Burning My Fireview

Todd said:

Keep playing with it, maybe next time try between 1 and 1.25. Flue temps do tell another story but I can't say with a different set up than you. Does that horizontal pipe run have a slight rise going away from the stove? What does your fire look like when you turn it down to #1, Do the coals start to go dark or is the red still in them? The air setting on this stove is very sensitive and a very small adjustment can make a big difference. For a low burn I turn my air down slowly til the coals turn dark red with little flame, usually a smidge above .5, if I go lower everything turns black. If I want more heat I turn it up. Maybe my .5 is your #1 and Dennis's .25? After some trial and error you will figure it all out.

It would be nice to see Woodstock come out with a user video, it's kind of hard to explain and learn burning techniques without seeing fire.

Click to expand...

Todd--Keep those tips coming. I pick up my stove tomorrow. I'm planning to print this and the other info from you and keep it right by the stove! Is that flattery or what? :lol:

BrotherBart said:

Texas boy said:

I'm planning to print this and the other info from you and keep it right by the stove! :lol:

Click to expand...

Until the first time the kindling doesn't take off and then it will be the nearest pieces of paper....

Click to expand...

Remember all that 80 year old wood? The kindling is also 80 years old. I just act like I'm gonna light a match and it bursts into flame. So THAT won't be a problem! Just heard on the weather radio that Lubbock's record low for tomorrow's date is minus 16 F in 1963. Y'know, that is very cold! The all-time record is minus 17! It CAN get cold here if it wants!

Texas Boy,

You've probably already seen it but the following thread has a lot of good tips too...

https://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/forums/viewthread/48706/

BrotherBart said:

Texas boy said:

Just heard on the weather radio that Lubbock's record low for tomorrow's date is minus 16 F in 1963. Y'know, that is very cold!

Click to expand...

Ya know, I was there. In a fifty dollar a month, furnished, garage apartment on Avenue A just in front of Tech. With a measly gas wall unit and a landlord that didn't pay the gas bill. I know cold in Lubbock bubba. I know damn cold in Lubbock.

The only good part of getting drafted was that they sent me where it never got cold.

Click to expand...

To verify what you just said, the record lows for the last three days have been -10, -7 and today -16. The first two were in 1918, the third was in 1963, so it isn't all "back in the day" stuff. When I was in school here in the late 1970s, I lived in similar circumstances to yours and the temp got to -4 over the Christmas holidays when I could not go home. This place was so "tight" that when the dirt blew, I'd get (literally) a couple of inches on the kitchen floor, which had a 3 degree tilt to the west. I had to close the door between there and the closet and BR or it would drift in there too. You must have lived on some other street than Ave. A if you were next to Tech.

The guy from ABF called just a few minutes ago. The FIREVIEW is IN the CITY!! (If you can call Lubbock a "city"!) And I'm low on wood! Only got about 6 cords at the house! I'd better run get some more!

Great news, Texas Boy. Good luck with the install.

Todd said:

We like pictures!

Click to expand...

Yup. Lots of them. Pictures of stoves (before, during and after install), pictures of wood (what does that old wood look like anyway?)... Granted my wife happens to be from the panhandle area and has family scattered about Tx (I picked her up down there while in Aggieland) so I have a pretty good idea of what the landscape is like from various adventures (pre and post wife) but even landscape shots get points around here.

Slow1 said:

Todd said:

We like pictures!

Click to expand...

Yup. Lots of them. Pictures of stoves (before, during and after install), pictures of wood (what does that old wood look like anyway?)... Granted my wife happens to be from the panhandle area and has family scattered about Tx (I picked her up down there while in Aggieland) so I have a pretty good idea of what the landscape is like from various adventures (pre and post wife) but even landscape shots get points around here.

Click to expand...

Okey-doke! I can sure put up some photos (now that I know how!). I'm off to pick up the stove at 1600. I'll document it all and keep y'all posted. The landscape ain't much to brag about, but the people more than make up for it. PLUS, we have killer beautiful sunrises and sunsets here, which just can't be described. I'll try to include one or two of those for those of you who don't have th' privilege of livin' here. Th' wood? Y'want pichers of th' wood? Well, I'll be switched! Why would folks want to see wood? Well, okay. I'll do some of those, too! I put up some shots of the wood in those piles and stacks, but you want to see some of the single sticks? That's a real head scratcher, but okay! Whatever makes y'all happy! We Texans aim t'please!

Hi Fellas,

I thought I'd report back on my progress. Using your suggestions, I was able to achieve much better results than I was previously getting. However, the one variable I couldn't change was the fuel. So, I walked down the street and asked one of my wood-burning neighbors about his wood supply (red oak) and he assured me it was dry as a bone (3-years; top-covered). He was kind enough to give me a wheelbarrow full for my experiment. Great neighbor…great guy. I loaded into my stove and used the same techniques I've adopted from you guys. After about 10 minutes I engaged the Cat and set the draft to 1 for a bit (normally I set it to 1.2), but after several minutes I dialed it down to .75. Normally this would kill my heat output. I'm sure you won't be shocked to hear that the results far exceeded what had become the standard over the past months. The stove has been hovering around 500F for about 2 hours...something that it has never done before. Also, the firebox is filled with dark-red embers and no flame (like you guys keep talking about). So, not only is the stove burning hotter, it is also burning longer. I’m sure I can still fine-tune some of my technique, but I’m obviously on the right path.

I consider myself a fairly methodical person who prepares adequately for projects/tasks/etc. Therefore, I thought I was way ahead of the game when I picked up 9 cords of "seasoned" wood in the middle of last summer. Mostly oak (for better or worse). I still had several months to further dry the already seasoned fuel, right? Yes, but it wasn't close to enough (damn oak). If there are any of you that are reading this that are new to wood burning (Cat stoves in particular), please learn from my mistake. As a group, why do us newbies keep making this mistake even with this plethora of great advice at our fingertips? Take the advice of those who have been there and done that. It will save you time, money, effort and frustration. The importance of dry wood cannot be overstated. It is crucial to getting thought the winter at an acceptable level of efficiency. If the wood is improperly seasoned, it burns cooler and shorter. With improperly seasoned wood, you can forget about those 8-12 hour burns the Fireview owners tout. Those results cannot be reached without an adequately dry fuel source. If you're thinking about getting a Fireview...don't let this detract you. Quite the opposite, the results that this beauty can achieve with the right knowledge and materials is astounding. This includes, very long burn times, low fuel consumption, wonderfully soft heat. I LOVE this stove and I would buy another in a heartbeat. Ah, and when next year comes around, and my wood is dry, dry, dry, I am going to love it even more!

Thanks again guys for your help. As I gain a little more experience over the next year or so, I look forward to helping others out and pay it forward.

-Todd

Ted E Bear, that is a great post and I would love to have you make this as a separate thread. Just copy what you wrote and name it something like "The difference between good fuel and bad," or something like that. Or how about, "What I learned about what wood to burn, " or just use your imagination as you can probably come up with a better title.


It is good to see this happen to new wood burners and even experienced wood burners. You asked why this happens to so many new wood burners. I believe it is a combination of things.

1. People believe wood sellers when they say the wood is seasoned and ready to burn.

2. Sometimes people ask the older folks and are given really bad advice! It seems so many of the old folks grew up with the idea you can just cut, split and throw it into the stove. They never learned a better way and pass on this so-called knowledge to new folks. This includes that stupid thing about burning the stove on high for an hour or so to burn the creosote out of the chimney on a daily basis. Oh, how dumb that is. Running a stove in high for long periods can cause some very serious problems.

3. For years and years and years, when someone needs fuel, all they do is call the fuel company and they bring it to you and you have heat. That works with gas and oil....but it just does not work with wood. But they simply do not know better.

4. Finally, we still have some folks on this forum from time to time praising how good their wood burns even though it no doubt is not all that good. For example, what about the guy who cuts red oak this winter and burns it the next fall? Sure, you can get it to burn, but you will have a mess, you will burn more wood than you would if you had dry wood and you won't get as much heat out of that red oak that has had only a year or even less to dry.

Ted, you have a nice neighbor. I hope you filled him in on the results of your experiment, which I'm sure you have already done. Thanks for posting.

I think I'll add in there one more factor:

We all WANT (and I mean REALLY WANT) to believe that we we have good wood to burn. So many reasons for this, but somehow to admit we have anything less than the best or at least good enough just seems to be saying that we've failed in some way. This is even more true I suppose if we have paid a premium for "seasoned" wood and perhaps don't want to admit (to ourselves as much as anything) that we may have made a mistake. Human nature plays a big part of it.

Then there is of course the fact that until we see the results of burning really good wood it is hard to really believe it. I think I've had only a few loads of premium good wood go through my stove - and that was probably all during shoulder season. I have had quite a bit of good wood and very little marginal, but I am seriously looking forward to the day when I can rely on a full winter of premium dry wood (like <18%?) such as folks like Dennis have on hand to burn. Perhaps in another two years I'll get there. Perhaps I'll be halfway there next year with that poplar I split early last summer since it dries faster... who knows.

That is an excellent observation. I have expected that very same thing for a long time but just had a hard time putting it into words without thinking it might come across wrong. I really do not want to rattle anyone and that is why sometimes I back off on my posts. Many times I'll get a post ready, read it to myself and then think that someone could take it wrong....then I simply discard it rather than make the post.

Well as to taking it the wrong way - I'm speaking for myself here. Been there, done that. Each time I think I have perfect wood I learn that I don't. go figure eh? So, I'm the only one I'm giving first hand experience about here. Now I'm sure everyone else on this forum is different. I just offer the possibility that there are others who may feel that to have less than ideal wood somehow reflects badly on themselves.

I'm not saying that this actually makes sense mind you - just because what I thought was a stack of perfectly seasoned wood (whatever my source(s)) turns out to be marginal or worse really doesn't mean I'm any less of a wood burner. But it does seem as though at least in this online community there is some status associated with having your wood supply in order meaning having the 'best' fuel lined up for as many seasons as possible.

Slow, I don't think it has anything to do with status. It has everything to do with having good fuel.

Okay, y'all, I have another FV operational question--Do you load up the stove, get it hot and then let it burn way down before you reload or do you feed right along to keep the heat up? What seems to be best? I usually get a fire going in the late afternoon so the house will be warmer when Lynda gets home and then it burns overnight. I usually put a partial load in in the morning to make it warm for when she gets up. Then we're both gone for the bulk of the day between 0900 and 1630 so it burns down. On the weekends I could manage to keep it going, if that's what works best from an efficiency standpoint. Just wondering how y'all do it. Thanks--

I do my best to plan the loads such that it is burned all the way down before I add any more wood. Every once in a while I will toss/stuff a couple pieces into the box mid-cycle if we are about to go somewhere and don't expect to be home for a while but I never know for sure how that is going to affect the burn cycle so I'd rather not. I generally do my first load around 0600, then next load goes in about noon or later (depends on how cold it is - this one is up to the wife or sitter so there is a great amount of variance), then sometime between 1730-1900 it may get a small load to boost it until final load that goes in between 2000-2130. At least that is the general pattern during the week.

Now during the weekend it may be quite different - first load may be smaller so that I can reload by 1000 as we may have plans to be out most of the day after that which of course throws the rest of the schedule off. I don't really think we do any loads at the same time with the exception of that first one each morning.

The temptation is to reload often before the burn cycle is complete, especially in really cold weather or if the stove is a little too small for the application (like mine!). But what I found was that reloading too early (before it all burns into tiny coals and ashes) causes a humungus and annoying coal bed to form which prevents filling up the firebox with a full load of new wood. So you may stretch one burn cycle by reloading early, but you pay for it on the next load 'cause you can't fill it up! The trick seems to be opening the draft to a higher setting once the wood goes to coals. This burns it down quicker so you can reload sooner. Types of wood probably matter, too. I hear if you burn pine and soft hardwoods you can reload more often because these don't make as many coals but instead go straight to ash. I have some Poplar I am going to try this on. Oak makes lots of heavy coals.

Texas boy said:

Okay, y'all, I have another FV operational question--Do you load up the stove, get it hot and then let it burn way down before you reload or do you feed right along to keep the heat up? What seems to be best? I usually get a fire going in the late afternoon so the house will be warmer when Lynda gets home and then it burns overnight. I usually put a partial load in in the morning to make it warm for when she gets up. Then we're both gone for the bulk of the day between 0900 and 1630 so it burns down. On the weekends I could manage to keep it going, if that's what works best from an efficiency standpoint. Just wondering how y'all do it. Thanks--

Click to expand...

We rarely load up our stove except for night burning. Most of the time during the day we'll throw in 3 pieces and let them burn. You've already read about our method of handling the coals and that pertains also to the 3 piece burn.

I have just a few times put in more wood when the wood was only partially burned. That was because of some timing and by bedtime the wood had not burned down. It worked out okay but I would not do that normally.

When people get into the habit of putting more wood in before the last load has burned down, they are the ones who have more problem with a big load of coals and wondering how to get rid of them. So I still say it is best to go the full cycle each and every load.