Having lived in houses with wood burning appliances most of my life, and knowing many of them were likely not up to any codes or standards that we have today, I can honestly say I never had any worries with my most recent, and current, wood stove, which I installed myself and had W.E.T.T. inspected for insurance reasons. That is not to say I didn't check things out during the first few fires, but once I could see, and feel, that it was all working as it should I never felt any more uncomfortable with it then my coffee maker, or my hot water tank, or leaving the oven on when leaving the house, or the actual wiring in my house, or,,,, etc...
Providing everything is installed correctly and up to code, and your chimney is clean, and you don't stack your wood too close to the stove or something stupid like that, the main worry people seem to have is over firing the stove. (Operating it above the designed operating limits). But how big a concern is that?
Most wood stoves, I believe, are designed to "contain" an over fire situation well beyond the operating range they are designed to be operated in. This means that even if you do over fire a stove, it's not going to burn your house down. You might warp your stove, or even crack a weld, and you'll definitely cause premature wear on the insides (burn tubes, cat, etc...) especially if you make a habit of it, but actually catching the house on fire because of operating beyond the working parameters is something I've never heard of that ever happening with modern wood stoves. But I could be wrong.
Perhaps you could chime in on that Jake. Being a firefighter, how many house fires have you been to that could be attributed directly too getting the wood stove too hot? I'm not talking about chimney fires from creosote, or fires started by leaving stuff to close to the wood stove. I mean how many cases of house fires do you know of that were started by modern wood stoves that were installed up to code, but simply operated above their designed operating parameters?
