Having a bad burn day...

[albertj03]

I work from home which is great for a lot of reasons and one of them is being able to run the stove and tend to it all day. Small stove so it needs a few reloads during the day. I've been burning great all season long with the stove keeping my basement warm and the 1st floor above it 70 - 71 all winter long. My office is on the 2nd floor which is heated by the oil furnace but at least I get good excerise running up and down the stairs to load the stove.

For whatever reason I've been fighting with the stove all day. I got it going fine this morning and then when I reloaded it was slow to take off and then when I went to check 20 minutes later it was just smoldering and it has been kind of doing that on and off all day. I did get a good cycle before lunch but it's acting up again. Everythig is normal, using the same wood I've been burning all winter with no problems. I just checked my chimney about a week ago and it was clear. I think it might be the weather which has been strange all day. It started off ok but then got cloudy, dark and Now it's snowing.

I guess I'll just open the air a little more and chalk it up to a bad burn day unless it becomes a trend.

 

[NothingLikeWood]

Glad to hear that you're struggling too. It must be the weather as we had problems today (and yesterday too). Is it mild down where you are? As much as I hate to say it...from the stove's perspective I'd much prefer a windy freezeyourwhateveroff day as it creates a beautiful draft in our stove.

I thought today's problems stemmed from the wood as we just brought in a new rank from the garage (we store 2 weeks worth inside a room near the stove with a dehumidifier going in case anything new can be sucked out.....we rarely get more than 1/2 of a cup of water over the 2 weeks). I thought it was struggling because the wood could be wetter than previous loads but no sizzle from the firebox. Since we decided not to burn last night as it was a warm night, the first load this am was from a relatively cold start (just a few embers) and it took forever just to get to 400 (inside flu temp). This is our stove's happy spot but we try to run it hotter once a day to clean out the flu. When the coals were apple size I reloaded and it didn't take as long to get up to a close 600. I let this fire run its course and tonight started with minimal coals this evening...a couple of pieces of cedar kindling, 1 piece of paper and 3 splits of yellow birch and beech and it still took forever to creep to 400 again and although there were flames, the firebox was dark for at least 10 minutes. I even cracked the window. Just checked and the glass is clean and the bricks are white but I'm beginning to think this mild weather isn't kind to wood heat (its been hovering between what I think is 30 and 40 Fahrenheit (-2 to +5 Celsius) during the past week, and that includes night temps).

We're about 6 hours north of you up in New Brunswick and this is our first year and I've learned a lot from this website concerning our setup and how to handle it (we inherited a basement install with outside chimney inside a chase and installed the Napoleon 1400P based on member reviews ). We're burning wood cut, and split in March (I know...we should be half a year ahead next year though). We re-split the delivery into smaller size splits (each piece that was larger than 6-8" got split into 4 pieces) in May and ranked it out in a windy spot on our property. It came undercover in October. I'd say about 10% of the wood sizzles and we now load these into a hot stove if we can sense its a wetter piece in advance. The number of wet pieces have gone down as the burn year progresses.

As an aside....based upon recent threads I'm considering a new probe thermometer as I'm thinking ours (an Imperial) could be way off. The stove shop that sold us our stove burns EcoBricks and their probe is always around 400 when I drop in so I'm not sure if its off as other posts indicate their flu temps are higher than ours. We've got an EcoFan and it just whirs at full speed (it hums) once the stove is dampered back (and we're at 400). Other posters say their fan only "sings" when they're running a very hot stove. I move it off to a cooler spot when we go up to the 600 range. From the sounds of things (other posts) a Condar probe is popular....still researching.

Wishing you (and me) a better burn tomorrow!

 

[BrowningBAR]

I had a problem on Sunday and Monday. I was going along great and than I hit the bottom portion of one of my wood stacks and the next thing I know my temperatures sucked and I was getting a lot of sizzling coming from the wood.

I seem to have gotten through it as I am back to the 'holy crap, that thing took off' zone for the stoves again... I still curse the Intrepid, though.

 

[pen]

Do you have a cap on your chimney? If so, I'd be inspecting that to make sure it didn't get plugged somehow.

pen

 

[albertj03]

It was in the low 30's today with a low pressure system over the area according to the weather man. Stove seems to be burning normally now. Good thing because I was getting tired of running up and down the stairs to check and mess with the stove.

 

[albertj03]

Do you have a cap on your chimney? If so, I'd be inspecting that to make sure it didn't get plugged somehow.

pen

No cap - just a slab over the top of the flue opening on the masonry chimney.