Door open or closed?

[KindredSpiritzz]

Each morning i wake up, rake my coals forward and then leave the door open awhile to let the coals burn down. The heat radiating into the room feels good but it has me wondering. Is more heat going into the room with the door open or is more being sucked out of the room and up the chimney with this practice? Am i warming the room while burning down the coals or just making the room colder? I figure one of you's did scientific studies and will have the answer, lol.

 

[DAKSY]

Rake the coals forward & add your next load of wood behind the coals.
The new load will ignite & the stove will keep burning.
Those coals will burn to ash anyway.

 

[firefighterjake]

No scientific study, but I'm pretty sure the general consensus is leaving the door open may make you feel more warm with the coals having less restriction (metal and "glass" of the stove) . . . but at the expense of more of the warm air in the room going up the chimney with the added draft.

If I have excessive coals and need to burn 'em down I'll either rake them up and toss a small split on them (I especially like softwood splits) with the air control open all the way . . . or simply open the air all the way and let it cruise like that for awhile.

 

[KindredSpiritzz]

Well in the morning the house is cold so i dont have the luxury of burning down coals and not getting some heat out into the room but if i dont get rid of the coals then i cant properly pack the stove for the day before i head to work. Kind of a catch 22. Leaving the door open keeps me toasting warm sitting a few feet away but the rest of the house does seem to get colder.

 

[RandyBoBandy]

Start your overnight burn a 1/2 hour earlier.

 

[sportbikerider78]

Rake the ash off the coals. Throw 2 splits on with air left wide open. They will burn down and you will get the stove temps up to output some heat.

 

[firefighterjake]

Well in the morning the house is cold so i dont have the luxury of burning down coals and not getting some heat out into the room but if i dont get rid of the coals then i cant properly pack the stove for the day before i head to work. Kind of a catch 22. Leaving the door open keeps me toasting warm sitting a few feet away but the rest of the house does seem to get colder.

If you toss on a split or two and open up the air all the way in about a half hour the bed of coals should be reduced AND you should be able to then reload a full load and dial back the air to set the fire for the day before heading to work. I tend to wake up earlier in the Winter so I can get the fire re-established before leaving for work . . . it's usually cooler (i.e. it was in the high 70s last night when I went to bed around 9 and at 63 or so when I woke up this morning at 5 a.m.), but still warm enough so that the oil boiler doesn't kick on.

 

[xman23]

If you have coals by the morning, your doing much better than me. With the temp tonight -5. I'm going to need 3 reloads and a good load of wood and a hot stove burning all night.

 

[Sprinter]

To the "scientific" part of the question: You're letting in cold air, just like an open fireplace. That's why we have stoves with doors

The unanswered question: Whatever makes you feel nice at the time. I wouldn't worry about a few BTU's, just stay close where the heat is and enjoy it for a while. Pet your dog, cat, wife, whatever.

Then close the door.

 

[Doug Morford]

In most situations, you get better heating efficiency the slower you burn. The slower velocity of gasses flowing over the surfaces of your stoves interior allows more energy to be transferred to your home. So yes, you're probably getting less of the energy in your coals into your home by cracking your door open. That also assumes you're getting efficient combustion of the coals with the door closed, which you most likely would be at that point in the burn.

 

[KindredSpiritzz]

So yes, you're probably getting less of the energy in your coals into your home by cracking your door open.

im not cracking the door, its wide open with nice heat radiating 3 ft out into the room.Just confused me how that heat radiates out like that but cold air still gets sucked in thru the wall of heat. Maybe the heat rises and the cold air comes thru on the bottom i guess.

 

[Sprinter]

im not cracking the door, its wide open with nice heat radiating 3 ft out into the room.Just confused me how that heat radiates out like that but cold air still gets sucked in thru the wall of heat. Maybe the heat rises and the cold air comes thru on the bottom i guess.

It's acting like an open fireplace. Without the newer stoves' air handling designs, it is sucking larger amounts of air through the house and up the chimney. Used normally and properly, these stoves only draw less than 50 cfm. Less than a bathroom fan. But really, if you are enjoying the nice early morning moments, it's not going to matter that much for a short time. Most of the heat energy is stored in the more dense stuff in the house and the air is going to heat back up pretty quickly since it's so thin.

 

[Tar12]

im not cracking the door, its wide open with nice heat radiating 3 ft out into the room.Just confused me how that heat radiates out like that but cold air still gets sucked in thru the wall of heat. Maybe the heat rises and the cold air comes thru on the bottom i guess.

If I am running late in the morning for work (pretty much every morning...lol) I will rake coals to the side and take out what is needed on one side and reverse the process for the other side and spread the coal bed out and load her up....I don't have the luxury of extra time in the am.

 

[Doug Morford]

The heat you are feeling while the door is open is from radiant energy. It doesn't care which direction the air is moving. Same as the heat you feel from the sun. That energy travels through the vacuum of space.

While the radiant energy transferred to the room increases with the door open, the increase in energy lost up the flue from increased air flow is probably going to be much greater than your gain.

 

[HomeinPA]

I do like Tar12 does - Rake them out, push them all to one side then stack beside and on top of the coals til it's full, shut the door and set the air. Come back in 8 hours. Randy's idea of filling it earlier the previous evening seems logical too.

 

[KindredSpiritzz]

It doesn't care which direction the air is moving. Same as the heat you feel from the sun. That energy travels through the vacuum of space.

good analogy, now i get it. Loading earlier wont help cause then the stove would be colder and more burned down before i woke and harder to relight with less glowing coals. And the coals only become a problem later in the week as the ash bed gets bigger. I clean the stove once a week or so, if the ash is thick then the coals take up more room compounding the problem. Its nice, i dont have to go into work til 1pm so i can sit by the fire perusing Hearth stuff while drinking my coffee in the morning while fussing with the fire getting it ready for that 12:30 reload before work.