I have had this stove for about 2 weeks and while I am not new to wood stoves I am new to wood furnaces. my problem is that I can't my house to heat above 68 degrees. I read all these reviews for folks who have this stove who says it runs them out of their houses. I do not have it tied to my main HVAC system but ran a dedicated duct with two outlets to specifically help keep my large two story great room warm. With the capacity to heat 3000 sq. ft I thought I would be able to walk around in my underware when its zero outside. As a matter fact it was almost zero last night and 63 is as high I could get the room. I can get the stove itself so hot that it will set the fire alarm off in the basement but the temperature coming out of the vents is only about 90 degrees. The blower sometimes will run continuously but that seems to be the case only when the basement is already fairly warm. I am wondering if the cold basement air is so cold that when the blower kicks on it is cooling the stove so much that the temp goes down and the blower kicks back off. I have the thermostat on the factory settings. It just doesn't seem that I am getting the heat transfer from the stove to the exhaust. Any suggestions?
Can't get enough heat from Englander 28-3500
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How large are the ducts leading away from the furnace. If the flow of air through the furnace is too slow or too fast then it can't work properly.
maple1
Minister of Fire
I don't have a return air. The air is being drawn from the basement. The owners manual says not to hook to return air. The exhaust duct is 8" full and goes to a "T" where it is reduced to 2 - 6" ducts to the registers.
maple1
Minister of Fire
I have ordered a thermometer for the flue. I know it can get extremely hot when I open up the draft controls. I just had a double wall 6" stove pipe installed that goes well above my 2 story house. I have great draft .
maple1
Minister of Fire
I would also get a manometer to monitor your chimney draft - Dwyer Mark 2 Model 25 is a good one that lots on here use. I have one permanently mounted. They don't cost that much.
Do you have a damper in the pipe, either barometric or key? I suspect you have too much draft & its sucking heat up the chimney. I have a 2 storey also. About 30' of chimney. When my fire is going I see 0.1" of draft. I use a baro to limit it to that. I see the tag on your boiler in the manual specs max of 0.05". You are likely at twice that, and even more with any wind at all. I know when I have wind gusts & hold my damper shut, the manometer can pull up to 0.3".
Do you have a damper in the pipe, either barometric or key? I suspect you have too much draft & its sucking heat up the chimney. I have a 2 storey also. About 30' of chimney. When my fire is going I see 0.1" of draft. I use a baro to limit it to that. I see the tag on your boiler in the manual specs max of 0.05". You are likely at twice that, and even more with any wind at all. I know when I have wind gusts & hold my damper shut, the manometer can pull up to 0.3".
I do have a manual damper that I have closed almost all the way at times. When I close it all the way the unit will cycle on and off. I was afraid to leave it closed for too long due to creosote build up. I will see about getting a manometer.
I guess I'm confused. If you're sucking air out of the basement and blowing it into the great room there has to be conduit to bring air back to the basement. If your basement is negative pressure that would lead to all sorts of problems.
Does anybody have one of these stoves that can answer as to what the temp at the register should be?
I have this stove. My set up is the stove has a 30 foot masionary chimney, the hot air duct goes up to the floor joists then 90s to run parallel with them until it gets to the central LP furnace plenum about 20 foot away. I have a magnet style thermometer 2 foot about the flue collar on the single wall pipe. I run it about 300F until it coals. Old drafty 2 story house.
Now to answer your question my vents run between 90 and 110ish. the upstairs vents are about 5 to 10 cooler than the first floor. When it was -20 out we struggled to keep the house at 70 but just got the flue temps at 600 and kept feeding the beast. If you leave your basement door open air will naturally find its way down there to feed the fire and feed your ducts. We also installed a filter box around the blower so that the basement dust isn't being pushed into our ducts. I highly recommend getting one. But its your health.
Now to answer your question my vents run between 90 and 110ish. the upstairs vents are about 5 to 10 cooler than the first floor. When it was -20 out we struggled to keep the house at 70 but just got the flue temps at 600 and kept feeding the beast. If you leave your basement door open air will naturally find its way down there to feed the fire and feed your ducts. We also installed a filter box around the blower so that the basement dust isn't being pushed into our ducts. I highly recommend getting one. But its your health.
maple1
Minister of Fire
A flue temp of 600 measured with a magnetic guage is a really hot flue temp - those things read way low.
psebowhunter
Member
How long are your duct runs? And are they run through the basement as well? I would venture to guess that pulling the cool basement air into the furnace combined with the duct work being surrounded by the cool basement air may be reducing the register temps.
Also is the wood dry? Mine is set up to pull basement air as well but the only time i struggled with inside temps was when it was 15-20 below and i was burning questionable (ok bad) wood. Might consider insulating your duct pipe or get a temp measurement right above the stove outlet and see what it is there at least to see what the heat loss is along your run.
Also is the wood dry? Mine is set up to pull basement air as well but the only time i struggled with inside temps was when it was 15-20 below and i was burning questionable (ok bad) wood. Might consider insulating your duct pipe or get a temp measurement right above the stove outlet and see what it is there at least to see what the heat loss is along your run.
adam6979
Member
I think what you are reading is that they do not want you to hook up the heated air from this furnace to your regular furnace return air as it is too hot of air. The manual did not say not to hookup a cold air return. They sell filter boxes that you can put on this and extend into your cold air return vents or at least pull air from your living space - without it the furnace is probably not going to be as efficient. Also depending on the temp of your basement you may want to insulate the hot air pipe as you could be losing heat from the pipe in the basement.
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