Approaches to burning in cold snap

[tdhd]

I'd love to hear opinions and perspectives on fires for extreme cold. Along with much of the Northeast, its going to be colder that it usually ever gets here for a few days. I have an old soapstone Mansfield. I've got to know it pretty well over the 6 months we've been in the house.

The main issues I encounter are: When I use logs, in a N-S fashion, they often dont burn very well at the back of the stove, making low heat ash that takes up a lot of space and time to burn down before a reload. Another issue I sometimes have, is after an overnight fire, what feels like very heavy grey ash left behind. It seems like it may be harder to get a good hot fire going on top of this. I always remove the clunkers. They come and go seemingly without logic.

I've got some oak that I've split up small, some in bigger chunks - it seems like it burns hotter and longer.

Filling the stove with smaller splits seems to send it all out the chimney and not efficiently heat the box, I guess because there's less space being taken up by hot coal? Even after I damp it down, it seems like the stove takes a much longer time to take (and radiate) the heat than when I load it with logs.

Anyway, I'm all over the place here. But welcome your tips and suggestions.

 

[begreen]

Draft will increase with colder temps, more so when the storm also has high winds. This means adjusting burning habits to the conditions. We switch to our best and longest burning hardwood which is locust and mandrona. White oak, hickory, osage orange, and locust are all dense, high btu woods. For long burns, load larger, thick splits, and watch the air control setting. With very hard wood being burned the fire may require a bit more air. Or, if no change in the wood and the draft is very strong, less air. This is a judgment call based on the strength of the fire, flue and stove temps. Some wood produces more ash, some less. That is just the nature of firewood. Clinkers are formed from fused silicas and minerals in the wood. The bark contains the most silicas.

When dealing with extreme cold, the windows are usually the greatest source of heat loss. Cover them, even temporarily, with insulating blinds, blankets, curtains, plastic storm windows, etc. to increase their insulation value. Close off unused rooms unless they have plumbing in them. And run the boiler or furnace a few times to warm up the basement and keep pipes from freezing.

 

[EbS-P]

Get some pine to help burn down the coals. I imagine we will gets lots of posts about excess coaling as the stoves get pushed hard. Get a metal bucket and shovel ready and have a safe place to put it if you need to remove some coals.

Used blowers or get a small fan to help move more heat off the stove. That will send less up the stack.

Bring as much wood inside as you can.

Get comfortable being a littler chillier. A hat inside. Gloves? An extra vest or sweatshirt. Socks and slippers. If that’s already your normal inside attire you might not notice it getting a bit colder.

 

[tdhd]

Draft will increase with colder temps, more so when the storm also has high winds. This means adjusting burning habits to the conditions. We switch to our best and longest burning hardwood which is locust and mandrona. White oak, hickory, osage orange, and locust are all dense, high btu woods. For long burns, load larger, thick splits, and watch the air control setting. With very hard wood being burned the fire may require a bit more air. Or, if no change in the wood and the draft is very strong, less air. This is a judgment call based on the strength of the fire, flue and stove temps. Some wood produces more ash, some less. That is just the nature of firewood. Clinkers are formed from fused silicas and minerals in the wood. The bark contains the most silicas.

When dealing with extreme cold, the windows are usually the greatest source of heat loss. Cover them, even temporarily, with insulating blinds, blankets, curtains, plastic storm windows, etc. to increase their insulation value. Close off unused rooms unless they have plumbing in them. And run the boiler or furnace a few times to warm up the basement and keep pipes from freezing.

I don't think I can imagine a more efficient and helpful reply. Thank you!

I've done some searches on clinkers before but dont think I ever turned up the bark connection. Makes sense and lots of my bark has moss and lichen so....

Windows are near the top of our list to do - old, wavy single-panes. They go after the roof and bulking up some structure though - and once a good carpenter is available as I think we're going to be pulling at a tangled ball of yarn once we start digging in on that one. I believe I have a couple film kits on hand and I've put towels on a few of the windows that don't yet have blinds. We have so many windows - which is great when the sun is out.

Woodstove is our main heat source, so I've been getting to know it pretty well. (There are baseboards but we don't use them because $$$$.) I've never seen such big gaps between flue and stove top temps as the past 24 hours. Flue is consistently at 500 or so even when shut down almost all the way while stove is stuck at 400 or so, which is okay, but id love to get it to climb up to that edge of overfire zone for at least a little while with each load. Unfortunately, we had wet wet weather prior to this and though I stocked up inside as best I could, they are mostly all juicing out water for the first 20 min or so : ( A good woodshed also at the top of the list.

 

[tdhd]

Get some pine to help burn down the coals. I imagine we will gets lots of posts about excess coaling as the stoves get pushed hard. Get a metal bucket and shovel ready and have a safe place to put it if you need to remove some coals.

Used blowers or get a small fan to help move more heat off the stove. That will send less up the stack.

Bring as much wood inside as you can.

Get comfortable being a littler chillier. A hat inside. Gloves? An extra vest or sweatshirt. Socks and slippers. If that’s already your normal inside attire you might not notice it getting a bit colder.

Good advice. I've got some pine kindling and will try this. I will pull to the front and put a few piece of pine on it, fully open.

I've got a stove top fan and I've got another little table top. A bit unsure as o whether I should point it at the stove or away to pull air from the stove. Or out the door of the living room where the stove is. Once things heat up the air does travel pretty well up the stairs and into our rooms.

 

[Split]

Woke up to -25° C today. Windchill -40°. I have a drafty old home. I could feel the cold getting stronger while I slept. Had to get up for work so got up an hour early and jammed the stove full. Ran great off the coals from the previous night. If power goes out we'll be warm. Now.... about going to work.... sigh. Man it's cold out but I gotta go. At least the family will be warm.

 

[EbS-P]

Good advice. I've got some pine kindling and will try this. I will pull to the front and put a few piece of pine on it, fully open.

I've got a stove top fan and I've got another little table top. A bit unsure as o whether I should point it at the stove or away to pull air from the stove. Or out the door of the living room where the stove is. Once things heat up the air does travel pretty well up the stairs and into our rooms.

At the stove will get more heat off the stove. Blowing cold air into the stove room is often the best way to heat to heat to the rest of the house.

 

[KDubU]

Woke up to -25° C today. Windchill -40°. I have a drafty old home. I could feel the cold getting stronger while I slept. Had to get up for work so got up an hour early and jammed the stove full. Ran great off the coals from the previous night. If power goes out we'll be warm. Now.... about going to work.... sigh. Man it's cold out but I gotta go. At least the family will be warm.

Stay warm out there. It’s bloody cold and I’m a fellow Canuck a bit South of you. I recall cold temps like this back in Montreal but not here on the coast of Maine.

 

[armanidog]

“In New Hampshire, Mount Washington just recorded the coldest wind chill on record for the country. For the entire country. One hundred four degrees below zero Fahrenheit (is) the current wind chill,” Channel 2 Action News chief meteorologist Brad Nitz said Friday evening."

That is dang cold.

 

[Todd]

When I have extreme cold I don’t fill the stove full, I go with half loads and burn with a hotter medium air setting. This keeps the stove hot and reduces over coaling. 3-4 splits give me a 4 hour burn then I reload another 3-4 splits. Before bed I do fill it full but there are times when I get up to pee I may do a small hot reload.

 

[paredown]

Call me a slow learner--but I have been educated by BeGreen.

Cold=more draft (that I already witnessed this morning), although we're a balmy 1 degree above zero now (-3 F for a low) so not as cold as others.

And what makes clinkers, which I assumed were a result of moisture, not silica. I have been seeing more of them this year, and thought it was some side effect of a tighter stove, but it is likely the result of burning more deadfall ash with the bark still on.

And a minor note--the window sealing (and can light replacement) in our great room has made a huge difference, especially last night in the big winds. We have actually been able to stay warm-ish, although both furnaces are running intermittently. Our windows were site built and the caulk had failed, so carefully applied caulk was the ticket.

Regarding heat loss through air leakage, this JLC article helped me:

https://www.jlconline.com/how-to/insulation/common-air-leaks_o

 

[Eman85]

For those with a cat stove how do you keep the cat in control and maximize heat output? That is my biggest problem when it's cold. Increased draft and the cat goes high fast. Cut the air back to control the cat and the stove temp drops. It's fine until it gets below freezing then the heat output is really lacking. What I can do for more heat in the room is not engage the cat and burn with the bypass open and I can get a lot more heat in the room/house with a little more wood.

 

[begreen]

You all have my greatest sympathy. I went through a couple of cold winters in the Berkshires that were no fun. On one -15 day I was stoking the wood cookstove like a fireman and ready to burn the furniture if necessary. That cabin had little insulation and a concrete slab floor. The car wouldn't start and I worried about the pipes freezing a lot. I ended up spending most of my time for a couple of days up in the loft where it was warmest. I don't miss that at all.

 

[vernorz]

I'm in the northern Berkshires. It was -18 with -35 windchill this morning. Been feeding the stove since yesterday morning to keep things at 67 inside. Keep throwing a couple splits in every couple hours to keep the STT above 500. It's 0 out now with no wind, so I don't have to load it so often. It's been quite the ride.

 

[begreen]

We were south of you in Cornwall, CT. I love that area, but don't miss the winters.

 

[begreen]

When I have extreme cold I don’t fill the stove full, I go with half loads and burn with a hotter medium air setting. This keeps the stove hot and reduces over coaling. 3-4 splits give me a 4 hour burn then I reload another 3-4 splits. Before bed I do fill it full but there are times when I get up to pee I may do a small hot reload.

Good tip Todd. I do the same and even toss in some skinnier splits with the thicker ones. The stove may need more frequent reloading, but it gets hot quicker. Usually this is for the morning fire, but I could see keeping up this rhythm in very cold weather.

 

[Eman85]

You all have my greatest sympathy. I went through a couple of cold winters in the Berkshires that were no fun. On one -15 day I was stoking the wood cookstove like a fireman and ready to burn the furniture if necessary. That cabin had little insulation and a concrete slab floor. The car wouldn't start and I worried about the pipes freezing a lot. I ended up spending most of my time for a couple of days up in the loft where it was warmest. I don't miss that at all.

I have inlaws in the Bershires, been there when the thermometer never went above zero for weeks decades ago. One house I stayed at had a wood eater in the basement, tin stove under the wood staircase and that's where we slept. We would get that cheap POS glowing red trying to keep war, didn't care if the stairs caught fire. BIL had a stove as only heat, the dog's water dish would freeze in the kitchen.

 

[Newbie78]

Wanna stay warm?

get your stove and flue hot. And keep it that way.

600 flue and 400 stove top is running cold.

your flue can take a thousand degrees continuous and your stove can take 700 degrees continuous

Tho better to be at 700 flue and 600 stove.

just a newbies opinion who lives where -40 is pretty common....

at least that's how I run my stove where it is below freezing for months on end, and then sometimes it gets cold.

 

[begreen]

I have inlaws in the Bershires, been there when the thermometer never went above zero for weeks decades ago. One house I stayed at had a wood eater in the basement, tin stove under the wood staircase and that's where we slept. We would get that cheap POS glowing red trying to keep war, didn't care if the stairs caught fire. BIL had a stove as only heat, the dog's water dish would freeze in the kitchen.

The winter before the -15F winter I stayed at a friend's rustic cabin. It had no insulation or even interior wall covering, just studs. I had an Ashley Columbia in there. When it was very cold out I would wake up at 2 or 3am and eyeball the stove. If the sides weren't glowing I knew I had to get up and add more wood. That was another winter I never want to repeat. When spring rolled around, I woke up early one morning to carpenter ants dripping down onto me. I was outta there looking for a new place the next month.

 

[Crab]

Clinkers are formed from fused silicas and minerals in the wood. The bark contains the most silicas.

I'm burning 5year css, 13-14% mc debarked red and white oak. I am getting a handful of clinkers every day. They are always right up front. I'm thinkn' because I rake the "too hot to reload yet" coals up front, then open the air wide to cook them down that this is causing them to form. No big deal. Because of our mild winter and fear, I do not burn overnight, so I just remove the larger ones in the morning. Morning low was a balmy(compared to others) 16.

 

[Woodsplitter67]

I burn all oak.. lots of btus in it, I. also burning thick splits during the day, like 2or 3 and letting it burn down. My air is set half way. At night like last night and again tonight it will be all thick splits like 5.5x5.5 size and load the stove to the gills.

Normally I load the stove in the morning and get the house to temp then cut the air all the way back and let it cruise the rest of the day until I get home from work

 

[Dix]

Windows are near the top of our list to do - old, wavy single-panes. They go after the roof and bulking up some structure though - and once a good carpenter is available as I think we're going to be pulling at a tangled ball of yarn once we start digging in on that one. I believe I have a couple film kits on hand and I've put towels on a few of the windows that don't yet have blinds. We have so many windows - which is great when the sun is out.

Welcome to the Forums

About 10 years ago, $$$'s were tight. I was heating with wood only, no supplemental (I couldn't afford to fix the Oil Burner, buy oil, and buy wood ).

I was in Big Lot's and they were clearing out their fleece throws, marked down from $8 to $2. I bought enough to cover most of the windows, bought a container of straight pins, and pinned those fleece puppies on the existing curtain rods.

Temps in the house went up 5 -10F, depending on out side temps

 

[marty319]

I have double cell cellular shades ,pull them down at night,huge difference

 

[clydesdale]

I have a follow up question. How do I burn the coals down better? I have an insert with a cat. Cat was recently cleaned and working fine. I fine if I load the stove, I get the hot temps, but coals don't burn down well. So, I then put only one piece in and open the air up and try to burn the coals down. Otherwise, I have to melt my face and remove the coals with shovel and metal bucket. I saw someone mentioned pine, but I don't think that is approved in a cat stove. Any ideas? Thanks.

 

[Eman85]

I have a follow up question. How do I burn the coals down better? I have an insert with a cat. Cat was recently cleaned and working fine. I fine if I load the stove, I get the hot temps, but coals don't burn down well. So, I then put only one piece in and open the air up and try to burn the coals down. Otherwise, I have to melt my face and remove the coals with shovel and metal bucket. I saw someone mentioned pine, but I don't think that is approved in a cat stove. Any ideas? Thanks.

pine is fine as long as it's dry. I don't have any pine all I do for coals is open the air and let them burn down. I burn overnight and in the morning I open the air wide open and let the coals burn for a while, stove gets to 500 STT with just coals. After they burn down some I'll reload on top of them. My stove has a grate and an ashpan under it so I don't have to shovel anything out. I never remove any coals from my stove.