karl said:
Today has been really cold here and I have been running the stove a little harder than normal. I am having a problem burn down the coals. I raked them to the front and turned the air on high and put a few pine splits in it and left it on high. It helped some but not alot. I am wondering if part of my coal build up problem might be inadequate drafting. I have a 15 or 16 foot uninsulated stainless liner. I only have a back puffing problem on rare occaisons, so my draft isn't awful but I am at the miniums for the reccomended installation. I was wondering if I had a better draft that I could open the air control up when I was at the coal stage and help it burn down quicker. I need more heat than I'm getting with the coal bed.
Anything thoughts on this?
Coal buildup IMO depends on a few things. What type of wood you are burning. If your filling it up with oak or similar all hard woods, your going to get some significant coals. I try to load some softer wood on bottom then oak on top, the secondary helps burn the oak from the top while the soft stuff below blazes and also burns the oak from below.
I have changed my burning habits since lat year. I couldn't refrain myself from continually adding splits. This year on colder days, I load her 3x a day. Every 8 hrs. And as tempted as I am to add more splits, I wait. There is usually just a nice decent amount of coals to get the new load going without any problem. Also depends on the size I burn also. When I load her up with big splits or rounds for over night, I'll have a good amount of coals left in the morning. I pull them front & open it up 1/2 to full and let it go another couple hours or so. The temp inside the house will fluctuate maybe from 73 or so down to 70 usually. I can deal with that. You have to learn your own burning habits and figure a time period when you have the amount of coals you desire. I myself don't think your going to get a consistent temperature for the house through all the stages of the burn, unless you continue to add splits, which will continue to add more coals.
Another factor is wood dryness, sure even in a hot fire wood a lil on the wetter side will burn, but I have found it will also charcoal & coal much more also. Also keep your ash bed to about 1"-3" tops, when it gets deeper and your moving coals, splits etc around, some coals get buried in the ash and to me don't seem to burn completely due to the ash insulating them and keeping them from burning completely.
Bottom line again is, you might find you need to space your adding of splits further apart to give the coals time to burn down to ash and keep new ones from building up on top of the ones already there. The best way I have found for me is as described above. I wait it out and let them burn down. If the house drops to 70 or hell even 68 or so, it doesn't bother me. I just do my 3 full loads a day and it works well for me. You can also try burning smaller splits, but keep in mind it will burn hotter. I do this on occasion and I cut the air back at about 300-400 degrees. On smalls she will climb to 500-600 on her own due to a good secondary blazing. Cut air back at 500 or so and she'll hover at about 700-750 for a couple hours or so, then settle back to 650, then 600 and so on and so forth. It seems the temp hovers around 600 for the longest period before the slow descent begins. Another point this makes is at the higher temps, the house will get to 76 degrees or higher, which when it slowly cools as the coals burn down, when its time for me to reload, the house temp might be 70-72 and another full load in and back up to 75 or so in no time. I have gotten used to and really don't mind a temp swing inside the house of 5 degrees or so. Hell, when its 20 or 30 something outside and its 70 or so inside, that works for me. I am heating the entire house with one insert and feel very lucky I can heat a large home as well as it is and in the 70s inside no less.
