Maximize heat output

Rake the coals forward, open the air up. A couple tiny splits of softwood on top of the coals can speed it up.

To maximize heat output, I'll open the air up pretty much once the hottest point of the burn has passed. The earlier you open the air back up the earlier you'll burn through your coals. People talk of raking the coals forward; it definitely makes more heat for me, but I'm not sure if that's quicker v. breaking them up and spreading them out (more surface area). But breaking them up for sure will speed it up.

I think whether "rake it forward" is good advice or not also depends on the airflow in your firebox. It's good general advice because most stoves have airwash air up there.

If you are a new burner, realize that depending on your stack and liner, the colder it is outside your heat output will go up to the point until you overfire the stove. As long as you dont overfire going with smaller splits puts out more heat although you need to feed it more often. If you are on the edge of overfiring consistently then its time for a larger stove. A former woodstove guru I knew was an advocate of having two stoves, a small one for the spring and fall and larger one for the deep winter.

peakbagger said:

If you are a new burner, realize that depending on your stack and liner, the colder it is outside your heat output will go up to the point until you overfire the stove. As long as you dont overfire going with smaller splits puts out more heat although you need to feed it more often. If you are on the edge of overfiring consistently then its time for a larger stove. A former woodstove guru I knew was an advocate of having two stoves, a small one for the spring and fall and larger one for the deep winter.

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That was advice for old stoves with poor air control. I can't imagine doing that today, when I could buy one good stove with good turn-down instead of two poor stoves. (I wouldn't have done it with the old stoves either; you can build a small fire in a big stove, and losing some efficiency in the big stove vs. 4 stove uninstalls and installs per year? Man.)

That's the nice thing about hearth.com is everyone has an opinion. Good turn down is a relative thing some stoves do it better but generally there is an efficiency hit for turndown.

I just open my air all the way and sometimes crack the door.

peakbagger said:

A former woodstove guru I knew was an advocate of having two stoves, a small one for the spring and fall and larger one for the deep winter.

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Another option is to turn your one larger stove into a smaller one by adding some firebrick. Of course, that can mess with the dynamics of how the stove was designed for secondary burning, so it may not always work out well. But I tried it one fall and found I could get a more efficient smaller fire (shorter time for secondaries to kick in).

clipse270 said:

best way to increase heat output particularly as the fire dies down and mostly coals remain

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I can tell you the WORST way: have a poorly insulated and drafty house. When its real cold and the coals are building up, my options get limited. I can reload more and more often, because my firebox is effectively getting smaller and smaller with the coal buildup, or I can let the house get cold while I open up the air and/or door to burn down the coals.

I admit to the sin of using an open ashpan door for a few minutes at a time, when the coals are at the later stages of cooling down at the very end of a cycle. It is not recommended. But it works

peakbagger said:

That's the nice thing about hearth.com is everyone has an opinion. Good turn down is a relative thing some stoves do it better but generally there is an efficiency hit for turndown.

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Depends! I got one that gets an efficiency bonus when I turn it way down!

Quite the change from smoke dragons.

I rake to get some ash out of the way.. it makes the coles light up better.. then turn the air all the way up. The coles burn down quick. I have to admit though I really don't need to do this much at all I think I needed to use this technique maybe two or three times the entire Burning Season last year

I never had a coal problem in the new stove... until the Polar Vortex last year. Then I had to run her hard and learn to deal with coalpiles. (My favorite solution ended up being just switching to pine, which doesn't coal much if at all.)

If your stove is sized correctly for its load and your wood is dry, you won't have to worry about it.

Replacing the stove with a bigger one isn't a palatable option for most people, but reducing the number of BTUs you need to heat your envelope can be very low cost, and provide benefits beyond what a monster stove would have done for you. Get a cheap IR thermometer (or a thermal camera if you are feeling frisky) and eliminate some cold air ingresses in your house! See if there's room for more insulation in the attic. Check your windows.

Pine works beautifully for burning down coals. A few smaller splits of nice dry pine will throw plenty of heat while the coal bed burns down, and leave no coals of its own if it's burned aggressively. We usually load in the morning and before bed, and use pine to burn coals down around dinner time if necessary based on how cold it is outside. Running a Woodstock Ideal Steel.

If you're building up coals and need more heat during that stage and opening up the air doesn't cut it, the advice of using pine or something else that doesn't coal up is about as good as you can get. Just let it run full bore until the coal bed is manageable, then reload.

Which leaves open the question of exactly when have you burned down the coals enough?

If I am pushing the stove hard (not often, thankfully), I shovel everything to the front and open up the air to about mid-way once the stove top temperature drops down below 300 deg. I then wait until the coals can be pushed to the rear of the stove into the size and shape of a three inch log, plus a one or two inch layer across the bottom. This sounds more complicated than it is - I just look at it and say "That's about right", or "It needs to go another 30 minutes.

On a fresh reload this gets the back going more quickly and the air wash pattern gets the front splits going. I can be back up to full operating temperature in 20 minutes or so. The entire cycle with my Oslo and oak/hickory fuel runs about four hours.

Factors involved:
Kind of wood
The airflow pattern of the stove
Draft
Outside air temperature
Maybe the tides and phase of the moon, for all I know.

If you are new to burning I want to offer a word of caution regarding doing reloads on a large bed of hot coals. Depending upon the wood you are using you can get a surprisingly vigorous fire burning much faster than you might expect. Several people mentioned burning some small pine splits at the end of a burn cycle to help eliminate the coals quicker so you can do a full reload sooner. This if fine for burning down coals, however, doing a full reload with small pine splits on a large bed of hot coals can create a real inferno if you aren't really attentive. The wood takes off extremely fast and before you realize just how violent things have gotten inside the stove it can be hard to control, even with the primary air turned all the way down.

peakbagger said:

. A former woodstove guru I knew was an advocate of having two stoves, a small one for the spring and fall and larger one for the deep winter.

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Interesting idea. Did he actually do that, or does anyone?

Sounds like an opportunity for a stove manufacturer to design a dual input stove that would do the same thing without the disadvantages of building a small fire in a big stove.

Of course gas furnaces these days are often dual input, with different combustion air speeds and different gas input pressures to burn different amounts of gas.

clipse270 said:

YI’m using a drolet 1800i and so far have been pleased. However have yet to get stove above 450-500 using stove top temp

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Are you able to get a true stove top reading off the top of an insert? I think it's harder to get a good reading, like you could off a free-standing stove.

wooduser said:

Interesting idea. Did he actually do that, or does anyone?

Sounds like an opportunity for a stove manufacturer to design a dual input stove that would do the same thing without the disadvantages of building a small fire in a big stove.

Of course gas furnaces these days are often dual input, with different combustion air speeds and different gas input pressures to burn different amounts of gas.

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I have met a few folks over the years that did swap stoves, the big stove gets left in place and then the small stove gets set in front of it. These are folks who dont really care about aesthetics, they usually are low and fixed income and need to heat predominately with wood as that is what they have got. A stove the size of Jotul 602 can be moved by one person pretty easily and with an appliance dolly it goes real quick. It does require switching the pipe over but with single wall its not that hard to do and once its made up it can be set aside and goes in quick. I have also seen folks with two stoves installed, one gets fired in the shoulder seasons and then they make the switch and fire the second one in cold weather.

My house is set up for it but I also have a boiler. I have two taps on my flue one in the basement and one on my main floor.For several years while I got my boiler and storage in place, I had my boiler and my Defiant hooked to the same flue connection via a tee in the piping. In cold conditions I have run both the boiler and the Defiant just to see if it would work. I am not advocating anyone else do this. Obviously this is not code and has potential issues but it worked fine. The main flue is a 8 by 12 flue on a center interior chimney with lots of draft so it readily could handle two 8" pipes hooking into it.

I currently have a Jotul 404 wood cook stove sitting in place but not hooked up on the main floor and my old Defiant is sitting in the basement that could be quickly swapped to the same flue via the separate taps on each floor.The Defiant is way oversized for shoulder season and even turned down puts out way too much heat. Its great as a whole house heater in cold weather and I have heated the entire house to balmy with the power out. If I was to need to do it I also have a Jotul 606 in storage that would be a perfect shoulder season stove on the main floor as its a small fire box and super efficient (for its era). Despite codes against it, more than few older installations used the same flue for multiple stoves.It pretty well was standard in older homes.

I think a lot of newer wood burners with recent installations in newer homes are not familiar with older installations. I have been seen a lot of installations in far older homes that are definitely not code but have been run for years.

Sorry I missed your comment as I was editing the original post. I agree entirely that a single combustion device on one flue is the way to go as it compensates for a lot of sins.

peakbagger said:

I have met a few folks over the years that did swap stoves, the big stove gets left in place and then the small stove gets set in front of it. These are folks who dont really care about aesthetics, they usually are low and fixed income and need to heat predominately with wood as that is what they have got. A stove the size of Jotul 602 can be moved by one person pretty easily and with an appliance dolly it goes real quick. It does require switching the pipe over but with single wall its not that hard to do and once its made up it can be set aside and goes in quick. I have also seen folks with two stoves installed, one gets fired in the shoulder seasons and then they make the switch and fire the second one in cold weather.

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This is something I could do. I live alone and do what I please. I typically take apart my metal chimney to clean it thoroughly, and could easily change from a smaller to a larger stove or vice versa.

And my current stove, a pre epa steel stove, seems oversized for the shoulder season.

I noticed in the Fisher Stoven thread some people seem to have the whole dam family of Fisher stoves in their homes ---- Papa Bear, Mama Bear, Bear Cub and perhaps others! Something like that might be fun to try with two stoves.

I see older stoves available on Craigslist for $100 or less, even free. It might be fun to experiment by installing and using different stoves and then changing them out ----like socks.

Anyway, I find it a fun thing to think about, and an entirely new idea.