New To Using A Wood Insert - Need Help

New guy here, been doing lots of reading on this site and have a couple of questions. Hopefully someone can point me in the right direction.

A little background info: We bought a new house that has an insert and it's finally gotten cold enough to use it. I don't know what brand it is and I'm not really sure were to look to found out. It has solid doors and a blower. My problem is I can't seem to get the room above 70 degrees. The room is 19'x14' with a vaulted ceiling that is 12' high. across from the insert is a 6' wide opening to the next room that is 17'x13'. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong, not being able to see what the fire is doing because I don't have glass doors is driving me crazy. I've got a good bed of ash with a good amount of coals. I'll put 2 splits on it and get it blazing pretty good, after a while I'll add another 2 splits and let it burn for awhile and then close the damper some and close the air intake down to about 1/2 way.

Do I need a thermometer and if I do what kind to I need. It's a brick fireplace that the insert is in so there is no exposed metal other then the insert and the metal trim around it.

The only wood I could get was supposed to seasoned over a year but I'm not real sure how dry it is.

I really could use some help.

Thanks,
Brian

Thanks for the welcome

I'll see if I can get a decent pic of it posted in a while.

I let it warm up and then turn the blower on low and gradually increase the speed to medium and then when it starts to feel like the air isn't as hot I will back it down to low again. Don't really think that's the ideal thing to do but not sure what else to do.

Not that great of a pic but it was all I have on my computer at work. This was taken before we moved in and started work on the house.

The chimney is on the outside wall on the front of the house, the house is very well insulated, has new windows. The main floor is 1,600 sq. ft and has a full basement that 1/2 is finished. The house is all brick and stone.

I agree with the comment about the seasoned wood, as far as I know it's been cut up for over a year but who knows when it was split. It looks like it was split a long time ago and has just laid around.

Here is one more.




What kind of thermometer do I need?

bokehman said:

High ceiling may be a problem (need a ceiling fan), or less than seasoned wood... but... to make some heat you need to put some fuel in it. 2 splits is never going to make any heat. You need to fill it up. With my insert if I want some good heat I fill it to the baffle, which means a bed of hot coal with 5 north/south splits with a couple of longer east/west above.

Click to expand...

I guess I wasn't really sure how full I could fill it. I'll loader up tonight and see what she does.

DAKSY said:

Not sure what you've got there, but if you can pull the blower away from
the stove body, the rating plate is probably there.
It'll have the make, model & serial number...

Click to expand...

I'll take a look tonight when I get home. I could call the old owners but she is an elderly lady and might not know or remember. When we had everything inspected they said it looked like it was only used a few times.

I'm about ready to throw in the towel.....Last night I had a great coal bed so I loaded the sucker up got it roaring, closed the doors but left the air intakes wide open and the damper wide open. It was putting out some descent heat. I finally closed the damper down one setting and closed the air intakes down to about 1/2. It had been going about an hour and I decided to lay in the floor in front of it. Needless to say I never really got that warm even with the blower on high. It's driving me nuts, I'm really starting to wonder if my wood isn't seasoned long enough? I banged some wood together and it sounds like what hitting two bowling pins together sounds like. Maybe I need to throw some Viagra in there with it. That load lasted about 8 hours but it never warmed the room up next to it to 70 degrees.

The first night I used it I got better results then now. The difference was this, there was no ash bed and they had a few bricks in there to keep the wood up off the bottom. Any thoughts about that?


All I could find about the who made the insert is Martin Industries model k1200a

**UPDATE**

Last night I decided to start from scratch (almost) I cleaned out most of the ash (all but 1" deep) left all the nice coals I had in there. I loaded it with 3 medium splits N/S, the 2 just a little smaller then medium splits E/W on top. That's all that will fit, I don't have very many logs that will fit in it N/S without cutting some down so this might not last very long. It didn't take very long to get off and going and after about an hour it was putting out some major heat. It got the temp up to 73 in the hallway which is about 25' away. About 4 hours later I loaded a couple of round logs on the top and let it settle down and closed it down for the night at 9:30pm. Got up this morning at 6:00am and the thermostat in the hall said 72. All that was left in the insert was some red hot coals but it was still pretty warm.

I think I might of finally figured out how to get this thing to really get going.