Isle Royale - Simple overnight question

[Johnpolk]

Hello. I have a fairly new isle royale that I am still trying to learn the ins and outs of. I am to the point where I would like to reload it before bed, or in the middle of the night, but I'm not sure what to do with the air controls. Should I just leave them in the position that they were in for the previous fire since that gave the stove a proper burn temp? Or should I worry about different wood or loading techniques that may cause this fire to burn hotter than the last? I'm just not comfortable reloading it and not being there to keep it from over firing etc. any advice?

 

[begreen]

The stove will behave fairly predictably with the same wood and procedure. I'd recommend you try reloading on a burned down coal bed. Then load it up fully and then close down the air control incrementally to a low burn. Try this in the daytime until you are familiar and used to the stove behavior. Then you can do it at night and sleep peacefully knowing the stove is doing it's job.

Hopefully Jags will chime in here about IR specific burning. It's a great stove and you will get more comfortable with it over time.

 

[flhpi]

Load that thing up on a Saturday morning just like you would for an overnight burn. Stick around and watch how it burns. It will be fine.

 

[northwinds]

Hello. I have a fairly new isle royale that I am still trying to learn the ins and outs of. I am to the point where I would like to reload it before bed, or in the middle of the night, but I'm not sure what to do with the air controls. Should I just leave them in the position that they were in for the previous fire since that gave the stove a proper burn temp? Or should I worry about different wood or loading techniques that may cause this fire to burn hotter than the last? I'm just not comfortable reloading it and not being there to keep it from over firing etc. any advice?

Good questions. And some good advice. You want to watch how your stove behaves during the daytime for a couple of times so that you can better predict how it will behave when you are sleepy and want to go to bed. I try to never reload my IR unless the temps are below 400 and preferably on a dying coal bed. If I haven't planned well, I might add a split or two at 450 or 500, but rarely. My stove reacts very differently to those three reloading situations (coal bed, 300, 500). For the first two situations, I open up the air wide until the wood is charred nearly all over, cut the air by half at 500, and then move the air to nearly closed fairly quickly between 550 and 600. For the last situation, I'll only leave the air wide open for a very short time, and I'm getting it nearly closed within five to ten minutes.

There's nothing worse than waiting for the stove to level off when wanting to go to bed (or back to bed), except for when the stove takes off like a rocket and then you're wide awake wondering what's going to happen next.

As you've also probably noticed, big splits react more slowly than small splits. Wood stacked the same way reacts more slowly than criss-crossed wood.
Less seasoned wood reacts more slowly than well seasoned wood. These things all will become second nature, and then the stove becomes very predictable.