Help!!! Tempwood manual!!

Look if you have bought a stove of some critical esteem, your manual for the stove you bought will be online... Do you know how to use your browser (search engine)? "Just say no if you don't and i will tell you how to:" Look here none of us did until it was explained to us" ....Say No, and I will give you step by step intructions...there is no competition here, only a great desire to guide people (maybe) such as you on the right path, without embarrassment. Call on me me if you need guidence....I will not laugh or denigrate you.......only give give you good orderly direction



My name is Joe and I don't laugh at new comers

shoctor said:

I have tried in vain for the past 3 months to try and get a tempwood manual for my stove as I am trying to be legal and an inspection. No dice on the manual is what I have come up with. Does anyone know of where one of these manuals are available?Shane

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Ignore some of the these online geeks Shane: they just diddle and just want to seem bright. Ain't. %-P

The Tempwood was and is a fine pre-EPA steel stove. Yes, the business is long gone, but the stoves are still in use. We have a large Tempwood ( fire bricks long ago replaced ) as my workshop stove and was used as our camp stove when building a "real" home, for quick heat and short fires. Sporting camps here in the North Woods of Maine such as Little Lyford Pond Camps of the AMC ,use the small Tempwoods for cabin heating ( cabins around 15' x 15' uninsulated). They've been in constant use for decades.

For clearances look at other single wall steel stove manuals online for specs. The usual clearancxe to combustibles is usually a min of 36" horizontal and vertical ( such as a mantel). You can use state Fire Marshal or insurance specs also ( just Google it ). My workshop Tempwood is spaced 8" from cement board from floor to 12" above the top of the Tempwood with ceramic spacers. The base of the cement boards is about an inch above the floor protection. I use the hand test: with the stove at full bore heat, can you hold your hand behind the board for awhile. Not rocket science for wood combustion.

Did you ever get anywhere looking for the manual??? My brother recently purchased a house that has a Tempwood top load and we are trying to learn about it. He heated the last half of last winter with it and is still learning its personality. Anything you have would be more than we have right now. Thanks.

I, too, have purchased a house with a Tempwood stove, and am seeking the manual. I was so happy to find this thread -- but learned that the link provided by BigBrother now replys that the blog is viewable by invitation only.

Did anyone get that manual? Or are there other sources? Thanks.

(Sorry to "bump" an old thread, if that's frowned on here.)

Sorry -- I meant BrotherBart. Careless Orwellian references aren't a great start on a forum.

I've been using a tempwood for years...what do you want to know?

Basic info, no manual
https://www.hearth.com/econtent/index.php/wiki/Tempwood/

@Dune
I'm starting from scratch -- a real woodstove neophyte. Mostly, am I running correctly to maximize room heat per pound of firewood, and also minimizing creosote? My wood is well-seasoned ash. I've got a Rutland thermometer on the top of the small (?) Tempwood, 18x23x13, and I'm trying to keep it in the mid-burn-zone = 150-250 Celsius. I've been getting a smallish fire going well and then loading it up to about the bottom of the downdraft tubes and closing the damper to maybe 70degrees angle (where 90degrees would be shut) and closing the two inlets to about 20% of their full open area. This seems to keep the correct(?) temperature range and a nice orange glow. I'm hoping it's fuel-efficient, etc. I'm also using a small fan to distribute the room air. The stove is downstairs, and I'd like to get as much heat up the (straight) staircase as possible.

But "Read the manual" seems the right approach to this old engineer! Just a comfort factor, I guess.

Any comments/suggestions are very welcome. Thanks for your reply.



@Webmaster
Thanks for the link -- that's a great diagram.

Since you are the engineer, you can do the math. Best efficiency/least creosote comes from small hot fires. I'd say you are running a little cold. A decent fire in my stove is 550F or higher. If I am feeling cold or have northwest wind, I"ll run it near 700F. Obviously temps over 600F only when I am milling around, trying to warm the house fast. I don't have a stovepipe damper, hardly ever feel like I need one, unless it is extremely cold out. I keep wondering if I should have one. Somehow I became convinced that airtight stoves don't need pipe dampers.

As far as the manual goes, tempwoods were by far the most popular stoves here on Cape Cod before the modern era. They throw serious heat but don't eat wood like a Fisher or other early airtight stoves.
They use half the wood of pre-airtights with equal heat. We didn't know the mechanics of it, just that they were better. Having hung around this forum for a few years, I now know that the tempwood's advantage is that they are primitive gassifiers...primitive but effective. Which brings me to the main way I can help you; I learned most of what I know about effective wood burning in the three years I have been a member here, more than in the multiple decades I practiced solo.

Ask specific questions on the apropriate forum. The folks on this forum are the most helpful knowledgable bunch of people I have ever had the pleasure to assosiate with.

Of course, feel free to ask me any other questions you desire as well, however, by addressing the forum at large, we are both likely to learn more.

One last thing, I load similar to your description during the day and evening, but before I go to bed, I stuff it to the gills and damp it down. I never close the plates to less than a 1/4" (6mm).

Good luck, welcome, and I hope to see you become a prolific poster here.

I grew up with one of these as our main heat for our old victorian converted mansion, it really threw the heat. My dad made some draft pipe extensions for it that were adjustable with bolts to put the air deeper into the fire, I remember the way it would heat up quickly after the fire was lit and the way it would chug until the lid and draft lids were dancing around. one time my dad loaded it up and left the draft tubes open all the way, he woke up a couple hours later to find the stove red hot, closing the draft tubes didn't fix it so he poured in large salad bowls of water until it stopped glowing, it had a permanent sag in the front steel from that, but otherwise worked fine for the next 6 years we were there. I think that was when he started looking for a chimney damper, but I don't know if he ever got one.

Just keep an open mind to not using the damper. If the gaskets in that stove are in good shape, it should be airtight and you should be able to control air on the front end [air inlets] as opposed to the air [exhaust] outlets. I tightened up the gaskets on the old stove and it burned very well just using the knobs on the front to control air. The damper just backs the stove up with smoke and makes it all creosote-y.

@CTwoodburner & Dune
I will keep an open mind about not using the damper and running a bit hotter. Too much smoke/creosote sounds/looks like the direction I may have been running -- trying to be so cheap with the wood that I could get myself in trouble... I'm getting the idea that "damping" the stove can involve just the air inlets. I'll cogitate/experiment some more.

@rowerwet
Interesting story. And it suggests that you, too, are rather blase about chimney dampers.

@Dune
As I look at the fora here it seems this one is the most active, and that it concentrates on wood stoves (where my present questions are) as much as any does. So I thank all of you for the fast, friendly and helpful responses. I've got some experimenting to do -- and will move over to my own new threads in this forum with further questions. Thanks again!

Mr. Rooto, Please bear in mind that I am not advocating pipe dampers one way or another. I am actualy pretty certain that it would be adventagous during extremely cold weather. Since you have one installed anyway, and the methodology to perform acurate studies, perhaps you could determine it's value to a tempwood user. We could begin a users manual in the wiki with your findings. I recomed the use of a digital infra-red lazer pyrometer. They are available for rediculously cheap money. I take the temperature at four points on the stove and two or three spots on the pipe sometimes. The center of the ends just about at the lower termination of the air inlet pipes is the hottest spot in at highest running temps. I check the top for ease and comparison with other peoples stove top temps. I check the front center at the same elevation as the ends, the place where rowerwet's family stove buckled. This is the place where overfire will have the most effect. I check the pipe right off the stove. The temp can vary a bit here from the top by a hundred to a few hundred degrees F, over the course of a fire. The top of the pipe on my stove usualy cruises around 200 degrees unless I am cranking. When the temp aroaches 400F, I am checking all along the pipe too, out of curiosity, since I seldom see it that high.

Hello,
I can get copys of the owners manuals on this stove being I am the current builder of the NEW tempwood stove ,firebricks and other parts will be available on request please email me if you have questions or comments on the stove .

Tell us more Joe.

I could use some advice on a woodstove. I have never had a woodstove but have come across a Tempwood and was wondering the pro' and cons. I am going to install it in my garage, but can I get some advice or things I should know before I get burning. I am a pretty handy guy, but have would prefer to not burn my house down the first night. Eric