Have I committed a sin here?

[HollowHill]

And, if so, how heinous? I didn't wait until the stove was just a bed of coals before adding more wood. There was still a decent size chunk of wood burning and the stove top was around 410 when I added two more smallish med splits. I bypassed the cat first and upped the draft, opened the door and there was a flurry of exploding sparks, stuck in the two splits, closed it up and lowered the draft. It still caught within a couple of minutes and I engaged the cat within a minute after that as it was really going to town :bug: . Stove top after 15 minutes is around 425 and there are small flames in the splits and some secondaries going at the top of the stove. So, it seems to have calmed down nicely at this point. My intent was to extend the burn another couple of hours as I have some stuff to do and won't be able to load it up when it would have needed it and didn't want the house temp to drop. Dumb idea? I admit that the shower of sparks wasn't my brightest idea yet and I certainly wouldn't want to put on more than a couple of splits seeing how it went to town. Will I pay the price later in the burn cycle (wood at different stages of burning and off-gassing)? It's something I would have done in my old (not only pre-EPA, but pre-twentieth century) stove with no problems, but maybe the new stoves are not meant to be operated like that ever? What do you do in a similar situation of wanting to extend the burn a bit? Be more patient :red:

 

[HotCoals]

You did nothing wrong..I do it now and then.

On tube stoves doing that can be a prob as I have read on here.
Cat stoves..no big deal.

 

[HollowHill]

You did nothing wrong..I do it now and then.

On tube stoves doing that can be a prob as I have read on here.
Cat stoves..no big deal.

Well, my stove's a bit of both...

 

[HotCoals]

You did nothing wrong..I do it now and then.

On tube stoves doing that can be a prob as I have read on here.
Cat stoves..no big deal.

Well, my stove's a bit of both...

Ah..I should have noticed..my bad.
Did the secondary tubes go wild on ya?

 

[HollowHill]

You did nothing wrong..I do it now and then.

On tube stoves doing that can be a prob as I have read on here.
Cat stoves..no big deal.

Well, my stove's a bit of both...

Ah..I should have noticed..my bad.
Did the secondary tubes go wild on ya?

Yup :bug: :bug:

 

[HotCoals]

If I owned that hybrid I would have to find a way to stop those tubes from working till I wanted them to..can't be that hard.
I bet that stove can throw some heat when both are working!

 

[fire_man]

Hollowhill:

Glad to see you are starting to experiment a little with your stove! Its the only way you will ever really get comfortable with it.

Throwing in splits when there are already unburned splits is something I try not to do, because like you said, the new wood burns in a different part of it's normal burn cycle. The only bad part of this is you eventually end up building up a big nasty coal base, with not enough room for fresh wood. The new wood kind of smothers the half burned coals so they take longer to burn, plus the new wood must eventually coal down as well. This is fine if temps are warm enough and you have time to burn the coals down far enough, which sounds like what you are doing. Most people add wood in the middle of the burn cycle because their stove is too small, so they try to compensate by adding more wood to get more heat before the coals are burned down. Eventually they pay the price when the coals are heaping high. Been there, done that.

It should not hurt the stove, but the sparks can be intensive when loading a very hot stove. Just be sure to bypass the cat long enough (10 minutes) to get the new wood charred.

 

[HotCoals]

Well yeah..coals will build up.
But when he has the time he can just open the air and burn them down when need be.
These are wood stoves and they don't care if there is varying stages of wood being burnt in them.

 

[xman23]

There may be a reason, but I never considered an issue with throwing in wood any time more heat was needed, regardless of where the burn cycle was. In fact I like to get some fresh wood on a good bed of unburned coals. It's a no effort reload. Just my 2 cent on the subject.

 

[stircrazy]

On tube stoves doing that can be a prob as I have read on here.
Cat stoves..no big deal.

whats the issue with doing it with tube stoves?

I do it all the time as no one ever told me different, and I don't get a build up of coals at all.
I actualy am surprised when I find a coal when the stove is done.

Steve

 

[Scott2373]

I'll load between cycles and don't have any issues. I just crank up the primary for about 10 minutes to get everything toasty and she takes right off and will burn for hours, afterburners blazing, after closing down the air.

 

[HollowHill]

Everything worked out fine, no repercussions as far as I could tell. There were a lot of coals, but I just burnt them down. So, I guess my conclusion is that it is doable, but don't put much more fuel in because it will take off quickly. Hmmmm, maybe the thing to do would be to add a bigger split because it would have no trouble getting going, but it wouldn't take off too quickly because of its size.

 

[Wood Duck]

On tube stoves doing that can be a prob as I have read on here.
Cat stoves..no big deal.

whats the issue with doing it with tube stoves?

I do it all the time as no one ever told me different, and I don't get a build up of coals at all.
I actualy am surprised when I find a coal when the stove is done.

Steve

The only potential problem I cna think of is a big load of wood on a very hot bed of coals might release gases too quickly and you'll get the stove too hot. I have not actually had a problem but I have added wood to hot coals and it definitely can get hot fast. i think the reason to avoid adding wood before the old load burns is just efficiency and, for my stove, to avoid letting smoke into the house.

 

[stircrazy]

On tube stoves doing that can be a prob as I have read on here.
Cat stoves..no big deal.

whats the issue with doing it with tube stoves?

I do it all the time as no one ever told me different, and I don't get a build up of coals at all.
I actualy am surprised when I find a coal when the stove is done.

Steve

The only potential problem I cna think of is a big load of wood on a very hot bed of coals might release gases too quickly and you'll get the stove too hot. I have not actually had a problem but I have added wood to hot coals and it definitely can get hot fast. i think the reason to avoid adding wood before the old load burns is just efficiency and, for my stove, to avoid letting smoke into the house.

that makes sense I guess. I was under the impression that you were supposed to add wood befor the coals were down to much to get a good relight. I do get a puff of smoke if I open the door to fast, but some times I do this purposely as I love the smell of a fire.. but if the overheating is an issue wouldn't this be the same for both cat and non cat stoves?

my usual process is to put a light load in when I start from cold then when I have a good coal bed I load it up. the first load's heat goes to warming the stove and system up and the second load actually throws the heat to the room. I am burning pine so I only get about 4 to 5 hours out of a good load in this little guy. when I was running cherry wood I could get a 8 to 10 hour burn off a good load, so I only did one big burn then.

Steve

 

[joecool85]

Hmmmm, maybe the thing to do would be to add a bigger split because it would have no trouble getting going, but it wouldn't take off too quickly because of its size.

That's what I do in my stove. My little stove doesn't like splits much larger than 3-4" in diameter normally but if I load it with a stove top of 450-500F and still have some wood burning I can put in up to about an 8" round and it will burn a pretty steady rate. Stove top might hit 650F or so with me doing that, but settles down good after 15-20 minutes.

 

[cptoneleg]

I'll load between cycles and don't have any issues. I just crank up the primary for about 10 minutes to get everything toasty and she takes right off and will burn for hours, afterburners blazing, after closing down the air.

There is not an issue, just another example, just because its posted don't make it true.

 

[ScotO]

I do that quite often in our Napoleon and its no big deal....yes it does calm down the secondaries for a little bit but hey, if its cold and the lady of the house (aka The Boss) is chilly well then you gotta do what you gotta do......lol....it won't hurt nothing...I so, however, let it burn way down right before bedtime before loading it up for the overnight burn..

 

[Slow1]

I know I have done it on my FV - but no tubes to deal with

As to the sparks, that is very much dependent on the wood type. I've had some that will toss sparks from coals and others that don't spark at all as far as I can tell.

A couple nights ago I did a very late start of the stove and actually had it pretty full, then got sidetracked before going to bed so the wood burned down just a bit (about 2hrs worth). I had just enough space on top to shove one new piece of wood in before I went to bed. Needless to say that was on HOT firebox when I fed it in (stovetop was well over 500) and it caught before I let go of the piece. But no harm was done and only a bit of smoke came into the house... box full of wood outgassing is going to push some smoke out the door I've found. Anyway, it was worth it to me to have a FULL box when I went to bed so I could sleep a couple more hours.. I want the PH with the larger firebox!

 

[fire_man]

Anyway, it was worth it to me to have a FULL box when I went to bed so I could sleep a couple more hours.. I want the PH with the larger firebox!

That's one if the main reasons I bought the Progress! And its working I'm getting >12 hours USEFUL burn time when its 25-30 degrees out and it looks like at least 9 hours when it's really cold. I used to have a coaling problem with the Fireview because I had to load it too often to get real heat.

I need more cold days to test this Progress!

 

[Backwoods Savage]

And, if so, how heinous? I didn't wait until the stove was just a bed of coals before adding more wood. There was still a decent size chunk of wood burning and the stove top was around 410 when I added two more smallish med splits. I bypassed the cat first and upped the draft, opened the door and there was a flurry of exploding sparks, stuck in the two splits, closed it up and lowered the draft. It still caught within a couple of minutes and I engaged the cat within a minute after that as it was really going to town :bug: . Stove top after 15 minutes is around 425 and there are small flames in the splits and some secondaries going at the top of the stove. So, it seems to have calmed down nicely at this point. My intent was to extend the burn another couple of hours as I have some stuff to do and won't be able to load it up when it would have needed it and didn't want the house temp to drop. Dumb idea? I admit that the shower of sparks wasn't my brightest idea yet and I certainly wouldn't want to put on more than a couple of splits seeing how it went to town. Will I pay the price later in the burn cycle (wood at different stages of burning and off-gassing)? It's something I would have done in my old (not only pre-EPA, but pre-twentieth century) stove with no problems, but maybe the new stoves are not meant to be operated like that ever? What do you do in a similar situation of wanting to extend the burn a bit? Be more patient :red:

As you can see, many add wood like you did. I've also done it a few times when unexpectedly we had to leave for many hours so had to add wood to make sure the house stayed warm while we were gone.

I think the only problem with what you did was in turning the air down too quickly and engaging the cat a bit too quick. No real harm done but you learned something this time. That is good. Like Tony stated, this is how you learn the stove. You show signs of becoming more comfortable with the stove already. Soon you can really put it through some testing as some cold weather is just around the corner.

As for the sparks, yes, that is somewhat dependent upon what wood you are burning at the time but loading like that will tend to give you some fireworks.

Fear not, you did not harm the stove or yourself. All is well. ;-)