new guys here, (to site and wood burning) first off I'd like to say I love this site and all the information that it provides. I just bought a home with an older englander wood stove. After 2 weeks of burning inefficiently, I found the thread on the site about installing a baffle. Last night was the first night burning with it in, honestly can't believe what a 1/4" piece of scrap steel and 12 bucks worth of firebrick can do lol. Anyway, I was happy to reach 500* stovetop with minimal wood and effort (something that has been a challenge for the past 2 weeks) this morning I woke up to 67* in the house and a nice bed of coals which made getting the fire back up to temp a breeze before work. My question is how do I get a longer burn cycle throughout the night? I read of guys going 8+ hours on a single load. I understand I'm not going to become a guru after 1 successful burn lol. I would just like to hear how you guys set your stove for the night before bed, so I can make some positive adjustments to increase efficiency. TIA for any information provided and patience for a noob Also here's a pic of the stove. Maybe somebody out there has a more sofisticated design of their baffle in this model. Mine is a temporary rig job until I have the time to make a good template and weld something up
Long burn cycles?
- Thread starter Jwess30
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I have a newer stove so it's not apples to apples, but on my new Englander 30 I wait until right before I'm going to go to bed (usually around 9:30 load for 10:00 bedtime), rake the coals to the front, dig channel in the center of the coals to the heat can get blasted to the back of the load and help it take off, then fill it up as much as I can. Once the load takes off, I wait until stovetop temps reach about 500 or so which is enough to ingnite a secondary burn, then I crank down the air to get some good secondaries going, then go to bed. I get up around 6:30 and almost always have a good hot bed of coals to re-load on top of. The whole process of loading, getting up to temp, cranking down air, etc. takes about 20 minutes or more for me. I also have 35 feet of chimney so it drafts like a madman.
Ashful
Minister of Fire
You are only going to get so far with the old Englander. It is often less expensive to replace it and start saving on wood right away with a modern version. The Englander 30-NC is inexpensive and a good heater. In addition to using less wood and getting longer burns, one also gets a nice view of the fire.
That's kindve in the plans for next season. Just purchasing a home there are a lot of other things that's need attended to first. It is an okay set up with the baffle now installed imo. Maybe I'm just expecting more out of the stove than it will allow. I've read a lot of the threads in the fisher forum and it seemed that guys were having better results than I am at the moment and am just trying to make the most of it for this season.
I'll have to try setting the coals up like that, I just kinda kept throwing wood on top instead of getting the coals postinioned up front
That works well for the new Englander as the doghouse provides air in the center at the base of the door, but should work pretty well for any stove as the air is coming in through the air control on the door(s). I have also "banked" the fire on really cold nights with good success. For that I follow the same procedure but put a very large split in the back of the stove going east/west, then fill the rest of the firebox north/south in front of it, that one large piece at the end will burn slower and definitely keep coals for the morning. But that's just my experience.
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