Well, I decided to forego any modifications to my hearth or lintel. So, I went with the Jotul Oslo. It looks awesome, fits on my hearth, even with long legs, has an awesome fireview with licking secondaries and provides just the right amount of heat for us. One caveat is that we close off our living room until it heats up and then we open up the door and let the heat roll out into the rest of the house after the living room is warm, maybe 60-90 minutes after firing it up. Doing this, I can keep the living room super hot and the rest of the house quite comfortable so far. We'll see once the winter really sets in!
Tonight is the second time I have been able to get a really rocking secondary fire going. I had a hot bed of thick coals, stovetop at 400F. I loaded in a 25" split of silver maple and a shorter split of elm. I let those get rolling and then threw a couple more good size splits of maple and elm on top. I let that get rolling maybe 5 mins and then went to 50% draft for a couple minutes, 25% for maybe 5 minutes and finally all of the way closed off. I was following Begreen's advice about closing down the draft just enough so the secondaries get lazier but not killing it off. The stovetop peaked at about 585 after 45 minutes and the secondaries ripped strongly for about 80 minutes. It was so awesome
It's just light blue flames wafting in the back of the stove at 95 minutes.
I have been playing a lot with the stove and I have noticed a few things:
1) It does work better if I use it continuously all day and into the night and everything heats up so much that it feels very comfortable everywhere, and the stove just responds really quickly then too. However, we only will do that on the weekend.
2) It seems to light off the secondaries better if I use my most dry wood (around 15% elm and maple) and not quite as well if I use my 20% MC random short wood (10-16" splits) I bought last year.
3) It seems to light off better if I fill it up pretty full, but it seems to depend on how the wood is placed into the firebox OR how much I let it burn before slowing it down. I am always tempted to back it down sooner than I should I think and end up not getting as good of secondaries. I need to just let it burn hot for longer and waste some of the energy of the wood, maybe to heat the flue up more and to get the wood ready for secondary combustion? Last night I loaded it up with some good-sized splits and probably closed it down too quickly and didn't get the lights show i got tonight. Maybe the wood last night wasn't quite as dry as well. I was getting a little smoke when I was trying to damper it down too much. I am going to just use the gauge of no smoke to tell me if I am burning it hot enough at each stage.
4) I need to be careful about loading smaller splits into it when loading it up or I can overheat it! I went up to 675 on accident last weekend by using very dry elm, mostly small splits, and packing it to the gills and then shut the damper off and it ripped for 60-90 minutes on secondaries, but I was afraid it was going to go over 700!
5) I also think it might work better if I use longer splits of wood. The few times I've used some of my ~2 ft splits it has been able to go to fully closed air and maintain secondaries for several minutes, maybe just due to having more fuel in there and good airflow due to not having so much congestion around the primary holes?
I think I should stock up on a few more cords of wood now so that it can for sure be dry next year. I'm thinking of getting 3 cords from one of these.
http://hudsonvalley.craigslist.org/grq/4176385289.html
http://hudsonvalley.craigslist.org/grq/4094056179.html
I can also get a bunch of locust from a friend this year, maybe some oak from another friend.
I'm wondering if I insulated my liner if it would have too strong of a draft or if it would be able to get ripping secondaries at lower stovetop temperatures? Seems like I need to get it up to around 525-550F before I can set off the most intense secondary burn with the draft completely closed down.
I don't think it's worth it now, but I may need to waste more of the heat of the wood to heat my flue more with it being uninsulated. I do have insulation above my blockoff and stuffed in at the top, so I would think after a few hours it would get somewhat warm. I'm glad I have the 30'+ 6" liner in there for good draft though. This stove has much weaker draft then my wicked old Vigilant. I felt like flames were rocketing up the flue several feet with that baby, kind of scared me!
Thanks for all of the input on the stove. I think if we were interested in a workhorse 24/7 heating machine I would have gone with a hearth demo and a Blaze King Princess or King, as some of you suggested, but we really just wanted the stove for a nice light show, intense quick heat and evening/weekend heat, so I think it will work nicely! If it gets too hot in the shoulder months I'll just open up our living room completely, and we should be very comfortable. I'm glad I didn't go with an insert. I hate that f'ing blower sound. This thing is nice and quiet when the damper is shut.
Still learning every day about this cast iron beast!
