Hearthstone Heritage

[mrpee]

So the last few nites and mornings have been at 30 32 deg , I have had the Hearitage going 24 7. I don't seem to be getting the heat I think I should. The house is 20 x 40 , 2 story around 1300 sq ft. Stove is at the stairwell . Loaded it with Silver Maple ai 10:00 last nite had good bed of coals this morning. Loaded with Doug Fir than closed air down , two hrs later it's in coaling stage the stove top is at 425 deg and 67 deg in house . The blower is stupid noisey so don't use. Is there anything I'm doing wrong? I seem to get good secondary burn . It is now 11: 53 and I am on my third load sense around 5:30 one load of Doug fir and two of silver maple. Seems like a lot ?

 

[Newburnerwisconsin]

Have you checked your wood with a moisture meter? I have been burning red norway pine, white cedar, and some red elm and oak. I am getting moisture meter readings around 15 to 22%. We are running our heritage at 400 to 500 and our house is anywhere from 65 to 72 f. The only time I get long burn times is when I burn large chunks/splits of oak, elm or hickory. Mostly 2 to 4 hour burns with other wood. My wife and I have to be careful not to over fire the stove over 600 degrees. Do you have a outside air kit for your stove?

 

[mrpee]

Wood runs + - 15 % most of my wood I have had stacked 3 years or more. Bull pine , Doug fir , white oak and the silver maple . At high temp it gets to 400,450 deg. So 3 hrs or so for a reload is normal ? Oh no OAK can't do one where the stove is .

 

[begreen]

Burn time sounds short. Is there a very tall chimney on the stove? Have the gaskets been tested for leakage via the dollar bill test?

 

[mrpee]

Stack is around 16 ft , I have not done the dollar bill test. When I close the air off the fire gets " lazy " and get nice blue flame from the tubes sometimes looks like an Arora.

 

[begreen]

That all sounds normal. How thick are the splits being burned and how tightly packed are they? Are you letting the coal bed burn down before reloading?

 

[mrpee]

Splits are 3 to 6 in. I let it burn down to coals 200,250 deg

 

[begreen]

The setup sounds good. After this summer's drought our wood is super dry. So far our 2+ yr split doug fir is too dry and burns up quickly too. We are getting 6-8 hr burns with 4-8" splits.

 

[Nate Dog]

I realize that this is a late post, but it's still pretty cold outside. For my setup I have a hearthstone heritage adapted for external air in the basement and a cheap steel stove upstairs. I like the even heat of the heritage, but the torsion springs break continually on the model I have (8022) and I have given up on that.

From the info you gave I can think of several things. The first is stove placement. Stone stoves don't heat by convection as much as steel or cast iron. They are primarily radiant heaters. To get an idea of the area of your house heated by your stove, check to see if you have a line of sight to the stove. If not, you're not heating there.

Second is that you are cutting off too much air. The flames in your stove should burn brightly, particularly the secondary burn. Have you checked outside on your smoke output? There shouldn't be any. Dim blue flames = a lot of smoke output, which means your fuel is going up the chimney instead of being converted into heat. For me it's a ritual to get the stove going: open one door a crack, open the other door, prod this, add that, until the stove and flue are hot enough to pull enough air to burn brightly with the stove latched. Once that happens, you can cut back air, but not to the point the flames turn blue. The manual suggests somewhere around halfway for a continuous unattended burn.

Third, does your stove have external air? If not, the stove is pulling in air into your home from outside. Given your setup, it sounds like your stove is primarily working to cool your basement. The stove draws in air from outside, cooling the basement, while the warmer air--not warm enough to actually heat anything, then moves up the stairwell to the upper floor to exit your home. If you don't have a second stairwell, floor grate, or the like in a different spot in your home to allow the cold air of the second floor to fall down and recirculate, this is exactly what's happening. That reminds me of a final piece of advice for getting heat around your home: you can use fans to push cold air towards a stove, but trying to move around warm air is usually futile; it can't displace denser, colder air.

 

[begreen]

True that one wants the firebox to be hot enough to burn all the smoke. However, burning brightly and fountains of secondary flame are not always necessary for a clean hot burn. Dim, ghostly blue flames can be a sign of a nice hot fire. This is especially true when burning dense hardwood like locust, hedge, white oak. If there is no smoke, hot stove top and flue, then lazy flames are good.

 

[begreen]

I'm wondering if the stove location is the issue with the stairwell having a chimney effect. What's the air temp upstairs at about 6ft, at the top of the stairway?

 

[hamsey]

I like the even heat of the heritage, but the torsion springs break continually on the model I have (8022) and I have given up on that.

Just had the torsion spring break on our stove about 3 weeks ago. When I tried to replace it a screw head broke. Had the dealer finish replacing it. Hopefully they have it sorted. Supposedly a new designed spring. Bummed to hear you continually have problems with it.

This sounds typical with the burn time we are getting. My splits are on the smallish side. When I do put big ones (6-8") I can only fit in 2 of those and maybe one more on top. Not that much wood to get extended burn times. Typical temps are 450 to 500. No OAK but am thinking about putting one in. I think there was a discussion about the OAK advantages being debunked.

 

[Highbeam]

Loaded it with Silver Maple ai 10:00 last nite had good bed of coals this morning.

I burned a heritage for several years and about 30 cords. I never found a torsion spring but perhaps you all are talking about the door latch springs?

I could also get it to run overnight with enough coals to relight in the morning. I have always burned low btu PNW species and the stove heated my 1700 SF very well even into the single digit outside temps.

Funny how the maple made it overnight but the fir goes away in a few hours. As you know, the fir does not produce ash so the coals are always exposed to the fire. They burn down much faster as a result and with a non-cat there really is very little control over temperatures so I propose that you mix the maple (nice to burn) and the fir to help shield the fir with ash and slow down the combustion. Do you really want to do that though? You want heat so you need to be burning wood.

OAK is always superior to non-OAK but some folks don't want to go through the effort of installation so they skip it. I always recommend it if it reasonable.

 

[Rearscreen]

Take what I say as a grain of salt but Highbeam from my experience is correct on his OAK opinion, however I do disagree on one point... my last OAK installation was less than reasonable (drilling through steel and rock) but for the last 2 months I have been enjoying my efforts as I put my hand on the 0 degree metalflex and smile.

 

[Nate Dog]

I burned a heritage for several years and about 30 cords. I never found a torsion spring but perhaps you all are talking about the door latch springs?

The latest model heritage has a downward opening side loading door. The torsion spring is located at the bottom of the door in an attempt to accommodate the weight of the door. It is part 113 in this diagram:

http://rockymountainstove.com/hearthstoneheritage8022partslist.aspx

 

[Nate Dog]

Just had the torsion spring break on our stove about 3 weeks ago. When I tried to replace it a screw head broke. Had the dealer finish replacing it. Hopefully they have it sorted. Supposedly a new designed spring. Bummed to hear you continually have problems with it.

Oh, man, one of the screws holding that door flange on? Why did they make it necessary to remove that door flange to replace the spring?

Ha, ha! Yeah, I went through two of the "new designed springs" and then there was "a bad batch of springs" and I have no interest to find out what next, since I'm worried about cracking the iron or stone from repeated spring explosions.

The problem is the horrible engineering of the 90 degree turn where the spring inserts into the stove. That weird bend needs to handle all the stress contained in the spring at a point, unlike the tangent leg of a standard torsion spring.

I'd bet $100 that's where yours broke. I assume that they didn't just use a normal 90 degree or even 360 degree torsion spring due to a rookie design error, since they aren't making money off the springs they provide under warranty. But yeah, if they just lowered that hole a quarter of an inch, the spring may twist a little more on the hinge, but it would hold up a lot better.

One of these days I might get around to retrofitting it to work with a more standard spring. Which would be nice since torsion springs fail from fatigue anyway. So it's nice that they made it so hard to get at.

 

[hamsey]

According to the instructions that were supplied I had to remove the sliding plate (4 screws on the door) from the door. Then you need to remove the 4 screws that hold the door frame to the stove (one of these broke). From what I was told this is the same setup as the Equinox and my dealer has not had to replace a spring on any of those.

OAK is pretty easy for me to install so I will order that.

Please keep us updated on the retrofit. If it works I may do the same thing. I too am worried about something breaking with repeated removal. So you did not remove the door flange to replace the spring? I am going to scan in the instructions and start a new thread.

As far as burning times I hate to say it but the best burn times I get is when I burn Envi blocks. Not the brick type but the blocks. Put in a full package (3) at 10 with them still glowing and putting out heat at 5.

 

[Nate Dog]

According to the instructions that were supplied I had to remove the sliding plate (4 screws on the door) from the door. Then you need to remove the 4 screws that hold the door frame to the stove (one of these broke). From what I was told this is the same setup as the Equinox and my dealer has not had to replace a spring on any of those.

Didn't see your new thread so I'll post here. I did not receive any instructions, which is good, because you don't need to remove the sliding plate from the door. After knocking the hinge pin out, you can simply rotate the door and plate together so the ears of the sliding plate come out of the slots.

I AM talking about the door frame screws, and yes, one of those was seized in there good. I can understand having to remove the door to replace the spring, but not the door frame.

The retrofit is a low priority; I'm tired of taking the door off and I won't get to it anytime soon, but the two options I've thought of are to either drill a new hole, or more likely fabricate a pin to fit in the original hole to hold a standard 180 degree torsion spring. Then you wouldn't have to remove the frame to replace the spring. The leg that hooks onto the door will still need a dogleg bent into it, but it has a longer leg off the body of the spring and shouldn't be as prone breaking.

Back to the original post, my reload times are on the order of 4-5 hours using honey locust.