Bit of a scare

[nola mike]

Neighbor remodeling, so I've been using mostly dimensional lumbar that he gave me so far this season. Doesn't burn much hotter than regular cord wood that I've noticed, though it certainly doesn't burn for very long. Today put some wood on hot coals, turned the air down almost immediately. Checked the temp and was getting 800 on the cook plate, 600's behind that (normal for this stove). Went to drop the kid off, came back 15 min later. Now temp with my (ahem) high quality HF IR thermo is reading "HI" at the cook plate, and over 1k EVERYWHERE else on the stove (the sides NEVER get above 500). The mantle above the stove (where I was resting my hand) is 800'. Nothing glowing. The stove was already 1.5 hours into its burn and had nice lazy flames going (normally it's 2 hours max till reload). Hmm. Pretty damn nervous, but nothing SEEMED that hot. Not sure what to do at that point. Tried to get to my key damper, and realized that it is damn near impossible to get to when the stove is hot. Decided to take 5 and see what the temps did. In 5 minutes, the temps were now reading 700's on the cook plate and 500's elsewhere. So I guess thermo malfunction, but weird and scary.

 

[DAKSY]

Bet your chimney is REALLY clean...

 

[mfglickman]

Sounds like among other things you need a mantel heat shield? Shouldn't it have been on fire, or at least way too hot to touch, at 800?

 

[nola mike]

Sounds like among other things you need a mantel heat shield? Shouldn't it have been on fire, or at least way too hot to touch, at 800?

Yeah, and my hand should have been made of kevlar or something to have been resting it there. Guess I should have immediately suspected the thermo at that point

 

[bryan]

I probably have the same high quality HF IR thermometer and have found that if you get it too close to the stove while checking the temps that it will over read. I have the same insert you do and I try to check the temp in the gap between the actually insert top and the top of the firebox where the air flows out. When doing so inevitably the front of the thermometer gets warm and starts reading high. Same goes for the Exergen thermometer we use on the kids. Once we left it in the car during the summer and it wasn't until we took it inside into the A/C for a while that it read correctly again. I've learned with the HF one to check other surfaces (my hand, the tile floor) and do a reality check if I don't think it is reading right.