any suggestions on overnights?

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steeltowninwv

Minister of Fire
Nov 16, 2010
768
west virginia
My stove has a pretty big firebox...I load it down of a night..and I wake up about 8 hours later to just a few coals...last night I let it burn down to coals before bed time raked coals to front of stove...loaded tight with all oak...got it burning good for 15 minutes or so..then shut it down..after it calmed down..it was burning pretty slow...went off to bed...woke up to use restroom about an hour later and looked at fire...burning hard at this point..woke up 7 hours later to a few coals...(at least the house was still warm).anything better I can do?
 
By the sounds of it, not much unless you get up in the night again and add a couple of splits. I did this for years with older stoves and then with age, nature forced me up in the night anyway. Sometimes I'll even add a couple splits in our Fireview but only during the real cold winter nights. At this time of year there surely should not be a need to add in the night. Last night it was so warm in here that I did not add anything to the fire. Temp in the 20's overnight and still nice and warm in here this morning.
 
Yeah the heat from the fire was fine...78 when I woke up..just think there should be chunks instead of coals in the morning
 
Sounds to me that what you are seeing is consistent, especially with an older stove.

With my Vigilant I would have just enough to get some very small splits started in the morning to bring the fire back up to speed. I am not familiar with your stove, but the only thing I could suggest is to ensure that your stove does not have any large air leaks that may be contributing to the fire burning hotter/faster.

Good luck.
 
steeltowninwv said:
Yeah the heat from the fire was fine...78 when I woke up..just think there should be chunks instead of coals in the morning

Sounds like you are doing well.
Have you tried a couple "all nighters" ?

6-7" rounds.
 
Couple of things you can do with the FP-1 is first let that ash pan fill up and develop a two or three inch ash bed instead of dumping the ashes with the pan. Maintains the heat and burn a lot better. Second is check to make sure that bi-metallic automatic air control is opening and closing as the stove heats up and cools down. If it is stuck open you are gonna eat a lot more wood.
 
/Agree with Dune on this one- Use unsplit large rounds as all-nighters... unsplit wood burns slower naturally. In my very very limited experience- a few ~7" unsplit rounds of soft wood (pine in my case) will be a pile of still very active hot coals after ~5-6 hours depending on damping. With that in mind, hard would should theoretically achieve your goals if unsplit.
 
Backwoods Savage said:
At this time of year there surely should not be a need to add in the night. Last night it was so warm in here that I did not add anything to the fire. Temp in the 20's overnight and still nice and warm in here this morning.


what are you talking about it was -4 F the other night here.
 
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