Newby Questions - Wood furnace.

Hello Everyone,
Not new to the site as I usually am posting about pellet stoves. But in the last month I installed a Englander 28-3500 wood burning furnace in my 2 story carriage house. The furnace is on the bottom floor on concrete, in a small furnace room with required firecode sheetrock, fire door, ect. Installed double walled black pipe from furnace up through the second floor and the double walled stainless class A through the roof and 10' above the roof to get the required 24" above anything within 10' deal. Actually went just a little higher than required.
I have awesome draft and get the wood burning nice. Burning wood is new to me so I have a few questions. On the front of this unit is a temperture guage and it has a designated burn area marked off of between 275 and 575 for the range I should stay in. Too low and you create creasote, to high you over fire. I had about 15 burn days so far and getting used to this furnace. The manual for the stove and post on here state that I should get about 6 to 8 hours of burn out of a load of wood, filling the furnace. I am lucky if I get 2 hours. I am continually monitoring the burn and closing the draft controls to keep it above 300 degrees. It has to be burning pretty strong for me to get it above 350. I get it so that the draft control on the ash door is almost closed and the chimney draft is 4 fifth closed. If I close any more the temp goes below the "Burn range" on the guage. Having it set like this gives me about 2 hours before the wood is down to ashes. What am I not getting here? The wood is Ash and Cherry, cut in late October. I don't think it is because the wood is too dry. Any thoughts? I was thinking that the temperature guage was broken but the thermostat (seperate from the temp guage) on the unit doesn't turn the circulation fan on if the guage reads under 275.
Another question. Because this is a garage and I am only working during the day, and am only getting 2 hours of burn out of a load of wood, the fire goes out every night after I finish work. So all the start up and cool down time this system gets every day has plenty of time in the "Creasote making" temperature range. How concerned do I have to be about this? How often should I be checking the insides of the chimney pipes? My plan was, if I get the 6 to 8 hours of burn per load, to fill it before bed and keep it burning 24/7 and not have this amount of down time. It ain't workin' out dat way right about now. Thanks for any suggestions.

Simonkenton said:

Wood 3 months old is probably not dry enough. Go to Lowes and buy the $29 moisture meter with prongs on it and check moisture content of wood. You need to get it down to around 20 percent.

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If the wood was not dry enough wouldn't it just smolder and not burn well? My sister has been bruning for 20 years and when she gets wood that isn't dry it sits in there and takes forever to burn and the heat output is horrible. Mine burns fast and hot. TOO FAST.

begreen said:

We need more data. Without a moisture measurement we can only speculate. Wood cut only a few months earlier leads to the strong suspicion that it is not seasoned. With drier wood you may be able to allow less air and yet have a hotter fire. Was the wood standing dead?

Strong draft could also be playing into this question and somewhat masking the issue with the wood. Has the draft been measured? If it is far above spec then a damper may need to be added to the connector pipe. Another data point would be to measure the connector pipe temp. If it is high that could be where a good portion of the heat is going. For example if you are reading 300F on the furnace door and 500F on the connector pipe surface (meaning a flue gas temp around 750-900F), then most of the heat is going up the chimney.

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I thank you for your input. Hearing that to much heat could be going up the chimney got me trying something. I totally closed the top damper control and only had the ash door control open a little. Results were that the temp on the guage went up to 400 (Which in higher than before) and the load lasted nearly 4 hours this time. Double what I had before. So you got me going in the right direction. I own a good quality moisture ,meter so I probed the core on about 20 of the pieces of wood. Ranged from 11% up to 15%. Seems a little to low, like kiln dried, do I will get fresh batteries tomorrow and scan again. I took my laser temperature guage and took a reading of the temp on the outside surface of the double walled chimney just above the furnace outlet. Got a reading of 225 degees.
About measuring the draft.... Where would I get a guage for doing that and how is it Done?

bholler said:

So you have stove pipe running through the floor?

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Yes. Through a 2' x 2' hole with sheet steel as a fire block. I have more than the 6" required clearances from the framing.

bholler said:

Still not allowed you cant have connector pipe passing through walls or floors

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I tend to believe you are wrong. I submitted plans to my building inspector with all details of pipes, parts and clearances and he approved them. Fire inspector also looked at the plans and said it was good.