to the gills everytime I reload to maintain the heat in the home.

* Size does matter . . . in general with all things being equal (moisture content of wood, same wood species, etc.) if you load your stove with small splits and rounds it will burn a heckuva lot hotter than loading it up with large splits and rounds . . . therefore if you want a longer and in general a "cooler" burn you can try burning larger wood (providing you have a well established bed of coals).

* Softwood vs. Hardwood . . . as mentioned . . . this makes a difference. With all things being equal (size, moisture content, etc.) if you load up with all softwood you will end up with a quick not as hot fire to take the chill off a room vs. loading up with all hardwood which will usually result in a longer, hot fire which may be better in the deep Winter (something I wish I had thought of before burning up some prime "Winter wood" (the aforementioned very dead maple) in late-September instead of waiting until late-January.

she never did follow up and say what the outside temps were at the time but i think that is the true key in all of this.
my Defiant Encore was out of commission last week until i could get to cleaning the catalyst and i remember thinking 'i'm glad its this week when its pretty warm' so maybe that was part of it. also, depending where her thermostat is located in the house, maybe her furnace is still kicking on despite the temps in the stove area and she is getting a double heat in that area.

like others said though, it's a definite learning curve.

Open up some windows...nothing finer than than a maximum burn and total fresh air swap.

All I can say is be thankful--I wish I had your problem Like the above posters said, experiment as much as possible in your environment. I have had good luck with this muffin/doorway fan and its not too noisy--really dig it and not too expensive:

http://www.northlineexpress.com/itemdesc.asp?ic=5SA-4001

This is my first year of serious burning with an efficient stove, but I haven't been able to find decent seasoned wood as of yet; however, as my yard is now a huge mass of felled trees and brush from the tree guy who just left today, I am ready for next season...

you'll get used to 80s

i wouldn't have it any other way

btw build smaller fires and load less often

My house is allways 74-78. I only wish that the would be happy with that temp. during the summer.

johnsopi said:

My house is allways 74-78. I only wish that the would be happy with that temp. during the summer.

Click to expand...

Ha ha....AMEN

If it ain't 80 in here, I'm cold.

I got a 1500 sq ft ranch, and i move the air from living room to the bedrooms (3) by a 6inch vortex in-line duct fan. I got the fan and duct work in attic. Fan is hooked up to a variable speed switch. At full tilt fan blows 450 cfm I keep it about at half speed. Living room temp is about 74 to 78 and bedrooms about 68 to 71.