We have had a frigid couple weeks down here (for us) with temps in 20's, a couple snows, etc.
The house isn't that well insulated (I think?) and there is some weird thing we haven't quite figured out about how the heat pump works when the stove is running. (We keep the heat pump in the low 60s for when the fire gets low at night or when we are at work. - there seems to be some strange thing that happens with it, where it stays lower than it should - I don't really get it ...)
But anyway back to the stove. When it's super cold out we can't seem to get the temp up quite as high (VERY seasoned wood right now) and the coals and ash accumulate like crazy to the point we end up shoveling out a whole bucket of coals to make room for new wood to get the stove really hot again.
Our setup is: insert with no surround in interior masonry chimney, about 16' up one story, insulflex insulated liner. No problem with draft. I don't have a blockoff plate yet. Chimney is warm inside but not hot - we are losing some heat, but not too much up there.
I'm just not sure if we are honestly getting less performance out of the stove when it's very cold, OR, if we are just really focused on it, feeding it all day etc, so that we end up with a faster coal and ash accumulation or something without giving the coals time to burn out or something.
And this heat pump thing's another issue altogether. It's a retrofit, it's in the attic. I think it might be a bad setup. Last year was the first time we tried to use it much (prior to that we just used it for AC for a few yrs since we installed it) and it was so terrible that we HAD to get the stove. Now just figuring out how to use the two most efficiently in tandem. The house is only 1430 sq feet so this stove should be plenty for us in this climate if we can figure out how to make the most of it.
The house isn't that well insulated (I think?) and there is some weird thing we haven't quite figured out about how the heat pump works when the stove is running. (We keep the heat pump in the low 60s for when the fire gets low at night or when we are at work. - there seems to be some strange thing that happens with it, where it stays lower than it should - I don't really get it ...)
But anyway back to the stove. When it's super cold out we can't seem to get the temp up quite as high (VERY seasoned wood right now) and the coals and ash accumulate like crazy to the point we end up shoveling out a whole bucket of coals to make room for new wood to get the stove really hot again.
Our setup is: insert with no surround in interior masonry chimney, about 16' up one story, insulflex insulated liner. No problem with draft. I don't have a blockoff plate yet. Chimney is warm inside but not hot - we are losing some heat, but not too much up there.
I'm just not sure if we are honestly getting less performance out of the stove when it's very cold, OR, if we are just really focused on it, feeding it all day etc, so that we end up with a faster coal and ash accumulation or something without giving the coals time to burn out or something.
And this heat pump thing's another issue altogether. It's a retrofit, it's in the attic. I think it might be a bad setup. Last year was the first time we tried to use it much (prior to that we just used it for AC for a few yrs since we installed it) and it was so terrible that we HAD to get the stove. Now just figuring out how to use the two most efficiently in tandem. The house is only 1430 sq feet so this stove should be plenty for us in this climate if we can figure out how to make the most of it.