Do you leave the stove on when you go to work?

[precaud]

What Warren is seeing is the result of the physics angle of heating mass...warm always seeks cold. If your walls, floor, ceiling...get appreciably cooled off then even if the air temp is warm(say, if you crank the furnace on to warm things up quickly) you will still feel cold. This happens due to your body radiating infrared heat to the cold walls(in physics terms you're acting as a black-body radiator). Well insulated houses feel warmer not only due to the lack of outside air drafts, but in a large part due to the surfaces inside the home being maintained at a higher relative temp.

Agreed.

If you crunch the numbers on the heat required to raise the temp of X pounds of sheetrock Y number of degrees and compare that to the amount of heat required to maintain the sheetrock at some temp (just offsetting the heat loss to the outside), the cool down, heat up, cool down, heat up, cool down cycle sucks up considerably more heat/fuel...while being less comfortable during the transitions.

Yes, but that may not describe the situation in a completely relevant way. If I only spend, say, 7 waking hours in the space contained by said mass... and most of it is in well less than half of said space... it is certainly not efficient to keep it constantly in the comfort zone. A radiant heater will easily swamp the effect of the initially cooler walls, and the energy not expended in those 17 hours is not sucked up anywhere.

The way I view it, I'm maintaining a constant temp of 63 and adding additional btu's into the occupied living space as needed. And you must agree, it's cheaper to maintain 63 than it is 70...

 

[Rich M]

24/7 here. Cinder block on slab house has good thermal radiation as long as it stays warm, let it get cold and it's an uphill battle. If I'm gone for an extended period and the house gets too cold I'll crank up the oil furnace for one cycle to quickly take the chill off while I'm getting the stove back up to temp.

 

[Gooserider]

I stuff before I go to bed, and try to keep a pretty good burn going. When I get up I will throw some more splits in, but not try to get a real good burn. Mostly I want to get enough fuel in the stove that it will keep the house reasonable while I'm gone, and have a decent coal bed left when I get home. When I get home, I do another stuff and try to get a HOT burn going to keep the creosote burned off, then do moderate to good burns the rest of the evening till bed-time.

(Note- pre-EPA stove, so secondary combustion is not a major issue.)

Gooserider

 

[fishboat]

What Warren is seeing is the result of the physics angle of heating mass...warm always seeks cold. If your walls, floor, ceiling...get appreciably cooled off then even if the air temp is warm(say, if you crank the furnace on to warm things up quickly) you will still feel cold. This happens due to your body radiating infrared heat to the cold walls(in physics terms you're acting as a black-body radiator). Well insulated houses feel warmer not only due to the lack of outside air drafts, but in a large part due to the surfaces inside the home being maintained at a higher relative temp.

Agreed.

If you crunch the numbers on the heat required to raise the temp of X pounds of sheetrock Y number of degrees and compare that to the amount of heat required to maintain the sheetrock at some temp (just offsetting the heat loss to the outside), the cool down, heat up, cool down, heat up, cool down cycle sucks up considerably more heat/fuel...while being less comfortable during the transitions.

Yes, but that may not describe the situation in a completely relevant way. If I only spend, say, 7 waking hours in the space contained by said mass... and most of it is in well less than half of said space... it is certainly not efficient to keep it constantly in the comfort zone. A radiant heater will easily swamp the effect of the initially cooler walls, and the energy not expended in those 17 hours is not sucked up anywhere.

The way I view it, I'm maintaining a constant temp of 63 and adding additional btu's into the occupied living space as needed. And you must agree, it's cheaper to maintain 63 than it is 70...

Precaud, I agree. Straight theory is seldom directly applicable...the real world tends to get in the way. Your limited time in a limited space is one real-world application, a family coming home to occupy the entire house is another real world application...everyone's situation is different. In the end it is useful to understand the basic laws that describe a particular situation and then use this to work out the most logical path forward.

 

[laynes69]

24/7 We load it according to how long we will be out. If its very windy and a possible electricity outage, I will only keep a small fire due to it being a wood furnace that requires electricity.

 

[johnsopi]

Night are @ 20 Days are @40 here. If I get the fire reload before leaving the house will stay @ 70-72untill
7pm. I geuss the fire will have burned out @ 11 AM. Then I restart the fire at 7:00 PM

 

[DavidV]

I just reloaded the stove 20 minutes ago. engaged the cat just now. I'll have coals in the morning. heat will likely have kicked on at 5 am to bring the house up to 67. I'll get up at 6, load her up, go out to the shop for a bit and then come in to engage the cat. I put the boys on the bus at quarter to 9 so I'll load her up with a couple big pieces around 820 and be ready to go. The wife will load when she gets home from work and it's still good to go. temp tonight is going into the 20's. tomorrow should warm to 50's so it should keep the furnace off during the day tomorrow., I keep sealing holes and insulating everything I can find. By the time I grow old and am ready to move out of this place it should be pretty nicely set up for some young family to enjoy.

 

[colsmith]

We don't 'go to work' per se, but we do leave the house frequently, I hope that is good enough.

precaud's statement Nope. I burn until bedtime, close it down, relight in the morning to take off the morning chill, and close it down before heading to work. No need to pump BTU’s into an empty house. tells me that he doesn't live anywhere near me! He doesn't list a location, but weather here in SE Wisconsin is like this: Tomorrow's high will be 28 and the low will be 9. The next day the high will be 20 and the low will be 8. Yes, I am talking Fahrenheit. If we didn't heat the house all the time, whether we are home or not, the pipes would freeze and we would freeze and I'd sure be sorry! We try to have the fire going all the time. Obviously if we are gone from home all day and night then we have to have the furnace backing us up. The past two days we have been out hauling free wood home all day. When we get home with a load, I go in the house, check on the fire. When I put some wood in, I turn up the air, then by the time we are unloaded I can turn the air down a bit, and off we go for more wood. No other solution in this climate if you rely on your woodstove for most of your heat.

I wish everybody would show their location! It makes a big difference if you are in Georgia or Montana.

 

[ourhouse]

Up at 430 get the stove going hot load it up 530 and out the door. Mama bear takes care of it the rest of the day. She even brings wood too

 

[Willhound]

Unless I missed it, I didn't see anyone comment on the obvious. I have absolutely no issues with burning during the day or when I'm not at home. House is insured and can be replaced. A fire during the day when no one is home is much more preferable than one at night when we are sound asleep and it is much more likely to kill us. Of course, no house fire is good. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I worry more about it overnight than during the day. When I first started burning 24/7 I found myself getting up 3 or 4 times a night to check the fire. Now I trust my installation and my ability to get the fire just where I like it before retiring for the night. That being said, every floor has a smoke detector and every bedroom has an escape route and the family has a fire plan.

 

[Jay H]

I had my first overnight fire last night here in NJ. Yup, I too was kind of not really soundly sleeping for just being anxious at 1)an overnight fire 2)it's a new toy for me, I want to play! I had the Quad installed in June of this year and a fairly warm November meant that I would only occasionally have a fire in the wood stove but last night was the first and I stoked about 5 smallish logs into the embers of a dying fire at 10:30pm last night and at 5;30am this morning, it was down to a hot ash. But I know I could of stuffed 1 or perhaps 2 small logs in so it looks good for me to get a good overnight burn.

What I did for safety sakes is that I have two windows on my ranch so I'm on the first floor. The seller had a fire extinguisher in the kitchen but that is useless if the wood stove ever blew up because it is between me and the kitchen so I moved the thing into my bedroom so at least if I wake up to smoke and flames, I can at least use that if it looks possible not to climb out the window. (My back door is down the hallway so that would be the preferred method of escape. I have a smoke alarm right outside my bedroom door and a CO2 meter inside my bedroom. I had a smoke alarm in the room with the stove but I found the heat would set it off too many times so I moved it.

Jay

 

[precaud]

I wish everybody would show their location! It makes a big difference if you are in Georgia or Montana.

Yes, you're right, it does make a difference. So does house construction.

I'm in New Mexico, and what I earlier wrote is valid as long as we have a sunny day, which is 99% of the time. In the cold snap last week, we had conditions like yours - days in the high 20's and single-digit nights. The main difference I saw is that the boiler came on earlier at night (the pipes clunking always wake me up!).

Having grown up in the midwest, I can say that houses there are built differently than here. I have a friend who built a massive, super-tight, hyper-insulated passive solar adobe home 20 years ago. The heat generated from the sun, appliances and people is sufficient to keep this place quite comfortable all winter without supplimental heat 99.9% of the time. The electric baseboards come on once or twice a year. His place is my main inspiration, and though I know that my house will never become that tight of an envelope, I know it's possible.

 

[fishboat]

precaud,
New Mexico...well that is a bit different. I too am in SE Wisconsin...and we are having a bit of a cold snap for this time of year...more like Jan/Feb than early Dec. We got hit with 15 inches of snow a couple days back & it's all still here, though it looks to be warming up a bit...after thursday.

I'm in the process of researching the purchase of my first real woodburner. I wouldn't have guessed people with real stoves would be that concerned about burning when you're not there or when you're asleep. Is there any real frequency of good, correctly installed & maintained stoves lighting up houses?

Marcia,
SE Wis....free wood....if there's more than you need...ahh..well....

 

[rudysmallfry]

My stove was a new toy for me last fall. I baby sat that thing like a paranoid old lady. I'd get up several times at night if I heard the slightest sound to make sure the house wasn't burning down. I couldn't leave the room during the initial reloading stage since I thought the new fire might take off out of control. Even if I went out to run errands with just a few coals burning, I'd come home looking around the corner to expecting to see it burned to the ground. Definitely didn't run it if I was away at work, which is 72 miles for me.

1 year later...

I load that puppy up full, let it tear along for the first 10 minutes, cut it down to 1/2 air for the next 10, then shut the air down almost completely and leave for my long trip to work. While the fire probably is out within a few hours, the soapstone holds the heat enough that the house probably stay warm enough for the next 2 hours or so to prevent the boiler from kicking on. When I get home from work 12 hours later, it's extremely easy to relight and get another good fire going. then I do the full load ritual for bedtime. That's the one thing nobody ever mentions about soapstone. Everyone talks about how long it takes to get them going. While it's a pain to accomplish from an ice cold stove, if it's been lit earlier in the same day, it's pretty quick.

My oil boiler still comes on for a few hours while I'm at work, but I'm hoping once I get my house better insulated and replace some windows, it will hold the heat longer, and I'll be able to silence the boiler 24/7.

 

[sailor61]

Guess it's time for me to jump in on this one - I've heated primarily with wood for the last six winters. Burned 3 to 4 cord and maybe, on an annual basis, 150 gallons of oil for hot water. Lit the stove in mid-October and she stayed hot/warm until some point in May, or even June, depending on the spring here in RI. Last January I had a very unfortunate turn of events and the house burned.

Fire cause was ruled as accidental and unexplained arising from the woodstove -
Friends immediately started in with "you're not getting another stove are you?" etc. First thing I started shopping for was a new wood stove - I like wood heat, the independence, the economy, the work, the way it feels- and yes, I'll burn it 24/7 again.

I know more than a dozen folks who heat primarily with wood - I am the only one who has ever had a problem that arose from the stove. However, two friends have had fires caused by electrical wiring - they are still attached to the electric grid and have not resorted to candles for lighting. Another had major smoke damage when his wife lost track of a pan of fat for frying french fries - had some dynamite fries there a week or so ago. And there were the folks who almost suffocated when their kids built a snowfort that covered the direct vent on their gas furnace.......They were the first ones who questioned me about replacing the stove... But they still have a furnace.

I guess what I'm getting at is that things happen and with a wood stove you just need to exercise a bit of caution and preventive maintenance.

Check your installation periodically, make sure the thing is inspected if required to be, be certain the insurance co knows it's there and that you've jumped through whatever hoops they require.
Last thing I would wish on most folks is to go through the experience I have had and then have problems with their insurance co. Luckily mine has been very good to deal with.

As to burning it when you're not home - as someone else has said - better the house burn when you're not in it - which was my experience. Yes it was quite an awful an experience when a neighbor tracked me down and said "get here quickly, you've got a fire - it's bad....." To turn the corner and see the trucks /engines in front of my home was beyond words in terms of painful - BUT I thank God on a daily basis that I wasn't in it when it went up. And the dog was with me too.

Things that will be different about how I live with a wood stove;

1) No one will ever sleep - even as an overnight guest- in the room where the stove is located unless they are between the door and the stove

2) There is a fire extinguisher in all bedrooms -

3) I will be even more concerned about checking the flue and connections

4) The installation of the new stove - meaning rear/bottom heatshields and venting for the wall behind it - will be in excess of the minimum.

Sorry this has gone on so long.

Soon to be a Woodstock Fireview house.......

 

[Czech]

What about pellet stoves? Heck yeah, 24/7 in the Gotz house. When it's cold, I fill before bed and then when I get up in the AM. SheGotz turns it down a bit before she leaves for the day, but not much. I agree that is easier to keep the house warm all the time rather than fight the heat it up/cool it off routine. As many have already said, 6 smoke detectors, 2 CO, and a volitile gas to boot in the Gotz house, good idea. Also, I keep the stove very well maintained and cannot see how one of these stoves could light the house up even with a major failure (my kid put a handful of pellets on top one day, there they sat until I came home 8 hours later, warm but not smoldering or anything). Although I do recall a post here last year titled "Flaming Pellet" or something about a pellet that came flying on fire out of the heat tubes and flew across the room....

Wait a minute, is that sirens I hear? Darn, need to run....

 

[Xena]

Pellet stoves too yes-siree. Round
the clock burner here. I work at home
half the week, but have no worries about leaving
it running when I have to leave the house.

 

[lizzybobio]

The only thing that I have to be cautious of is the new puppy that we got about 2 months ago. When we got him, he had a habit of tearing apart feather pillows...by the stove of course. Until I can be confident that he won't do that again, I'm wary!

 

[Swamp Fox]

We have been burning 24/7 now for about a week and a half. We tried it before that, but let it go out when the forcast was for 70+ degree days. Now the mornings are in the mid to high 20's and the days are in the low to mid 50s (but it is supposed to be much colder this weekend, mornings in the teens). Anyway...I think I have achieved the learning curve for my stove. I initially started with a firebox with no ashes and built the fresh fire...then fill the stove up to full capacity. I let it burn hot (max. air) for about thirty minutes (top of stove reads between 550 and 650 degrees) then start turning the thermostat down gradually, lowering it a little bit every 30 to 40 minutes. The thermostat has markings as follows: ___Warmer->____1__ . __2__ . __3__ . __ The number 2 is labeled as "Normal." The thermostat can be moved backwards past the 1 (into the zone marked Warmer) and it can be moved forward past the dot after the 3. I eventually back the thermostat to the middle position "2" and I leave it there and go to bed (usually around 10:00 to 10:30. The temp on the top of the stove is around 400 to 450 degrees. I get up at 5:15 and the thermostat is still around 400 degrees. I leave everything alone and we go to work. I get home around 3:30 and the stove top temp is around 300 to 350 degrees and the cat thermometer is still in the active zone. There is still plenty of fuel (there are large chunks and what appears to be whole splits which falls apart into large chunks when you hit them with a poker). Around 5:00 I turn the thermostat to beyond the three to get the stove real hot again. I fill up the stove to full capacity, shut the door, some of the new wood eventually ignites, I re-engage the bypass lever, let it burn hot for 40 minutes or so (stove top gets to around 650 degrees and cat thermometer is almost maxed out) then begin the process of gradually moving the thermostat back down to the number 2 position. I'm then back into the routine mode, go to bed, do nothing until I get home from work the next day and start process to fill it up again. So....Following that process, I am in fact getting 24 to 28 hours burn time on the number 2 "Normal" position with the stove top not going below 300 and the cat remaining in the active zone. I have no doubts that I could get at, or near, the 40 hour burn time advertised if I were to lower the thermostat into the zone prior to the number 1 or perhaps even in the zone marked number 1. Something I have learned though. You do not get as much burn time when you run the stove fans (attached to rear of stove, one on each side). If you run the fans, the top of the stove will, within minutes, go down by 100 degrees or more, unless you turn the thermostat back up. With the fans burning, wood is burned more quickly. I have learned I really don't need the fans anyway, the stove keeps the entire one story open floor plan warm enough...78 degrees or so in the "Great Room" where the stove is located and 65 degrees in the back bedroom. I do have a little fan in the upper corner of the bedroom door to "suck air" from the direction of the Great Room into the bedroom. On ocassion, I will use the fans for a short period of time if I come in from a very cold outside and I feel a little chilled. Burning Blaze King 1107 (second year), 95% oak that has been split and dried two years, and in the not so cold south (outside Charlotte, NC), lined and insulated chimney. That's about all I can think of at this time. Not very scientific, just my observations.

 

[precaud]

precaud,
New Mexico...well that is a bit different. I too am in SE Wisconsin...and we are having a bit of a cold snap for this time of year...more like Jan/Feb than early Dec. We got hit with 15 inches of snow a couple days back & it's all still here, though it looks to be warming up a bit...after thursday.

Yes, I see on the weather report that you are gettting socked right now... hang in there!

I can't answer your question about incidents of woodstove-caused housefires, but then, I don't know of any incidence of a housefile here. As dry as it can get here, that's actually surprising, now that I think about it...

 

[precaud]

Chesley... discover paragraphs please!

 

[MrGriz]

My office is in my house, so going to work doesn't come at any regular intervals. As I said in an earlier post here, I do burn when I'm gone.

That being said, I had to go out on a call yesterday mid morning. I loaded up the insert, got her rolling good and hot, shut the air down and hit the road. About three miles down the road I had that nagging feeling in the back of my mind and had to turn around and head home. Sure enough, when I went back inside...I left the damn coffee pot on and almost empty! No, I never gave the fire in the big steel box in the basement a second thought.

 

[BrotherBart]

For 18 years we got up in the morning, threw a few small splits on the coals, hit the showers and then packed the stove before leaving for work. And God help anybody that got in our way at quitting time. Had to get home before the house started getting cold.

I can't quite understand worrying about the stove running when you are at work. Heck, you slept upstairs last night with it burning down there! If this place is going to burn down I would rather be somewhere else than in bed when it happens.

Of course now I get up, make the coffee, fire off the big stove in the family room and then go down and light off the Jotul in the office in the basement.

 

[fishboat]

Guess it's time for me to jump in on this one - I've heated primarily with wood for the last six winters. Burned 3 to 4 cord and maybe, on an annual basis, 150 gallons of oil for hot water. Lit the stove in mid-October and she stayed hot/warm until some point in May, or even June, depending on the spring here in RI. Last January I had a very unfortunate turn of events and the house burned.

Fire cause was ruled as accidental and unexplained arising from the woodstove -
Friends immediately started in with "you're not getting another stove are you?" etc. First thing I started shopping for was a new wood stove - I like wood heat, the independence, the economy, the work, the way it feels- and yes, I'll burn it 24/7 again.

I know more than a dozen folks who heat primarily with wood - I am the only one who has ever had a problem that arose from the stove. However, two friends have had fires caused by electrical wiring - they are still attached to the electric grid and have not resorted to candles for lighting. Another had major smoke damage when his wife lost track of a pan of fat for frying french fries - had some dynamite fries there a week or so ago. And there were the folks who almost suffocated when their kids built a snowfort that covered the direct vent on their gas furnace.......They were the first ones who questioned me about replacing the stove... But they still have a furnace.

I guess what I'm getting at is that things happen and with a wood stove you just need to exercise a bit of caution and preventive maintenance.

Check your installation periodically, make sure the thing is inspected if required to be, be certain the insurance co knows it's there and that you've jumped through whatever hoops they require.
Last thing I would wish on most folks is to go through the experience I have had and then have problems with their insurance co. Luckily mine has been very good to deal with.

As to burning it when you're not home - as someone else has said - better the house burn when you're not in it - which was my experience. Yes it was quite an awful an experience when a neighbor tracked me down and said "get here quickly, you've got a fire - it's bad....." To turn the corner and see the trucks /engines in front of my home was beyond words in terms of painful - BUT I thank God on a daily basis that I wasn't in it when it went up. And the dog was with me too.

Things that will be different about how I live with a wood stove;

1) No one will ever sleep - even as an overnight guest- in the room where the stove is located unless they are between the door and the stove

2) There is a fire extinguisher in all bedrooms -

3) I will be even more concerned about checking the flue and connections

4) The installation of the new stove - meaning rear/bottom heatshields and venting for the wall behind it - will be in excess of the minimum.

Sorry this has gone on so long.

Soon to be a Woodstock Fireview house.......

Sailor61,
If you wouldn't mind my asking...do you know why the fire started? I ask in the interest of avoiding such an unfortunate event.
thanks,

 

[heydan]

I feel a little safer having a fireplace insert (Regency I2400) with a full stainless steel flue liner than I would with a standalone stove and/or standalone metal chimney -- the whole stove and liner could fail and it's still contained inside a fireplace and a brick chimney that are designed to withstand fire.

I do take one precaution with my dogs. Usually they come with me everywhere but if I have to leave them home alone and the stove is lit then I confine them to the kitchen. I don't want them romping around together and perhaps kicking something flammable like a sofa cushion onto the stove.