I've had a new oslo for about 2 months now. I have burned 2 pick up loads thru it with no problems. Now I am having a terrible time getting the thing to heat up. Leave the side door open and it hardly gets hot. Open the ash pan door and boom it's a blast furnace. As soon as I shut the ash door it goes back down. I am burning the same wood I have been.
Oslo running problems
- Thread starter toddh
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First, DO NOT USE YOUR ASH PAN for draft! You will break the base plate or warp the grate. Neither are covered using this practice. Second it sounds to me like you need to check your flue. If you had draft and now do not have draft it could be blocked. Tell us about the flue. How tall? Inside or out side? Your wood when was it cut and split? Normally it takes at least one year after split and stacked to be ready to burn.
I have a 25 foot outside chimney with a 8 x 10 clay liner. Wood is 1 year seasoned. Flue is very difficult to check. Guess I need to get up on the roof.
An exterior flue that is all clay can cool the flue temps dramatically. What stove top temps are you getting when you run the stove? Any signs of black on the glass?
The glass is pretty clean. Some cloudness but no black on it. Can get 600 F n 1 hour from a cold stove.
Clean your chimney. Empty ash pan and make sure keeping ash raked away from doghouse. Open up the doghouse and make sure you don't have a lot of ash collected and blocking air. Make sure the air lever hasn't jumped out of place leaving your air closed while you move the lever back and forth. Just some thoughts. Agree that although I've done it occasionally, using the ash pan door for air may end badly.
To have an effective fire it all boils down to three things . . . ignition temp, oxygen and fuel.
Ignition temp should be a non-issue for the most part.
Fuel . . . as mentioned "seasoned" wood around here is either loosely defined as being below . . . what is it . . . something like 20 or 21% moisture as determined by a moisture meter (I forget since I don't use a moisture meter) . . . or barring that . . . going the cheap, simple way and making sure your wood is cut, split and stacked a year before burning the wood (the exception being some wood species that seasons faster and some wood species season slower.) Truthfully, your wood may or may not in fact be well seasoned, but since you were doing OK and are using the same wood (or rather wood from the same pile) I am guessing that this may not be the culprit.
Oxygen . . . and to look at things correctly . . . we really should say we need to look at the oxygen/air source coming in . . . and the products of combustion going out. If the "stream" of air entering the stove is partially or fully blocked (i.e. by having the air inlet holes in the stove or in the back of the stove where the air comes in . . . say from a dog toy dropped there accidentally) then you will have problems . . . and if the stream of air consisting of the products of combustion (i.e. what most of us normal mortals call smoke) is blocked . . . say from not burning hot enough, closing down the air too much or burning unseasoned wood and having creosote form . . . then the fire will not burn well.
I would personally start by checking your chimney and cleaning it . . . and while I was at it check the air inlets on the stove . . . it may not hurt to clean out the ash pan if you have not done so . . . and try again and see if there are any changes. You may also want to check above the baffle to see that this area is not blocked by excess fly ash or even the remote possibility that the baffle's blanket may have moved and be partially blocking the flue.
Ignition temp should be a non-issue for the most part.
Fuel . . . as mentioned "seasoned" wood around here is either loosely defined as being below . . . what is it . . . something like 20 or 21% moisture as determined by a moisture meter (I forget since I don't use a moisture meter) . . . or barring that . . . going the cheap, simple way and making sure your wood is cut, split and stacked a year before burning the wood (the exception being some wood species that seasons faster and some wood species season slower.) Truthfully, your wood may or may not in fact be well seasoned, but since you were doing OK and are using the same wood (or rather wood from the same pile) I am guessing that this may not be the culprit.
Oxygen . . . and to look at things correctly . . . we really should say we need to look at the oxygen/air source coming in . . . and the products of combustion going out. If the "stream" of air entering the stove is partially or fully blocked (i.e. by having the air inlet holes in the stove or in the back of the stove where the air comes in . . . say from a dog toy dropped there accidentally) then you will have problems . . . and if the stream of air consisting of the products of combustion (i.e. what most of us normal mortals call smoke) is blocked . . . say from not burning hot enough, closing down the air too much or burning unseasoned wood and having creosote form . . . then the fire will not burn well.
I would personally start by checking your chimney and cleaning it . . . and while I was at it check the air inlets on the stove . . . it may not hurt to clean out the ash pan if you have not done so . . . and try again and see if there are any changes. You may also want to check above the baffle to see that this area is not blocked by excess fly ash or even the remote possibility that the baffle's blanket may have moved and be partially blocking the flue.
Oh yeah . . . almost forgot . . . DO NOT use the ash pan door to get the fire going . . . bad things can and have happened to members who have done so . . . and doing so can void the warranty and cause expensive parts to fail.
I'm confused as to why the OP would have success with the ash pan door, but not the side door as a source of air....air is air.
You can get a moisture meter cheaply, search threads here. Of course, if see moisture bubbling on the ends of wood as you start up, probably not dry and seasoned. %-P
You can get a moisture meter cheaply, search threads here. Of course, if see moisture bubbling on the ends of wood as you start up, probably not dry and seasoned. %-P
So then whats the problem? At 600 you should be able to shut er down and get secondaries going and sail for a few hours before dropping below 400. Maybe its the same wood pile, but a diff batch of wood?ToddH said:
I was getting 600 in one hour. Now I can't. I am going to check the doghouse tonight. I'll check the chimney on Saturday. Seems like it is not enough air. Just seems really sluggish, where as before I had no problems. Problems just started this week.
I pulled the doghouse last night. No problems noticed. I then pulled the stove pipe. Yikes. Creosote build up by about 1/4". I am going to check the chimney Saturday. I am assuming since it is in the stove pipe I have poor wood?
ToddH said:
If you are getting a quarter inch in just the stove pipe you most definitely want to check and clean if needed the chimney since this is where most folks tend to have more of an issue with creosote as the gases cool down . . . this may also indicate that either you're not burning hot enough or the wood is not as well seasoned as you thought . . . checking out your chimney will give you more of an idea if this is the culprit or not. Good luck.
Yah, like Jake said, its the wood or fires are too small. The hotter and bigger the less creosote.
Poor wood or a combination of that and burning practices. If you shut the air down too quickly the wood will do more smoldering than clean burning.
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