Castine fast increase in stove temp.

[f700]

Well the newbie here has been having pretty good luck with the Castine. Forgive the newbie question though. So, I have been become fairly proficient in my stove running until tonight. I had some firewood that was a cut into roughly 22" lengths for my outdoor firepit. I decided to cut these in half and use it them in the stove tonight. Most of the wood was oak and maple. So like I have done for 2 weeks now, I loaded it up with this wood and shut the damper down. Well what happened surprised me. My stove kick into "afterburner" in about 20 minutes and my temps rose very quickly to 750. I immediately got a fan and brought the temp down. But my question is, and I think I know the answer, but is there a such thing as overloading the stove? I have been filling to the top every night, but that was with about 4 16" splits. Tonite I had about 8 (6-10") splits (maybe more). Was it treating this wood like kindling or something? The diameter of the wood was about the same as I had been using as well. Thanks again for all your help on this forum.

 

[WOODBUTCHER]

The same thing happened to my Oslo when I first got it installed in 04. I had about 2 cords of whimpy 14-16 inch splits left over from when I was using my Russo....even some shorter 10" caps. The 10" caps laid North to south would really give me a blast real quick. My burn times were shorter beacuse I knew I was not using the fireboxes full potential. I had lots of wasted air space in there and in order to achieve full even burn times I needed a tighter load (but whatcha gonna do, had to use the short stuff up). I cut everything to 20 inches the following season and those sizes work out real nice for my Oslo. I pack it 2" from the burn tubes, leave it wide open for about 10 minutes, shut her down and let the secondary rip.

WoodButcher