Equinox, or soapstone in general operating temps??

wellbuilt home said:

Hi ruth , I under stand the concept of more and less air and how a damper works .
The problem is with out the damper the stove has burnt out of control 2 or 3 hour into the burn cycle and this is unacceptable to me .
The next problem is i cant duplicate the hi burn at will .
My chimney is very high 28+ feet .
With no damper i had a hard time reaching 350o with any amount of wood or air flow .
Ive been burning for a long time and never use more then 4 cord of wood .
With out a damper im looking at 8+ cord a season .
Dont get me wrong i like the stove its very pretty and the fire is very nice to watch .
On a 30o day it puts out enough heat with out force feeding the stove .
If i had the convenience of turning on the gas heat it would be fine but its been so lone since i used the heat i dont think it works.
I wanted to add a TV room this year but i dont have enough heat with the eq.
I think the btu rating and sq ft estimate is misleading . John

Click to expand...

Please describe in detail this out of control condition.

There was a time when I was also very concerned my Equinox was burning out of control and thus overfiring. As it turns out, it was not overfiring it was just burning along on full secondaries. I'm telling you when you see it, it's really gets raging in there. The scary part was not the stove, it was my connector.......it got hotter than it had before and started crackling like it was on fire in there. When it cooled I cleaned everything up and took a bunch of black flacky crap out my horizontal connector pipe. Since then, I run the stove really hot, wide open once every day. Once the secondaries light off, your burning the smoke and wood consumption should go way down. With no secondaries, it's all wood burn and I'm not suprised your running through your wood supply.

Please be careful taking advise from myself and other Equinox owners....every installation is different. We are all coaxing you to make an already big fire even bigger and who knows what the result will be.....if your chimney needs cleaning and we all tell you to let her rip that could be dangerous. You should only do what you are comfortable with and thats it.

The guy that suggested contacting Hearthstone is right on. I did this recently through my dealer and he was very helpful, give it a try.

Keep trying!

Well when i got home from work. I stuffed the stove with wood .
grabbed a double bourbon and sat buy the stove .
When it burnt down a little i added a few good splits .
I nodded off , when i woke up i though i was sitting on the sun .
The stove was at 650o, so i turned off the air .
About 40 min latter the stove was climbing to 800o
Since it seemed like it could be damaged i opened the door and removed the wood .
I just cant have this happen .
Ive been experimenting .
last night it was 10o out I stacked the wood n/s as we spoke about last week and let it rip.
after a hour i turned down the air in 1/3s with the flue open i reached 375o at 2hrs 400 at 21/2hrs and the stove maintained 400o 41/2 hours at 51/2 hrs i was at 325 .
The stove only put out usable heat for maybe 3 hours . With the damper i can get the same heat for 5 hrs ?
John

wellbuilt home said:

Well when i got home from work. I stuffed the stove with wood .
grabbed a double bourbon and sat buy the stove .
When it burnt down a little i added a few good splits .
I nodded off , when i woke up i though i was sitting on the sun .
The stove was at 650o, so i turned off the air .
About 40 min latter the stove was climbing to 800o
Since it seemed like it could be damaged i opened the door and removed the wood .
I just cant have this happen .
Ive been experimenting .
last night it was 10o out I stacked the wood n/s as we spoke about last week and let it rip.
after a hour i turned down the air in 1/3s with the flue open i reached 375o at 2hrs 400 at 21/2hrs and the stove maintained 400o 41/2 hours at 51/2 hrs i was at 325 .
The stove only put out usable heat for maybe 3 hours . With the damper i can get the same heat for 5 hrs ?
John

Click to expand...

So while you were sitting on the sun, did you get a tan? Was the temp in your house going up? When I read you got up to 650, I was thinking O.K., we are getting there but then things kept going up and up..........

The folks that moderate this site probably don't like the jist of this thread right now......John here got some advise to pack his stove full and let her rip to see if it will get up to full operating temp or maybe higher. John then proceeds with said advise but adds to the mix 6 ounces of JD, two loads of wood, an open pipe damper, a wide open air supply followed by a power nap right when thing were getting interesting. Geez man, why did you have to fall asleep! Sorry for the scare, I have also removed burning splits from my stove, don't want to have to do that again.

Don't know about you, but I see this as progress.....we now know that your stove will get up to maximum operating temps just like mine does, this is good. Now all you have to do is figure out how to quickly get up to 550 and then maintain it for these cold nights. You have all the tools including the pipe damper which I agree you need and like me should use regularly. Get your fire going hot, back down the air, and close the pipe damper.....takes about 45 minutes every day it's cold like this.

Sorry also to the OP as this is a major hijack......we are talking shop about the same stove though.

After reading through this thread I think I made a good decision to go with a stove pipe damper.

Digging up this old thread must be like digging up bones.

mhrischuk said:

After reading through this thread I think I made a good decision to go with a stove pipe damper.

Click to expand...

You can't go wrong with a pipe damper. It's cheap and you don't have to use it. I've used it a few times on the Heritage to slow down the draft.

. . .I nodded off. When I woke up, I thought I was sitting on the sun.

Click to expand...

LOLz