Bed of coals

[RyanH0802]

We have a older Century S131e stove and we use it to primarily heat the house. We are ending up with a large amount of hot coals after a few hours of burning. We are staying in the green on our temp gauge constantly now and we got a moisture meter and it's been reading about 10% when I check the wood. We get so many coals, it gets to the point we can't add more wood with out the coals spilling out. Are we doing something wrong or we will just have to clean the coals out every few hours?

 

[xman23]

When you get to coals you need to open the air and burn them down. All part of the burn cycle.

 

[Dix]

How long has the firewood been split & stacked? Species?

Are you resplitting a split and testing for moisture?

Welcome to the forums !

 

[RyanH0802]

Firewood has been cut for about 5 years and has been stored inside a grain bin for the last 4 years. I think it is poplar. I have some oak and hickory that got this weekend but it's still reading at about 18% for moisture so I'm going to split that down more into smaller pieces.

 

[Wood Duck]

When are you adding more wood? Are all the coals the result of the first load of wood? In my stove I load the stove, then let the load of wood burn down, including some time spent burning mostly coals. I don't reload until the coals have burned down at least a little. When I reload, I pull the coals to the front of the stove, make a groove in the coals in front of the doghouse air inlet, and then load more wood. I want to make sure the wood in front is in a position that allows air to pass under the wood and over the coals, to speed up the burning of the coals. If I leave the coals in the back of the stove and keep adding more wood, my stove will fill with coals the way yours has in the photo.

 

[RyanH0802]

The coals are from the first load. We try to keep it in the green all the time. Maybe we are adding too much wood too often to keep it in the green.

 

[RyanH0802]

We keep the air open all the way most of the time. There have been a few times that we have had to shut air down to bring the flue temp back down because it was getting close to the red on the temp

 

[KpR]

How are you measuring temps?

 

[firefighterjake]

The coals are from the first load. We try to keep it in the green all the time. Maybe we are adding too much wood too often to keep it in the green.

^^^ This is your most likely problem. Let the coals die down a bit more before adding wood . . . the temp may come down some and be out of the green for a bit, but it's fine.

My first year or two I had times when I had a lot of coals . . . mostly because I was adding wood too soon . . . part of my problem was with thinking flames = heat and coals = time to add more wood. If a home has decent insulation you can afford to let the coals burn down smaller without a huge dip in the home's temps before reloading the stove.

Occasionally however you still may find excessive coals -- especially if the temps are wicked cold and you're forced to add wood sooner rather than later. A good way to maintain temps and burn away some of those coals is to toss a single split or two on the coals and open up the air. Typically I can see a huge difference in the amount of coals in a half hour or so.

 

[Clydeburner]

+1 ^ burn them coals down, then you can add more wood and will burn longer in between reloads

 

[David.Ervin]

my problem was with thinking flames = heat and coals = time to add more wood

This was how I ran my stove when I first got it, and it was amazing how much wood I chewed through, not to mention how darn hot the living room it's installed in got. As I've learned to live with wood heat, I've discovered that running a couple fans to distribute heat around the house, and reloading based on how comfortable the house feels rather than what the stove looks like is really the optimal way to run.

As others have said, if you've got that many coals, you might want to rake them up near the air inlets and open the air up so they burn down. I find this is a good way to get another hour or so of good heat out of my stove if I'm not ready for a reload, or just have too many coals to fill up with wood for the night.

 

[edge-of-the-woods]

When are you adding more wood? Are all the coals the result of the first load of wood? In my stove I load the stove, then let the load of wood burn down, including some time spent burning mostly coals. I don't reload until the coals have burned down at least a little. When I reload, I pull the coals to the front of the stove, make a groove in the coals in front of the doghouse air inlet, and then load more wood. I want to make sure the wood in front is in a position that allows air to pass under the wood and over the coals, to speed up the burning of the coals. If I leave the coals in the back of the stove and keep adding more wood, my stove will fill with coals the way yours has in the photo.

+1 on this as well. When we started burning, I was always tempted into re-loading too early. Those coals may not be putting out temps in the green, but they've got a lot more to burn in them. If you keep adding new splits to the coals without burning them down, you might end up with a mountain of ash in there, too.

 

[RyanH0802]

I've been hearing a lot of talk of opening the air. I'm new as can be to this so if you mean the air control on the stove itself, we typically run that open to help with keeping the temps in the green. After talking with the local fireplace installer, they recommended that we take out the damper on the flue pipe and agreed with everyone on here and getting rid of the heat reclaimer on the flue pipe as well. I also added a slip joint for the ease of cleaning the chimney from the bottom up since the roof is so steep and I haven't had time to make something to help with getting to the chimney without the fear of sliding off the roof. We have a fan behind the stove to help blow the heat coming off the stove and into the room. We also have both ceiling fans running in the room to help keep the air moving.

 

[Jags]

Please define "running in the green". If this is in response to a magnetic thermo you may be running the stove too cool. Does the thermo have actual degrees listed? If not - it should. Many folks get all confuddled when they grab a thermo intended for a stove pipe, and slap it on the surface of their stove. Green (good) for a stove pipe is a completely different temp than what a stove top should be running at.

 

[RyanH0802]

Yes, it is the magnetic thermos that we have on the flue pipe about a foot above the stove

 

[RyanH0802]

Yes it has degrees on it. We are running around 400F on the flue pipe

 

[Jags]

Yes it has degrees on it. We are running around 400F on the flue pipe

That is good. Essentially giving you an internal flue temp of ~600F. I was concerned that you were reporting stove top temps and using the same color code (cool, good, hot). Those codes do not hold true for stove top temps.