The stove is down and furnace on WTH!!!!

Stay with it Pete. You will be amazed once you get to the point where all your wood is good and dry. More heat from the wood and less creosote. Get that thing cleaned quickly too because the weather is about to turn the other way.

Pete, are these temperatures you speak of stove top temperatures or flue? If stove top, for sure you can run much higher (I think 600 for your stove). Flue you should be okay between 300-400.

They Call Me Pete said:

She was back up and running this morning. I'm going to run my temps in the 400 range instead of 300. Woods in basement so it should get better with time. I had no problem with first half of pile but this was spilt a little later. Plus I'm going to keep a small stack by the stove to help dry it out more.

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Sounds to me like you're running cold. If you're wood is suspect, see if you cant find a short supply of some manufactured biomass fuel such as biobrick, ecobrix, envilogs, thermawood, etc and let your wood season out till next year. You can also mix biomass fuels with splits as well. The biomass fuels burn squeaky-clean, hot, and with amazingly little ash.

Pete, I hate to tell you this but anytime you get hissing for 5 minutes, that says your wood is still a bit green. That will call for a hotter fire for sure. So running the stack temperature higher will help. Sadly you will burn a little more wood than usual but hopefully you can get through this year and be more ready for next year.

If just surface moisture it is nothing to worry about as that dries quickly. But if you look at the ends of the logs and see what is causing that hissing you will know. Again, this is why I usually say to have enough wood on hand for 2-3 years; it has more time to get ready for the stove. That is, it has time to get rid of that sap moisture.


Good luck.