Coals in wood stove

[carpniels]

Hi Guys,

I want some input and opinions. This is the case:

I have a Quadrafire Isle Royale. Fantastic, large, top loading wood stove. It has been very cold lately here in Central NY (0-10 at night, 10-20 during the day). My house is large (2500+ ft) and not well laid out for a wood stove. I use 2 fans to move the heat, which works well.

I have been running it as hot as possible to get as much heat in the house as I can. This is the cycle I use: I add wood (cherry and locust), run the air full open until the temp hits 900, then shut the air to half and run that for 1-2 hours until the heat goes to 700. Then I open the air fully again, and wait another 1/2 hour until the temp goes lower. Then I add wood and start all over again.

This works well, except that over the weekend, I kept getting more and more and more coals on the bottom of the stove, so that by saturday night, I almost couldn't add any wood anymore. The stove was mostly red coals, but the heat was only 650. The only thing that saved me was that overnight, the stove does consume most of the coals so that I had a nice empty stove on sunday morning.

Questions: is this normal what happened to me? Is there anything I can do? Any other comments/sugestions?

Thanks

Carpniels

 

[begreen]

Good question. That's almost exactly what I ran into with the Castine. Best I could do was try to rake them to the front and burn them off with the air open, but that meant a subsequent drop in stove and therefore room temps. At times the coals were almost even with the door opening. I would think with a top loader that this would be less of an issue; guess not.

 

[elkimmeg]

Carp 900 surface temp is way too much 650 is good. Are you loading this stove every 2 hours?

 

[jqgs214]

rake them into a pile or just nearer the air intake into the stove and burn a small split on then at wide open. Seems counter productive but it works like a charm,

 

[wahoowad]

I've been struggling with it too lately. I don't think there is a way to prevent it, instead you just have to accept and deal with it as part of your burn cycle. You have to accept the drop in heat output while you burn them down some. I open my air up and sometimes add a small split, both of which seem to sustain my temps a little better than letting the coals burn down on low air.

 

[carpniels]

Hi Guys,

Thanks for the info.

That is exactly what I have been doing. Rake them to the front, center and open the air up. Then add some small splits.

900 is high but the stove has no problem with it. I need the heat. When it is 30 outside, I can clamp down and let the stove roll along at 400-600 and things are fine. The coals burn nicely too at that temp and there are no issues. This extreme weather is asking for drastic measures.

I am loading my stove every 2 hours, because the coals take up so much room I can only add 2 or 3 splits.

Thanks again

 

[precaud]

Carp 900 surface temp is way too much 650 is good. Are you loading this stove every 2 hours?

Elk, you've never run a Quad before. The only way to get the top plate at 650 is to put a block of ice on it. 800-900 is normal for them.

 

[Roospike]

That would explain the need for loading the stove every 2 hours.

One would think the room the stove is in would be very hot with a 900° stove.

Something that would help is the use of lower grade BTU wood ( pine ) every 4th load or something , its the hard wood locust that is making the large coal bed , a few pine splits on top pf the coal pile with the damper run almost wide open will help lower the coal bed.

 

[BrotherBart]

I know the Isle Royale is an iron stove but I damn sure would watch running a steel stove that hot. My old tank didn't bust that weld between the 3/8" top plate and the 1/4" back of the stove because of heat. It got busted running in the 900-1000 range and the door being opened and another big split being tossed in, and banging against the back of the firebox while it was that hot.

One too many times.

Something front to back loaders need to keep in mind at all times. Gently put those splits in. Gently.

 

[Roospike]

So ........... I guess the saying "throw another split in the stove" is a bad thing. ;-)

Or as BB has stated you might just get a "split" in the stove.

 

[wg_bent]

That would explain the need for loading the stove every 2 hours.

One would think the room the stove is in would be very hot with a 900° stove.

Something that would help is the use of lower grade BTU wood ( pine ) every 4th load or something , its the hard wood locust that is making the large coal bed , a few pine splits on top pf the coal pile with the damper run almost wide open will help lower the coal bed.

Spike's got my technique down. That's what I've been doing it works well, keeps the stove temp up and the coal bed low. You must rake the coals to the front on every load though. If you load the stove like my wife does (open door and toss in a split, close door...all day long) you get a monster coal bed.

 

[precaud]

So ........... I guess the saying "throw another split in the stove" is a bad thing. ;-)

That's pretty much how I see it. Throwing another split on an already roaring fire is asking for trouble.