I have always had and burnt wood. And I have seen and been somewhat jealous of all of you with these new high efficiency wood stoves. It still seems strange to me how small the fireboxes are but I just had to give one a try. Last fall someone here broke the news of the Pacific Energy True North wood stoves. And five weeks ago I ordered two one for the farm and one for my brother. They came in yesterday I got it home and just had to try it out!
I know from reading here that I am going to have to learn some new burning habits. First off draft seems much more important than on the older stoves possibly from how the air enters the stove coming in over the glass and then flowing down into the stove. Also it takes longer to heat up all the fire brick especially around the baffle which prolongs low draft. And since I only had 6' of chimney it took quite a while to get it lit good and had to leave the door cracked open until I got the top of the to 225 deg or it would just put the fire out.
But I think I am really going to love this stove. I put in two good sized splits of birch and one 6" ash log at 7:30 last nite and it was still putting out heat a 5:30 this morning. And was still warm to the touch at 11:30. It was amazing watching how clean it burned. One thing that was not in the manual was which way was open on the draft control and it took me a while to figure it out. Since it was outside I could change the draft and watch for any changes in the smoke. One thing I found out was that the stove top needs to get up to at least 300 deg to start to burn clean and I would say 350 is the lowest temp you would to burn constantly at. We put a fan on the top and it had cooled the surface off and noticed it start to smoke when we got it down to 250 deg even though the fire was going good. Then about 10:00pm it started to smoke with the top temp at 350 and was trying to figure out what was going on. Finally realized the humidity outside came up to 75% and it wasn't smoke just water condensing out of the flue.
Which brings me to another point. This thing really holds the heat in and releases it in the area (room) not up the chimney. We ran it up to 400 deg for a hour and it never burnt the price tags on the chimney in fact I could (and did) brush my fingers on the stove pipe and not get burnt.
When we went to the PE dealer to get a price on it we were told PE didn't make a stove with that name. Then when I went back to put a down payment on it the girl working there said I was wrong and PE didn't make it. And when we went to pick it up the owner was there and thanked us for showing him that stove and he had ordered one for his showroom.
While I am going to hate taking my 110 year old Round Oak stove out of the bunk and replacing it with this stove. The Round Oak was just too big for the place and we would have to leave windows cracked open at -6 deg outside and it would still be 95 inside. So it will make it a lot nicer to have a long burn time and a stove that I can control the heat on. And when I get a cabin built I will put both stoves in so when I go up in the winter I can light both and warm the place up fast.
Billy
I know from reading here that I am going to have to learn some new burning habits. First off draft seems much more important than on the older stoves possibly from how the air enters the stove coming in over the glass and then flowing down into the stove. Also it takes longer to heat up all the fire brick especially around the baffle which prolongs low draft. And since I only had 6' of chimney it took quite a while to get it lit good and had to leave the door cracked open until I got the top of the to 225 deg or it would just put the fire out.
But I think I am really going to love this stove. I put in two good sized splits of birch and one 6" ash log at 7:30 last nite and it was still putting out heat a 5:30 this morning. And was still warm to the touch at 11:30. It was amazing watching how clean it burned. One thing that was not in the manual was which way was open on the draft control and it took me a while to figure it out. Since it was outside I could change the draft and watch for any changes in the smoke. One thing I found out was that the stove top needs to get up to at least 300 deg to start to burn clean and I would say 350 is the lowest temp you would to burn constantly at. We put a fan on the top and it had cooled the surface off and noticed it start to smoke when we got it down to 250 deg even though the fire was going good. Then about 10:00pm it started to smoke with the top temp at 350 and was trying to figure out what was going on. Finally realized the humidity outside came up to 75% and it wasn't smoke just water condensing out of the flue.
Which brings me to another point. This thing really holds the heat in and releases it in the area (room) not up the chimney. We ran it up to 400 deg for a hour and it never burnt the price tags on the chimney in fact I could (and did) brush my fingers on the stove pipe and not get burnt.
When we went to the PE dealer to get a price on it we were told PE didn't make a stove with that name. Then when I went back to put a down payment on it the girl working there said I was wrong and PE didn't make it. And when we went to pick it up the owner was there and thanked us for showing him that stove and he had ordered one for his showroom.
While I am going to hate taking my 110 year old Round Oak stove out of the bunk and replacing it with this stove. The Round Oak was just too big for the place and we would have to leave windows cracked open at -6 deg outside and it would still be 95 inside. So it will make it a lot nicer to have a long burn time and a stove that I can control the heat on. And when I get a cabin built I will put both stoves in so when I go up in the winter I can light both and warm the place up fast.
Billy
