jotul 500 oslo little help please !

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par1

New Member
Hearth Supporter
Nov 21, 2008
4
northeast ohio
I;ve own this jotul 500 for 2 years now and dont seem to get the heat out of it i think i should.so please from you old salt (old navy days)wood burners give me a hand.I have the stove in my basement,the chimney is approx 30 ' high and a 13x13. i put a adapter from 6" to a blocking plate and into the chimney.aprox 5'up the chimney.it drafts good probally to good is what im thinking. I have a themometer on the face of the unit and run it about 500 degrees. my friend said it should be on the exhaust pipe. !) where should the themometer go? 2) is it getting to much draft and should i put in a damper to slow down the exhaust?i have a 2 story house.i put in 2 - 8" ducts to my cold air return and brought them down to the top of the stove with a hood above the stove and tied it in. i thought i could pull the heat off the top but does seem to work. any help to get some heat going?i have to feed the stove every couple of hour if the air is open 1/3.
 
Drop the air down to almost none. I've now put the air below 1/3 (beyond the arrow mark, you should know if you have the stove right there). If I do this, I can easily make it overnight with the stove (last year I would struggle with having coals in the morning). Burn it low after cooking and see how you do, it should be better. As a side, make sure you don't leave it open too long, forget and it will get over 650 very quick.
Chad
 
First thing to do is get the stove out of the basement. If the basement is uninsulated about 25-30% of the stove's heat is warming up the soil around the house.
 
Be Green's right. Basements stoves are tough although a friend keeps his basement door open and heats his ranch house pretty well. The basement walls are also insulated. The temperature on the Oslo is measured on the top stove corners. Oslo recommends a 6 to 8 inch fluepipe, 8x12 flue tile max, so you're correct in having to much draft. My stove heats great but it's on the first floor not the basement. Be safe.
Ed
 
I don't know the size of your basement, or how your home is built, but it doesn't make sense that you're unable to heat it with the oslo. I would think you could run it up to 85 or 90 degrees in that basement for sure, whether it's insulated or not.

Sounds like you have too much draft and are burning through the wood load too fast.

You should get a good stove thermometer and put it on one of the rear corners of your Oslo stove top, that is where they say to put it, and that is where mine is.

I load my stove with the air inlet wide open, and the side door cracked until the thermometer shows at least 200 degrees. I then close the side door and let that stove top thermometer go up to 600 degrees (sometimes this take a little while). I then close the air lever to exactly half. I wait about 5 minutes, sometimes more, sometimes less, and then close the air to about a quarter open. When the fire settles in to a good burn I can almost close the air completely and maintain a secondary burn with a stove top temperature about 500 to 550 degrees.

I'd like to hear other oslo owners tell if their process is close to the one I do. My suspicion is that it is, and if that is the case, and you cannot replicate this loading process, then you have something going on with your stove and/or chimney.
 
ansehnlich1 said:
I don't know the size of your basement, or how your home is built, but it doesn't make sense that you're unable to heat it with the oslo. I would think you could run it up to 85 or 90 degrees in that basement for sure, whether it's insulated or not.

Sounds like you have too much draft and are burning through the wood load too fast.

You should get a good stove thermometer and put it on one of the rear corners of your Oslo stove top, that is where they say to put it, and that is where mine is.

I load my stove with the air inlet wide open, and the side door cracked until the thermometer shows at least 200 degrees. I then close the side door and let that stove top thermometer go up to 600 degrees (sometimes this take a little while). I then close the air lever to exactly half. I wait about 5 minutes, sometimes more, sometimes less, and then close the air to about a quarter open. When the fire settles in to a good burn I can almost close the air completely and maintain a secondary burn with a stove top temperature about 500 to 550 degrees.

I'd like to hear other oslo owners tell if their process is close to the one I do. My suspicion is that it is, and if that is the case, and you cannot replicate this loading process, then you have something going on with your stove and/or chimney.
Good description. I use an almost identical procedure.
Joe
 
well iput in a damper and i can hear the air slowing down hope this helps. going down to watch it. maybe next year i'll move it out of the basement, or insulate it. thanks everyone!
 
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