Caddy issues

[OldStoneHouse]

I've been watching the forum for a while now but this is the first post! I have a couple of issues with our Caddy. We installed it last month - the house is a 2500 square foot, two storey, 160 year old limestone. The flue is about 40 feet long and seems to draw quite well for what that is worth.

The oil works well but I have been really having a hard time getting the temperature up with the wood. The oil will raise the temperature of the house quick enough but the wood will take hours (if at all) to bring the house up even half a degree Celsius. The thermostat rarely stops calling for heat.

I got a cord of wood from a local guy, it's probably not as dry as it could be - it had been cut for a two years but I'm not convinced that it was stacked to dry properly.

After a fix or six hours of burning I have a huge bed of coals (more than a foot thick) in the firebox. The installer said I was burning it too quickly and giving it too much air, but I have the damper adjusted the way the manual says. The installer suggested disconnecting it and adjusting the air supply manually like a wood stove (using a piece of metal to adjust the damper). Does anyone who has one of these do this with theirs?

I'm also not sure how I should best adjust the thermostats. Do you keep your oil set close to what the wood is or quite far apart? Does anyone use a two stage thermostat to control both oil and wood?

Thanks for any suggestions you might have!

 

[Gooserider]

A large percentage of burning problems are caused by damp wood - I'd suggest getting a cheap moisture meter (try E-bay or Harbor Freight) and checking out - remember you need to resplit and check the center of a piece to get an accurate reading...

Have you checked your draft, and made sure the stack isn't pulling TO hard? (I don't know if you are using a barometric damper or not, but some folks say that helps, especially on high draft chimneys...)

I would NOT advise bypassing the draft control, though you might want to play with the adjustments on it a bit. (Sort of like adjusting a carb - start from the default, and tweak it either way to see if it starts working better...)

However if your wood is not dry, you will probably just have to limp through the rest of this year and then work on getting your wood in EARLY next year and seasoning it properly - a lot of us try to be a year or two ahead, if not more, as that solves a lot of problems...

Gooserider

 

[biggenius29]

I had the same problem with my Caddy, I ended up putting a barometric damper in and it increased my burn times by alot.

 

[OldStoneHouse]

Thanks. I've got a barometric damper on it. It may not be adjusted properly, I wasn't actually there when they put it in. Is there an easy way to check to see if it is in the ballpark?

We're working on next years wood now. I was going to buy some that was actually stored inside and dry but at $400 a cord I can burn oil this year and not stack it...!

Brad

 

[laynes69]

You will need a manometer to check your draft. You should be at .04" low to .06" high. If its too high you will send alot of heat out of the chimney. How well is your home insulated? What do you have your limit/controls set at? I have found with mine they require seasoned wood, anything but they are fussy and take a little longer to get going. We open our damper when loading and once burning well we will close is via thermostat. We keep our thermostat for our central furnace set at 67 and our woodfurnace set at 69 at night. During the day its at 72. They should be at least a few degrees apart. When I installed ours, I ditched the thermostat that came with it, and bought a programmable one. It will come on and off with 1 degree which is nice.

 

[OldStoneHouse]

Insulation...there's not much. The attic is getting better - I've got about half of it done to about R40. The other half is likely R15/20. Maybe I'll get the rest done tonight. Walls - zip, windows are very large and there are lots of them. I did cover them all with the plastic kits and that seems to have made a huge difference. The oil can handle it quite nicely and its about 74,000 btu out I think. At least on paper the wood should be able to handle that quite nicely - what do you think?

The limits are set pretty much as the manual says. I think the on is about 160 (manual says 150).

I like your method with the thermostats, I'll try the same.

I think we'll limp along this year and get the wood ready for a good go next winter.

 

[laynes69]

I would concentrate on insulation. Our home is a 150+ year old home thats 2400 square feet with 10' ceilings. We have newer vinyl windows that are double pane and storms outside of those. We also have 6 to 8" of foam in our walls. But we have some serious heat loss in parts of the house, and when its cold its everything for our woodfurnace to keep up. But it does 95 percent of the time. Make sure you keep your heat exchanger clean and that will allow for maximum exchange of heat. I will say your probably too much for the caddy until you can button down your home a little better, but wet wood is one of your problems. Good luck.