How hot have you got your house?

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snosurfa7

Member
Mar 25, 2009
48
VA
So I have been jealous of all of you who have experienced temps in the 30s, 40s, maybe even 20s. I keep reading posts about shoulder season burns and low outside temps. So last night I could not wait any longer, temps dipped into the 50s early on in the evening, I fired up my Jotul 3CB for the first time this season.

I got the thermostat in my house to read 94 degrees! The fire got up to 500 in no time, then burned between 500-600 for the next several hours...with the front room windows open no less. Granted, it was 55 degrees outside will a slight wind and my house is only 1200 square feet all one level.

So I was just wondering: how hot have you got your house with your stove? I remember another time camping in a tiny 8'x14' cabin one time and we got it to 91.
 
Bet the family was rolling their eyes at you!

My wood stove is in the basement. With my old stove, I didn't get as long a burns as I do now. We had a really cold night coming and I didn't want the stove to go out or the house to get cold so I cooked that sucker to build up the coals. By the time I did go to bed the thermometer on the wall 25 feet away was reading 101 degrees.

We didn't get cold that night.

pen
 
I've had the temp in the low 80s before . . . way too warm . . . of course that was in my first year of burning when I was young, naive and foolish and ended up tossing well seasoned sugar maple on to a fire every 2-3 hours one Fall night . . . now I use my punks, chunks and uglies and do a single fire to keep the chill out of the house for the evening/night during the shoulder season.
 
I accidently got my house up to 78F about a week ago. (I have no idea how you got to 94F while thinking clearly)

after my intial top down the house went from 63F to about 66F. so I threw one medium log in and a small guy. 3 or 4 hours later is was 70F and the outside temp was 38F and I still had some good coals. I should have just let it die out for the night, but It was only 930pm and I was still up with the girl, so i said one more log just to hold this temp. I don't know what type of wood it was but surface temp of the stove quickly hit 650F and I knew it was about to get warm. sure enough 2 hours later when the movie ended the house was 78F and even my girlfirend was saying "its a little warm"

But funny thing is when we woke up at 800am it had dropped all the way back to 65F. I still need to do some insulating I think.
 
Had 16 woodbrickfuel bricks in the upstairs Defiant, got the thermostat to read 94F one time I think. Thank goodness that smoke dragon spills much of its heat out the chimney or else I'm sure it would've been much higher :D
 
As long as the outdoor temps stay above 25°F I can get the room that has the vigilant in it up to 90° if I'm not watching it. We like it warm in the house since we had to deal with a cold house for so long. So, we like room temperatures to be about 80°. This will probably change over time, especially when the third stove's installation is complete.

When you have dealt with a winter when the house stayed between 50-60 for the majority of the time, 80° is fantastic.
 
No way I could put a fire in the stove right now. Sunny, 70deg. days and 40 deg. nights and my house will stay 70-75.
We got down to freezing one night and I think the house was 69 by morning.

I hit low 80's a time or two last winter. Newbie issues. Had everybody in shorts and tanks - wouldn't be a bad thing with the "girlfriend" over. Hee,hee
 
I got my basement up to 99 on my first fire in the Oslo after the break in. I didn't realize it would heat that well. If I open up the door in my basement to the storage area, it will stay in the mid 80's when it is in the 40's outside.

With my setup, I think I will have to set the stove for being in the basement or trying to heat the rest of the house.

So far I have been happy because it takes the chill out of the babies room on the second story and I don't have to use the furnace.

Chris
 
Highest I ever measured here was in the upper 90s in the basement where the stove is.

Highest I ever didn't measure was in the apartment provided to me by a horse farm I was working on. It had electric baseboard heat and a nicely made no-name stove, built by a local welder IIRC. I never bothered with the stove since the electric was paid for. One night it was going down to 25* below and I knew the electric wouldn't cut it. My GF at the time was staying over and I wanted to get the place warm and romantic for her, so I lit up the stove and piled it full.

We went off to bed and, uh..... exhausted ourselves, and then passed out. I woke up a few hours later and couldn't breathe. The air was so hot that my lungs felt it. I ran out to the living room, and that steel stove was glowing redder than the Devil's eyes. I had forgotten to close the air and left it wide open with a full load of hardwood. I've felt 108* in the summertime. This was way hotter than that. Sauna hot.

I'll bet I must have warped that puppy that night, but I didn't think to check. Never used it again because I married that sweet girl a few months later and moved out.
 
Not sure what the highest temp was, but traditionally I roast everybody out when they request a fire for our Halloween party. Doors and windows get opened.
 
We have been doing fires in the evening and the temps have been low 60s during the days and high 30s at night. We have been getting the stove room to about 81-85 degrees with our little Jotul F100 running temps right around 400 degrees. The next room over is the kitchen which gets up to about 72-74 degrees and we run our whole house fan and get all the other rooms up to 67-70 degrees on the first floor. Kitchen is still 71 degrees in the morning even though the fire has long since burned out.

I'll admit that 85 degrees is way too hot but 81 felt pretty nice last night.
 
Yeah, last night was more of a "see what I could do" and a "I have not burned in over 7 months and can't wait any longer" than a controlled burn for heating purposes. To be honest, with temps only in the low 50s there was no real reason to burn at all last night - the forum made me do it!

I'd say the average temp in the house was in the eighties, I just wore shorts and a tank top. I grew up w/o ac so no big deal, just sat by the window in the back room, felt a cool breeze mixed with the warmth of the house was not all that bad, felt kind of good. Kind of like driving with your windows down in the fall when temps are in the 40s/50s but cranking the heat the in the truck at the same time.
 
I have yet to be able to figure out why during the summer months people can't seem to wait until the temperature is in the 80's or 90's yet during the winter months they seem to enjoy cooler air. Strange...

We routinely get our house over 80 degrees and keep it there. We hate to go visiting during winter months because we about freeze when we go to someone else's house. Not so with them if they come here; we have them removing clothing. In fact, the removal of clothing is one gauge I use for a thermostat. If the ladies aren't removing clothing, I open the draft a bit.
 
It looks like you got the Fever. Same thing happened to me last year. This forum can do that to people. LOL. I was reading posts from people in Colorado where it snows in July and I got the itch to burn and got the house up to darn near 100 degrees.
 
I know the feeling. The room get so hot I say "Oh my God, I've got to get out of here!" So I walk out to the kitchen where its a fridgid 75F and scream "Holy Jezus!, its freezing in here!" and run back into the room!
 
80 degrees is the most I have done, and plenty for us. There is something to be said about wood burning. Friends and relatives will come over and love the warmth. (Sometimes I can't get them to leave). It is almost feels so wrong to have that much heat in your house in the dead of winter when I know others out there are pretty cold and lowering their thermostat to save cash. I feel bad for about, oh..... 10 seconds. T-shirts and jeans is standard garb when the stove is chugging along. My neighbor runs his Hearthstone and his room is about 85 degrees. A bit too hot to enjoy.
 
Tonight should be a good test for the winter load of wood. I will most likely run through the night and re-load again in the morning, should be in the mid 30's around my way tonight.
I have never really made an attempt to fire the stove 'hot' to see how warm I could get the house, normal winter indoor temps usually run about 70 and a few degrees more upstairs.
My stove just keeps up for over 2,000 sq ft of a drafty victorian farmhouse.
 
BrowningBAR said:
As long as the outdoor temps stay above 25°F I can get the room that has the vigilant in it up to 90° if I'm not watching it. We like it warm in the house since we had to deal with a cold house for so long. So, we like room temperatures to be about 80°. This will probably change over time, especially when the third stove's installation is complete.

When you have dealt with a winter when the house stayed between 50-60 for the majority of the time, 80° is fantastic.

Yikes! 80??? I can't even imagine being comfy at 80. The AC would be on till it was below 70.

The Fireview heats 2300 sq ft to about 70 when its 30 degrees out. That was last year with lousy windows and less attic insulation. This year might be better with new windows and insulation.
 
Three years ago the forecast called for 18 degrees at night the night the in-laws were in town. Put a small load in to have coals when we got back from dinner. It was cold and raw out that night with high winds. When we got back from dinner I put on some splits and we proceeded to drink many beverages and catch up on our lives. When they wandered up to bed I stuffed the stove because it was going to be so cold. And probably because I was more loaded than the stove.

The wind shifted out of the South that night and it started warming up outside while we were in bed. The upstairs got up to 90 degrees. After I got back from taking them to the airport I noticed that they had opened the bedroom windows trying not to roast. Not knowing that the storm windows were closed. And to make it worse I had put the flannel sheets on their bed since they come from a warm climate. :red:

They said later they would see us again soon. In July sometime. When it is cooler.
 
The Fireview keeps most of the house in the mid 70s day and night. With the old smoke dragon, we could easily get the living room well into the 90s as long as the outside temp was over 15. Of course it would burn about as much wood as the Fireview does in three days and the house would be cold in the morning. I do miss going out on the porch barefoot in only shorts on a February night for more wood.... about every 2 hours!

More wood = less clothing.
 
Flatbedford said:
The Fireview keeps most of the house in the mid 70s day and night. With the old smoke dragon, we could easily get the living room well into the 90s as long as the outside temp was over 15. Of course it would burn about as much wood as the Fireview does in three days

Yeah, it takes tons more wood to get a living space up into the 90s than it does getting the same place into the 70s. Problem is getting the older stoves to burn clean at low output. I could not tolerate my Vigilant if it was on our main floor, I'd have it choked down all the time and be cleaning the chimney every other day.

It works great in the basement, though. Keeps the entire place at 72 around the clock. You guys can have your 80s, I'd be sitting in my undershorts, sippin' gin and tonics, running the AC full bore, and trying to figure out why there's no baseball on TV.
 
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