Extending Burn Times

What kind of wood are you burning? What size? Harder woods in larger diameters will give you longer burn times.

Sometimes it can be tough to achieve those overnight burns with a small fire box. You have to start with raking the coals forward and place a large split or round in the back and then pack it tight from there. Char the load good before turning it down to the lowest setting you can and hopefully it will burn front to back and you will get a longer burn. A good layer of ash in the bottom helps as well.

Door gasket has been replaced.........did it pass the paper test when job was complete?

tbuff said:

Hi All,

I have been burning with my Hearthstone Craftsbury now for 2 years and I feel there has to be a way to accomplish a longer burn. Right now I am averaging about 4-5.5 hrs a burn, with a packed stove. I only use the stove damper(no flue damper)and have recently replaced the door gasket and window gasket. I was wondering if it would help if I fabricated a small damper to damp down the air inlet even further than the stock damper does(basically a small steel duct adapter with a wing type damper, nothing fancy.) I heat the house with wood and wood only(have had the same 100 gallons of oil since October 2008) but if my wife and four kids keep waking up to a 60-62'f house, i'll quickly lose the battle and will be burning oil again. I apprecite any help you all can offer.

Happy Holidays!

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There are 3 possible solutions assuming your stove is in good working order (and at 2 years old that should be a given) because you won't dramatically change your burn times.

1) Re-load in the middle of the night

2) Get a bigger stove

3) Resign yourself to burning a bit of oil

4) Tell your wife and kids to harden the eff up

tbuff said:

Hi All,

I have been burning with my Hearthstone Craftsbury now for 2 years and I feel there has to be a way to accomplish a longer burn. Right now I am averaging about 4-5.5 hrs a burn, with a packed stove. I only use the stove damper(no flue damper)and have recently replaced the door gasket and window gasket. I was wondering if it would help if I fabricated a small damper to damp down the air inlet even further than the stock damper does(basically a small steel duct adapter with a wing type damper, nothing fancy.) I heat the house with wood and wood only(have had the same 100 gallons of oil since October 2008) but if my wife and four kids keep waking up to a 60-62'f house, i'll quickly lose the battle and will be burning oil again. I apprecite any help you all can offer.

Happy Holidays!

Click to expand...

5 hours out of a stove rated for 6 hours isn't too shabby.

Burn a little oil.
A little is better than a lot.
Then everyone is happy.
Maybe the boiler roaring will wake you up and you can reload the fire and go back to sleep.
Boiler should be exercised every now and then anyway if you ask me. Use it or lose it.

62° is what our back up thermostat is set at and yup, it's too cool to wake up to. The best work around I see is that whoever gets up in the middle of the night should be properly schooled on reloading the fire.

tbuff said:

Hi All,

I have been burning with my Hearthstone Craftsbury now for 2 years and I feel there has to be a way to accomplish a longer burn. Right now I am averaging about 4-5.5 hrs a burn, with a packed stove. I only use the stove damper(no flue damper)and have recently replaced the door gasket and window gasket. I was wondering if it would help if I fabricated a small damper to damp down the air inlet even further than the stock damper does(basically a small steel duct adapter with a wing type damper, nothing fancy.) I heat the house with wood and wood only(have had the same 100 gallons of oil since October 2008) but if my wife and four kids keep waking up to a 60-62'f house, i'll quickly lose the battle and will be burning oil again. I apprecite any help you all can offer.

Happy Holidays!

Click to expand...

I am in somerset county in a 1700 sq ft ranch with an internal chimney and an 80's buck insert. This morning the house was 65% after loading with hickory, and maple. Probably loaded at 60% capacity. I loaded last night at 11:00

I have similar burn times so if I get up at night I might put a few more splits on the fire but have learned it's not an absolute necessity. I have our furnace programed to come on at 64f so a little gas consumption is acceptable until I get the stove going again.

If you turn the damper all the way down, does that make it burn so slow that you don't even get enough heat off it for the house anyway?

fffrosty72 said:

If you turn the damper all the way down, does that make it burn so slow that you don't even get enough heat off it for the house anyway?

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Not to mention the creosote you'll be getting. My neighbor has the same issues with his small stove and there's really no easy answer which is why I went with an add-on furnace. It's a trade-off for sure as I am jealous of you guys who can sit on a nice comfortable couch in front of the fire in the living room, but I can load my 12" x 12" x 26" firebox with middle of the road hardwood (maple, cherry, etc...) at 10:00 p.m. and wake up to a good bed of coals and a 68 degree house at 5:00 a.m.

Besides our seasoned wood, there's always some fresh splits laying around. Sometimes I'll throw a thick piece of not so seasoned oak in the back, bottom of the stove at night (mixed in with the seasoned wood). That gaurantees me embers for a reload after 12 hrs.

I'm not sure you would gain a whole lot with a damper . . . I think the choices are clear unfortunately . . . bigger stove, more frequent loading, accept the cooler temps in the morning or set the oil boiler to come on at a higher temp . . . or a combination.

I know in my own case I have the oil boiler set at 60 degrees . . . I could set it lower, but I figure this is the minimum temp that I would want to wake up to in middle of the winter. It's chilly, but not brutally cold . . . and is always a motivator to get the woodstove up and running as quickly as possible. I am also happy to say the oil boiler doesn't kick on very frequently . . . but when it does it is just like an alarm clock as I nearly always spring out of bed when I hear than unfamiliar sound.

And now for some more useful advice . . . perhaps . . . have you tried loading up with some primo overnight wood . . . denser wood such as oak, osage, hickory, etc. and with some bigger stuff or even rounds?

I think alot has to do with the type of wood. I have a pretty small stove (Englander 13) and my burn times vary from 4hrs to 9hrs. The biggest contributor is the type of wood. I am currently burning some unknown species and I am getting consisted 6hrs (still able to start a fresh load no kindling), it also requires almost zero primary air. But last year I was burning some Locust and was getting 8hrs plus on a similar amount of wood, but it would need at least 1/4 of primary air control or I would wake up to a charred logs and a cold stove.

I also don't like to stuff my stove. when I over pack my stove it runs real hot and seams to actually burn through the wood faster. I do get a butt load more heat but it feels like I am over working the stove.

as other have said, rake the coals forward (forward and to the right on my stove to help burn along the legth of the log) and get a char going before closing the air control.

There are only so many BTU's in a stick of wood. You can only put so much wood in a given stove. Now, how you use that energy/heat (BTU load) is up to you. IF you use it efficiently you will get more of it in the room/house and enjoy more warmth out of it. You can get that out of the wood faster or slower but the sum total amount of energy/heat will be the same. If you burn in an inefficient manner then the effective total will be less - you know you are burning less efficiently if you have smoke headed up the chimney and/or are building up creosote in the flue. Bottom line is that you should be burning that fuel, not sending it out of the stove. It seems likely that if you modify your stove air controls you may well get into that realm very quickly which would not be a good idea for many reasons... Much of this has been said already but here are some basic simplistic facts to mull over:

To make a stove burn slower (but still efficient):
- reduce air within clean/efficient zone for given stove/wood load (smoke free operation)
- burn larger pieces of wood packed tightly
- burn wood that is very well dried
- get a catalytic stove and then turn it down ever farther

To increase total BTUs in a stove:
- Burn more dense fuel: harder wood (osage orange is said to be one of the most dense)
- insure wood is dry: 15-20% MC seems to be a happy zone for most stoves
- less air space between pieces
- get a stove with a larger firebox

No matter what stove you have, when you burn slower expect less heat/hour; when you burn faster expect more heat/hour; conversely when burning hotter expect a shorter burn/ when burning cooler expect a longer burn.

IF you are going all night and find the house is cold in the morning AND you don't start out with the house too hot during the first part of the burn (i.e. stove is keeping house comfortable at start of night but just can't keep up all night) then you just need a larger stove or you need to get up and feed it sometime in the middle of the night. Typically the coldest temperatures outside is at night (particularly early morning) so that is when you will lose the most heat. Thus you are likely to be 'coasting' in any case. Another strategy is to build up a heat load by feeding the stove more ahead of time and get the house warmer than normal before bedtime (i.e. if you can get 5* warmer before you retire) then you have more heat to lose before getting 'too cold' inside. This is an energy expensive approach as your heat loss will be faster the greater the difference between inside and outside temperatures, but perhaps it can help.

Insulating the home better and/or burning a bit of oil may be your optimal solution.

tbuff said:

Hi All,

I have been burning with my Hearthstone Craftsbury now for 2 years and I feel there has to be a way to accomplish a longer burn. Right now I am averaging about 4-5.5 hrs a burn, with a packed stove. I only use the stove damper(no flue damper)and have recently replaced the door gasket and window gasket. I was wondering if it would help if I fabricated a small damper to damp down the air inlet even further than the stock damper does(basically a small steel duct adapter with a wing type damper, nothing fancy.) I heat the house with wood and wood only(have had the same 100 gallons of oil since October 2008) but if my wife and four kids keep waking up to a 60-62'f house, i'll quickly lose the battle and will be burning oil again. I apprecite any help you all can offer.

Happy Holidays!

Click to expand...

No, don't do that. You will end up with more problems than the one you are trying to solve.


No Happy Holiday wish here but I will wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

You are welcome Tom. So, how did last winter go for you?

If last winter went that well you should really be ready this year and will do even better. Now stay home this winter!