Still having trouble with the Madison

[Silenced38]

Well its gotten cold enough to burn. Temps in the 30s when building a fire.
Once it gets past about 350* it burns good. But it seams to take forever to get to 350* and you have to mess with it. Open the door, close the door, throw in more kindling. Last nite i got tired of messing with it and went to bed. I know it smoldered all nite.
The oak is reading 18-20%. The pine is reading 16%. The pine definitely burns better.
But i cant just burn the pine. I made that mistake already. When the stove hit 750* and was still climbing. I had to take drastic measures.
Im thinking mabe moisture meter is wrong or not enough draft. Any thoughts?

 

[mellow]

I don't see where you talked about your chimney setup in this thread: https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/my-madison.132173/

Can you give us some more info on that.

 

[Silenced38]

I don't see where you talked about your chimney setup in this thread: https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/my-madison.132173/

Can you give us some more info on that.

Its 17' from top of stove to the cap. It has two 45* elbows in the house.
I couldnt go strait out because of stuff in the attic.

 

[KindredSpiritzz]

I think you may have to extend that chimney a bit with those two 45s in there.

 

[Silenced38]

I did add an OAK. Because i was having some negative pressure. Particularly when the dryer is running.

 

[begreen]

Everything you've done is correct. With 17' the stove should draft well unless it has an unusually long narrow path for the secondary air supply or the negative pressure issue is strong. You could try temporarily sticking a 4' length of cheap 6" duct pipe in the top of the chimney to see if that radically improves operation. If so, the stove is draft starved and adding extra chimney will remedy the problem. The only other thing to suspect is that the moisture meter is defective and not giving accurate readings on freshly split faces of the wood. Oak takes a long time to dry. If this is suspect, as a test I would get some store bought bundles and try them for comparison. But the first thing I would try is adding more pipe.

 

[RopeS]

Hey 38, not sure what your startup procedure is like, but since we have the same stove, I figure I'll chime in. (then decided to just post in my 'My Madison' thread so you might want to browse over to there.

 

[Silenced38]

I figured it out. I was using splits that was too big to start with.
I split some up to about 2x2 and put quite a few if those in there first. Leave the door cracked till it reaches 350*, takes around 30 minutes. Then throw in some bigger splits. Then it burns good there on. Thanks for the input.