Overnight Heating Questions

NATE379 said:

I work at night, but I sleep at day.

I just load the stove when I get home from work and before I leave for work. Holds the house around 70-75* without trouble, though it hasn't gotten all that cold here yet. Coldest so far has only be -5*. Seems to heat well without using all that much wood. If it works out at is has so far should burn a cord in 2 months, so about 3 cords for the winter.

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That's a pretty clear difference, chuckle. And that's with the small model.

Remind us the size and insulation of your abode? Congrats on the balmy weather. Stay warm!

1400sq ft single story. Good insulation but nothing above and beyond min code. (R45 ceiling and R21 walls). Stove works really well. I mean I cleaned it out this evening after I let it go dead Tuesday morning and the coals were still going enough that I could have just chucked in wood and got a fire going without any trouble.

My folks in Maine heat about the same size as your place RenovationGeorge (if you include heated basement) with a 25 yr old homebuilt stove on about 3-3.5 cords of wood a winter. When I was growing up, once of us would check the stove before going to bed around 9PM and then when my Dad got up for work around 4:30 he'd check it. Then normally my Mom would check it on her lunch break and then us again after school/before work... So I guess 3x per day on average, in colder temps, maybe 4x a day. Very rare did anyone check it in the middle of the night, that I know for sure. Temps out there in Maine very close to what we get here.

You can have the best stove made (Blaze King of course! hehe) but if you are trying to heat a screen room it's not going to work out that well.

sorry going off topic... just remove.

Cannot really add much to this thread that hasn't already been said . . . but me being me . . . I'll reiterate.

One of the best bits of advice I ever got from hearth.com was to spend my money on insulation before buying a stove . . . and keeping the heat inside the home that you generated from the stove overnight is where the insulation really helps. Typically I see a 4-6 degree drop in temps overnight (typically the house is at an average temp of 68-72 degrees -- a dite hotter in the room with the stove, a bit cooler in rooms further away) . . . there is a larger drop in temps inside when the outside temps dip in the single digits or below the donut.

Temps in the house rarely drop to 60 degrees . . . but when they do on those sub-zero days I have the oil boiler set to kick on so things may not be toasty warm when I wake up, but the temps are tolerable until I get things back up and running. And to tell the truth . . . usually I tend to wake up earlier on those colder days since I either start to feel notably cooler or I hear that unfamiliar sound of the oil boiler kicking on and the radiators ticking.

I never wake up during the night to load the stove . . . that was one of the reasons I bought an EPA stove . . . I did not want to be a slave to the stove, but wanted a long, clean burn. I would rather wake up and be a bit cool than to pay more for oil or wake up in middle of the night.

As for setting my overnight fire . . . same as setting by overday fire . . . I use my larger primo wood (wood I keep in larger rounds or split into larger squares or rectangles for tight fitting), load up the firebox and then adjust the air . . . secondaries are firing and stable . . . nice coal bed . . . good layer of ash . . . and in 5 minutes I am sound asleep. I rely on the fire and the coals and the thermal mass of the stove -- and the hearth to some slight degree -- to keep temps tolerable while I sleep.

I am a bit spoiled though . . . since my wife works nights and typically has 1-2 nights each week when she is "turning herself around" from being asleep at night to being awake during the night there are a couple of nights where she will load the stove during the night . . . which makes sense since she is up and about and wants the place to be as warm as it would be normally.

I will start stoking about an hour before I go to bed...to get the stove nice and hot - and also the room temp. I'll load it with as much wood as I can about 1/2 hour before bed & get a real nice char going before backing the air down for the overnight. If it's real cold out, I may need to get up and stoke it - but most of the time this will work. If it gets too cold inside, I have our gas furnace set to kick on...but this only happens if we sleep in.

Ok, several of you posted that you fill your firebox up to the max. Excuse the pun, but now the blazes do you do this without sending the stove temps through the roof? I loaded three pieces into Mr. Revere last night, one medium sized silver maple, one smaller silver maple, and the third biggest piece I can't remember what it was. My hottest wood is hickory, and it wasn't that. The temp shot up into the danger zone and scared the bejeebers out of me. I shut off the air and the temp continued to climb for the next 45 minutes until it hit 800. I could have added 3 more pieces to fill the box, but I'd wake up surrounded by a pile of ash-that-used-to-be-my-house with my luck. What wood do you use for overnight burning if you can cram you firebox full? I'm very curious...

Cate said:

Ok, several of you posted that you fill your firebox up to the max. Excuse the pun, but now the blazes do you do this without sending the stove temps through the roof? I loaded three pieces into Mr. Revere last night, one medium sized silver maple, one smaller silver maple, and the third biggest piece I can't remember what it was. My hottest wood is hickory, and it wasn't that. The temp shot up into the danger zone and scared the bejeebers out of me. I shut off the air and the temp continued to climb for the next 45 minutes until it hit 800. I could have added 3 more pieces to fill the box, but I'd wake up surrounded by a pile of ash-that-used-to-be-my-house with my luck. What wood do you use for overnight burning if you can cram you firebox full? I'm very curious...

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I fill er up with a mix of Maple and mostly Oak. Load it up, open air, 15 or so mins, down to half, another 5-10 down to 1/4, another 5-10 primary air off. Secondaires flaming, stove settles at 500-550. Under the covers fantisizing about 3 cord of c/s Hickory for free on CL.

Sounds like your stove isn't sealed well or something. All I do is let the wood get nice and burning and turn it down. It will hold ~350-400* stove temp all night without problems.

Cate said:

Ok, several of you posted that you fill your firebox up to the max. Excuse the pun, but now the blazes do you do this without sending the stove temps through the roof? I loaded three pieces into Mr. Revere last night, one medium sized silver maple, one smaller silver maple, and the third biggest piece I can't remember what it was. My hottest wood is hickory, and it wasn't that. The temp shot up into the danger zone and scared the bejeebers out of me. I shut off the air and the temp continued to climb for the next 45 minutes until it hit 800. I could have added 3 more pieces to fill the box, but I'd wake up surrounded by a pile of ash-that-used-to-be-my-house with my luck. What wood do you use for overnight burning if you can cram you firebox full? I'm very curious...

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Nate379 - I'll check the seal, thanks for the suggestion. The insert is new, not even a year old, so hopefully the seal isn't bad!

shawneyboy - my hickory is free. As is all my wood, except for the silver which I had to pay to have cut down. Maybe I left the air open for too long giving it time to heat up...I'll try again and close it down earlier.

NATE379 said:

Sounds like your stove isn't sealed well or something. All I do is let the wood get nice and burning and turn it down. It will hold ~350-400* stove temp all night without problems.

Cate said:

Ok, several of you posted that you fill your firebox up to the max. Excuse the pun, but now the blazes do you do this without sending the stove temps through the roof? I loaded three pieces into Mr. Revere last night, one medium sized silver maple, one smaller silver maple, and the third biggest piece I can't remember what it was. My hottest wood is hickory, and it wasn't that. The temp shot up into the danger zone and scared the bejeebers out of me. I shut off the air and the temp continued to climb for the next 45 minutes until it hit 800. I could have added 3 more pieces to fill the box, but I'd wake up surrounded by a pile of ash-that-used-to-be-my-house with my luck. What wood do you use for overnight burning if you can cram you firebox full? I'm very curious...

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I agree. Maybe check your door gasket or your chimney may be drafting too well. My stove is real easy to calm down from the initial blaze and settle into a long overnight burn. I use the blower all the time as well having a insert so that blows off heat. My experience indicates that if you have a lot of small pieces they will burn hotter and faster because there is more area exposed to the flames. Bigger pieces packed together tightly and large rounds should burn slower and last longer. I don't burn silver maple so it may be a hotter and faster burning wood.

Cate said:

Ok, several of you posted that you fill your firebox up to the max. Excuse the pun, but now the blazes do you do this without sending the stove temps through the roof? I loaded three pieces into Mr. Revere last night, one medium sized silver maple, one smaller silver maple, and the third biggest piece I can't remember what it was. My hottest wood is hickory, and it wasn't that. The temp shot up into the danger zone and scared the bejeebers out of me. I shut off the air and the temp continued to climb for the next 45 minutes until it hit 800. I could have added 3 more pieces to fill the box, but I'd wake up surrounded by a pile of ash-that-used-to-be-my-house with my luck. What wood do you use for overnight burning if you can cram you firebox full? I'm very curious...

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Overnight I load the best wood I have - defined as the largest pieces of the most dense, dry wood I can reach in the pile. Right now it is a mix of apple and black birch.

Now, if your stove runs out of control when you load it up then it seems likely you have an air leak somewhere or you may be waiting too long before reducing the air. With a hot stove on reload I don't even open the air full - I set air to 2 (4 is full open) and do the load. Once wood is burning well (only takes a few minutes - 10-15 max) I will have the cat engaged and air set down to less than 1 (which is where I will cruise for the full burn).

I went to a friend's house who had a non-cat stove. I did a similar thing there to load that stove in that on the hot coal bed I loaded then as soon as the wood was burning I started turning the air down to get secondaries burning then kept moving the slider down until it was almost all the way off so it could cruise (nice secondaries going for a hot display of fire).

I suspect that whatever stove you have, letting the stove heat up beyond a certain point will make it harder to get the fire under control with a peak temp that you are happy with. There is a delay loop involved here it seems between the time you reduce air and the fire cools enough to reduce out gassing, flue cools to reduce draft, etc and a new equilibrium is achieved.

leeave96 said:

With my fine Keystone, I never thought I'd get a full overnight burn with hot radiating heat from the stove and really don't plan to heat the house full time with it, however, just for kicks, we are trying to keep the furnance off as long as possible. What is intersting about this stove is that I can burn it for 8-10 hrs and have plenty of coals left over for a re-kindle and stove top temps at 200-250 degrees. Once the stove gets down to those temps, ain't much heating going on.

I can remember when I was a kid, at an old farm house, we had what amounted to a tall warm morning knock-off wood/coal stove. It seems like everyone went to bed in their briefs, sleeping on top of the covers and by morning had all of our clothes on - plus a jacket and under all the covers and blankets! Fire was out and it was cold!

My house is under 1000 sq ft, but is drafty as an old barn so I've got the right stove size and am keeping up with keeping it warm without the furnance coming on, but as we remodel/remake this house, new windows and insulation it will be easier to cruise at lower temperatures and yield longer meaningful burn times. I also still have plenty of reserve for the Keystone too. I have burned the stove mostly at about 550 stove top max, but have enough head room to easily take it past 600+ temps and will as the temps fall into the single digits.

Mostly, I am just courious as to how others are keeping their stoves cranking the heat during long overnight burns.

Thanks
Bill

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My Keystone can easily over heat my 1000 sq ft but I have new windows, added insulation in the attic and plugged many leaks. So I'm thinking you have the right stove for the job and should be able to do the same after your improvements. Just burning the Keystone upstairs without the help of the downstairs Fireview I can get away with 3 full loads per day and keep the upstairs in the upper 70's when it's in the single digits and lower teens outside.

Cate said:

Ok, several of you posted that you fill your firebox up to the max. Excuse the pun, but now the blazes do you do this without sending the stove temps through the roof? I loaded three pieces into Mr. Revere last night, one medium sized silver maple, one smaller silver maple, and the third biggest piece I can't remember what it was. My hottest wood is hickory, and it wasn't that. The temp shot up into the danger zone and scared the bejeebers out of me. I shut off the air and the temp continued to climb for the next 45 minutes until it hit 800. I could have added 3 more pieces to fill the box, but I'd wake up surrounded by a pile of ash-that-used-to-be-my-house with my luck. What wood do you use for overnight burning if you can cram you firebox full? I'm very curious...

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I tend to use mostly my bigger splits or rounds . . . sometimes adding a couple smaller pieces on the base to get things going nicely . . . and once the temp is up in the Goldilocks zone I don't dilly dally . . . I'll shut the air and watch things for 15-20 minutes to make sure things are stable . . . 99% of the time things are hunky-dorey. I think the key for me is to not let the temp go up too high before I start shutting down the air . . . well that and using the larger wood vs. filling up the firebox with lots of smaller splits. I would think that just three splits should not lead to an out of control fire though.

Thanks Jake. I tried again last night by turning the air down before things got out of control and had a better result. Common sense, huh?

Cate said:

Thanks Jake. I tried again last night by turning the air down before things got out of control and had a better result. Common sense, huh?

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It's a learning process . . . we've all gone through the same experiences . . . and some of us are still learning which is why I stick around. Glad to hear things worked out a bit better last night.

Cate said:

Thanks Jake. I tried again last night by turning the air down before things got out of control and had a better result. Common sense, huh?

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yep it's a learning curve for sure. Besides airing down earlier, a LARGE split is part of the answer. We call them "night logs" for our stove, if going for a long overnight burn, we keep an eye out for splits that ended up in the 8x8 to 10x10 range. Put that in with a couple much smaller splits, filling the firebox as close to full as possible, it takes a long time on low air to burn up a split that size, lot less surface area then several smaller splits of the same total weight.

gyrfalcon said:

Personally, I'd far, far rather deal with a cold house in the morning than wrench myself awake and stumble downstairs to try to reload competently in the middle of the night. My second floor bedrooms are unheated anyway, and they're actually a bit warmer overnight since I switched from central heating to the woodstove. But still my bedroom is very cold in winter, as I like it, and strumbling downstairs in the morning to a main room in the low 50s seems warm. It only takes a little while before I can get the stove cranking again, so it's all uphill and warming from there.

I'm certainly understoved and would be happier if it weren't quite so cold in the AM, but I find I cope just fine. I have my oil boiler set to come on at 45, but things only get that cold overnight, even with my puny stove, in the worst mid-winter weather.

I think if you're going to heat with wood, you really have to adjust your expectations about heating consistency.

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I've got my boiler set at 60 and my wife cries at that. I can't imagine low 50's let alone 45. You must either live alone of have an Eskimo for a wife. Getting up in the middle of the night to throw on a couple splits is a lot easier than hearing "Its freezing in here" and seeing her run to the thermostat in the AM to up the temp and burn up that liquid gold in my oil tank. But thankfully I'm getting the hang of my new Jotul C550 and can get enough heat out of it overnight without getting up to keep the wife happy. Happy wife= happy life.

I load up the stoves when I head to bed around 11. Baby wakes up my wife and that gets me moving downstairs to reload both of them. During the week I wake up at 5am so I just get up around 2-3am. Weekends I sleep in till 7 so I might get up around 5am to add more wood. To be honest my goal is not how long I can keep coals but keeping the house warm. I don't mind waking up to add wood. I am sure my Heritage could go all night with coals left in the am but the stovetop temp might be 200*. Not warm enough in my old 1800's house. NG is my backup and has only come on 3 or 4 times for a total of 6ccf of use. I want to totally go off NG but with both of us working and temps in the single digits, I don't think it will ever be possible. But I will keep trying.

I don't sleep long so overnights work out fine. I'm working hardest at keeping the warm air in my house. Insulation is on sale at home depot. I need to pick up some more.

Anyway, I load up the stove around midnight. Let it crank. Usually when I go to bed the stove top temp is between 500 and 600. If it's below 20 degrees outside my house is significantly cooler by 6:30 or so when I get up. I will usually turn the heat on (cast iron radiators/ oil burner) for 45 -60 min to bring the whole house up to even temps. Then let the stove do all the work for the rest of the day. I like doing it that way because it really helps even out the heat in the house.

I'm hoping I'll need the oil heat even less than that in the next month or so with some added insulation and adjustments with some doors and windows. Each week I tackle a small project to help keep the heat in my house. My wife says I'm obsessed. She's probably right.

firefighterjake said:

I tend to use mostly my bigger splits or rounds . . . sometimes adding a couple smaller pieces on the base to get things going nicely . . . and once the temp is up in the Goldilocks zone I don't dilly dally . . . I'll shut the air and watch things for 15-20 minutes to make sure things are stable . . . 99% of the time things are hunky-dorey. I think the key for me is to not let the temp go up too high before I start shutting down the air . . . well that and using the larger wood vs. filling up the firebox with lots of smaller splits. I would think that just three splits should not lead to an out of control fire though.

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you say you "shut the air" ...... does that mean you shut it all the way down, part way down, etc.??? Like, this evening I have fire for the night ..... by-pass is pushed in ...... air wash is open/on ..... and the primary air control pushed almost all the way in. Is this a good setting?

Boozie said:

firefighterjake said:

I tend to use mostly my bigger splits or rounds . . . sometimes adding a couple smaller pieces on the base to get things going nicely . . . and once the temp is up in the Goldilocks zone I don't dilly dally . . . I'll shut the air and watch things for 15-20 minutes to make sure things are stable . . . 99% of the time things are hunky-dorey. I think the key for me is to not let the temp go up too high before I start shutting down the air . . . well that and using the larger wood vs. filling up the firebox with lots of smaller splits. I would think that just three splits should not lead to an out of control fire though.

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you say you "shut the air" ...... does that mean you shut it all the way down, part way down, etc.??? Like, this evening I have fire for the night ..... by-pass is pushed in ...... air wash is open/on ..... and the primary air control pushed almost all the way in. Is this a good setting?

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Generally I shut it down in stages . . . closing it a quarter mark at a time and waiting for 5-10 minutes to make sure the fire is still burning well . . . sometimes if the fire has been going for some time I'll just turn it down to the 1/4 mark for a bit . . . let it level off and if the temps are good and the fire is burning well close the air all the way (of course these EPA stoves do not allow you to fully close the air -- there is always some oxygen coming in even if the air control is all the way shut.) How far one can shut down their air depends on several variables -- how well seasoned the wood is, draft with the chimney/stove, etc. Generally I would say the more you can shut down the air control and still have a good, clean burning stove the better off you will be for longer burns.