How far to Damper Down A Stove

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Huntindog1

Huntindog1

Minister of Fire
Dec 6, 2011
1,879
South Central Indiana
When dampening down stoves with the secondary burn tubes in the top, do you damper down till a point just before a flame goes out or do you damper down low but keep the tubes showing flaming out of them? If I damper down before going to work and I still have flames but no burn tube flaming will the stove eventually start the secondary burn on its own. Or must the stove be secondary burning and not turned down such as to kill the secondary burn before leaving the house.

sometimes I need to leave before I see secondary burn happening but I have a good flame going.
 
I don't feel comfortable leaving the house in the morning w/ a loaded stove unless I can stick around for 45 mins(an hour when the stove was new, but had burning experience in other appliances) after loading.

The concern is if you leave it closed too far too early, then your stove will burn ineffeciently and smoke up the neighborhood, leave the chimney dirty, etc.

On the flip side, if you leave the air open too much w/ nobody in attendance you could overheat the stove and cause damage to it or else start a chimney fire if accumulation has built up in the flue.

Best advice I can give is to always leave yourself enough time in the morning to get things going properly for the safest / most effecient burn.

That said, I do this by setting the alarm 5 mins earlier than I do in the non-burning season. From experience, I've made a morning routine of the stove that fits in w/ my regular routine and has it running on it's own in about 30 mins while only spending a few mins at the actual stove. The extra time is to just make sure things are cruising appropriately.

If you NEED some heat, but have to get out the door w/out getting the stove to settle in while you are there, I would suggest a 1/2 load of wood or less.

pen
 
forgot to add, the amount of secondary vs flame on the wood will also depend on how loaded up the stove is.

Basically, you are just going to have to spend some time observing this thing (while you can be home and watch a full burn) and how it reacts when you load it different ways, with different wood, in different weather conditions, w/ different draft settings.

pen
 
Welcome to the forum Huntindog1.

The best thing you can do is spend a weekend or two when you are home to watch what the stove is doing. You will quickly learn what is the best setting for your stove. Nobody can tell you what the best setting is because it depends upon your installation, your stove, your fuel and the weather. Sounds confusing but you will also quickly learn that it is not; just a short learning curve.
 
Generally I don't leave the stove alone (whether going to bed, leaving for work or just puttering around the house) until I have a sustained secondary going . . . that's me . . . I don't want to assume that things are good and then have the fire die down and then build up the gases and have it burst into flame (having seen that once) . . . and I certainly don't want to let it free burn and just assume it may start to have secondaries at some point.

The thing about a woodstove is it does take time to get things settled down and cruising . . . one reason I wake up 45 minutes earlier in the Fall, Winter and early Spring . . . gotta make the time to be safe.

As to far how down you can turn down the air . . . that depends on the draft, wood, etc.
 
Huntindog1 said:
When dampening down stoves with the secondary burn tubes in the top, do you damper down till a point just before a flame goes out or do you damper down low but keep the tubes showing flaming out of them? If I damper down before going to work and I still have flames but no burn tube flaming will the stove eventually start the secondary burn on its own. Or must the stove be secondary burning and not turned down such as to kill the secondary burn before leaving the house.

sometimes I need to leave before I see secondary burn happening but I have a good flame going.
Click to expand...

What kind of stove are you burning? You might need to allow a little more time to get a feel for your stove if it's new. My Woodstock Keystone stove has been very predicitable (knock on wood) and being a cat stove, once the cat is lit-off, it burns clean - no smoke out the chimney. My Englander 30-NCH is still pretty new to me. Like yours, it has burn tubes. The reason I ask about your stove type is - my Keystone is soapstone and I don't like to rush the burn on it so as to prevent the possibility of cracking something. On the other hand, my Englander is a steel plate stove. When I fire it up, I lit it rip full open until I start approaching about 550 stove top and begin to damper down. I can get this stove stable and cruising in 15 or 20 minutes. Being new to me, I'm learning and getting a feel for the final damper settings that let the stove cruise at that 550ish temp. Once I get there, like with my Keystone, then I feel more comfortable about leaving the stove for the day or night.

Good luck,
Bill
 
I agree with the comments above and add one more observation: I look at the burn tubes at the top 1-2 minutes after I damper it down. If they have a little glow to them--then I have a good hot fire going and can leave/go to bed. If those tubes aren't glowing & it looks like things are starting to cool down already--then I'm smothering the fire & need to open it up for a few more minutes.
It took me a while to get my brain trained to think about the stove about an hour ahead of when I'm going to leave or go to bed.
 
Cut the air back as far as you can while still maintaining stable secondaries in the top of the stove.

Three things to note:
1) you will probably have a little bit of flame still coming from the logs.
2) you will only have secondaries for part of the burn cycle.
3) I've seen it said here that about half of the heat in a load comes in the coaling stage when you have very little flame at all. I tend to agree.

-SF
 
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