How Do You Heat on Mild Days?

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boatboy63

Member
Feb 6, 2010
205
Northeastern TN
Just wondering how you guys go about heating on mild days? For the next week, we are supposed to be in low to mid 40's at night and low to mid 50's during the day. I can't run a full blown fire because it will be too hot, but am burning a couple of small splits at a time. The only problem is that I have to keep the air and damper cut back so far, I know I am staying in the smoke dragon stage. I would say that what creosote I have dried out in the past couple of weeks is getting a new layer now.
 
Small hot fires, I usually split my regular splits smaller so I can burn hot fires that burn out pretty fast.
 
for me just like the last few days it in the 50's which is not normal around here i just ran my furnace and it was a good time for the stove to be down a few days which i cleaned out the ashes and all that crap on the walls in the box and yes i left about 2 inch of ashes lol
 
boatboy63 said:
Just wondering how you guys go about heating on mild days? For the next week, we are supposed to be in low to mid 40's at night and low to mid 50's during the day. I can't run a full blown fire because it will be too hot, but am burning a couple of small splits at a time. The only problem is that I have to keep the air and damper cut back so far, I know I am staying in the smoke dragon stage. I would say that what creosote I have dried out in the past couple of weeks is getting a new layer now.


I use one stove instead of three.

Right now the Heritage is heating the whole house. Living room is about 80 degrees, the rest of the house is 65-73 degrees.
 
I let the fire go out and the gas furnace come on.
 
Quick hot fires with small splits, kindling, chunks, and uglies. I had to relight my stove tonight because it was like 50* here today. But I have the fire going now for the overnight.
 
LLigetfa said:
I let the fire go out and the gas furnace come on.
Same here, hate to have the furnace kick on, but if I can't burn my stove the way it needs to be burned correctly... Besides, its a nice break for a couple days and good to do maintenance on flue, stove, etc.
 
Around 40 we usually just burn a morning hot fire of about 3 splits and let it burn down and out with a revival in the evening if need be. At 50 we are burning electrons.
 
strictly geothermal same as if I'm not feeling well.
 
Morning-to-afternoon fires, hot and med-small. Lovely warm temps here today of 20-25F. We've had a few weeks of -20 and lower, then warmed up to around 0F for a bit, so this weather is a treat.

We put the last wood in the fire around 2 pm, house is still about 70F. about midnight. We'll appreciate the warmth of a fire in the morning, and avoid wasting wood keeping the house warm while everyone's asleep.
 
Anyone offer suggestions for a Cat stove? In reality if I try to go small fire, it ends up being impossible for me to light off the Cat.. So my small fired heat the place... but I'm sending a lot of heat up the chimney.... If I load the stove with 3 to 4 goodsized splits I can get the Cat to engage... but then its time to strip down to skivies....
 
We still burn 24/7, just turn the thermostat down on the stove.
 
Bobforsaken said:
Anyone offer suggestions for a Cat stove? In reality if I try to go small fire, it ends up being impossible for me to light off the Cat.. So my small fired heat the place... but I'm sending a lot of heat up the chimney.... If I load the stove with 3 to 4 goodsized splits I can get the Cat to engage... but then its time to strip down to skivies....

My Woodstock Keystone is a small cat stove. We also have had some moderate temperatures the past few days. What I have been doing is burning stubs and other odd shaped wood in my pile, getting the stove up to temp and lighting off the cat, then dampering down. Once the cat is lit and there is smoke, it will continue to burn. Infact, it glows the most red when dampered down because of the amount of smoke generated. It hasn't happened to me - yet, but from what I have read, most overfires on a cat stove occur when the stove is loaded hot and dampered down as the cat has plenty of smoke to burn and make heat.

Good luck,
Bill
 
Bobforsaken said:
Anyone offer suggestions for a Cat stove? In reality if I try to go small fire, it ends up being impossible for me to light off the Cat.. So my small fired heat the place... but I'm sending a lot of heat up the chimney.... If I load the stove with 3 to 4 goodsized splits I can get the Cat to engage... but then its time to strip down to skivies....

Woodstock Fireview here. Build small fire in morning and let it go out. Build another in the evening. Tomorrow do the same thing.

We don't have much problem lighting off the cat with 3 splits but if we don't, we do not worry about it. Many times in spring and fall we'll build just a small fire and don't bother to engage the cat. This does not happen day after day so we don't worry.

btw, when I built a fire the day before yesterday when our daytime temperaure reached 51, there was a small coal bed. I laid maybe a half dozen pieces of soft maple kindling on the coals and 3 splits on top of that. I was able to engage the cat and then just forgot the stove until evening when it started to feel cool and damp. Then I did the same thing as I did in the morning. No problem. Now it is in the teens out there so we won't worry about small fires for a while.
 
snowleopard said:
Morning-to-afternoon fires, hot and med-small. Lovely warm temps here today of 20-25F. We've had a few weeks of -20 and lower, then warmed up to around 0F for a bit, so this weather is a treat.

We put the last wood in the fire around 2 pm, house is still about 70F. about midnight. We'll appreciate the warmth of a fire in the morning, and avoid wasting wood keeping the house warm while everyone's asleep.

And where is this heatwave taking place?????

Home _ _ _ _
Stove_ _ _ _
 
splitnstack said:
...if I can't burn my stove the way it needs to be burned correctly...
Yup. I hate starting fires. If I can't run it 24/7, as normal, I burn oil.
 
Brian VT said:
splitnstack said:
...if I can't burn my stove the way it needs to be burned correctly...
Yup. I hate starting fires. If I can't run it 24/7, as normal, I burn oil.

Yep I used to hate rubbing those sticks together, then I went down south, and found out the match had been invented'

LOL Stay Warm
 
cptoneleg said:
And where is this heatwave taking place?????
Not here, that's for sure!

It's -22°C here this morning, going down to -28°C tonight.
 
Small hot fire when I arise at dawn. Another after supper.

That is for milder days.

But right now it is +5 F. and it was -4 F. yesterday, so no problem with overheating the house. Wind chill -25 F. outdoors, or something around there, so no problem overheating our bodies, either.
 
Small hot fires and open windows. Last week I had 5 windows wide open with a nice breeze coming through the house and had a fire in the woodstove. I do what I can to keep that evil propane from kicking on. I use my windows quite often to regulate my house. Fresh air is good.
 
I get so much heat stored in my basement slab and my masonry chimney that I get a free ride for a day or so of above 40º weather, especially if it's sunny out. Only had one fire in the evening for the last two days and the place has been at a very stable 71º day and night. The interesting thing about it is that the evening fire really doesn't change the upstairs temperature. It was 71º when I started the fire last night, it stayed 71º until I went to bed, and it's 71º right now, 10 hours later with a cold stove. The only thing the two fires did was to pump more heat into the masonry and cement slab, which otherwise might take a few days of hard burning to get back up there. Besides that, they didn't affect the temperature upstairs in the living space a bit.
 
When its warm out, I build 1 fire a day, and it burns 12 or so hours. The house will get up to 75 or so, and then I let it cool off and the fire go out.
I set my electric heat to say 65, so it cannot get too cool in here.
 
I am alittle like Battenkiller once my logs are up to temp they will keep house warm for a couple of days in 40f temps. It's cold here now but in spring i will light a small fire in morning unless its really warm say 50f out then i will build a fire in evening and we will go to bed. The main floor will heat up and the logs will store the energy and we will wake up to an evenly heated home for the next 2 days. The difference in heat retention between the different homes is dramatic.
 
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