Drolet Commander - Need ideas and guidance

[yram]

I've posted before, but now I'm going to make a fresh start. I have a house with a daylight basement which gives us about a third of our total heating. When it was built in 1987 I installed a Jensen "Solution" with the hot air simply shooting into an open central stairway. The house design uses convection to distribute heat (no ducting). I later installed a backup oil furnace next to the wood furnace, also shooting warm air into the stairway. This was a great system. The house is about 2500 sf but 640 sf of this is the basement.

Over time and a few too-hot fires (wasn't me!), my Jensen developed warping of the baffle and firebox back wall, which also cracked. A shop welded in a new back wall over the old. But the stove started smoking. It had always been a great stove, and I decided it was time to get a new furnace.

I bought a Drolet Heat Commander. With help from a general building contractor we got it installed. It works great as long as the fire is small. It just puts out too much heat when I fill the woodbox on a very cold night. We wake up to no fire and the house getting cool because the fire burned out in four hours. I did install a barometric damper, and no, I don't know what the chimney draft is. But it's a 40' 8x8 (which is actually 7x7) flue. And I had to put a couple of bends in the pipe. Not ideal.

To tell the truth, I'm sick of messing with this stove. Maybe it's a bad fit for my house. It was one thing to put in a barometric damper (to me it's silly to send air from a fairly tight house right up the chimney), but then I've heard maybe I need a second barometric damper, or put in a chimney liner, etc., etc., etc. I really hate having a stove this complex. I don't want to change my house.

At this point I want to break up with the Drolet and go back to something where I, not some plastic thermostat made in China, determines the draft. Everything worked so well with the original 1987 Jensen. I hate what's happened. Yes, I like to damp down a fire so it lasts the night. I cannot do that with the Drolet. I cannot control it.

I am open to suggestions. I do not have some HVAC wiz to turn to, but I am very capable. We also have a 1908 Atlantic Clarion cookstove on the floor above which we use 75% of the time to heat the DR, kitchen and living room.

 

[begreen]

Gonna move this to the boiler room for some tips on running the Commander. The Drolet will not run like the old Jensen. Modern, clean burning stoves and furnaces have secondary combustion and are designed to prevent smoldering, smoky fires. I would remove the barometric damper and replace it with a key damper for better draft control.

 

[EbS-P]

To questions?
Did you try it without the barometric dampener?
Did you ever measure your draft?

The later has implications for any stove you choose.

 

[yram]

No I didn't measure draft. I initially ran it without the barometric damper. A key damper would work how? I appreciate any and all ideas, I just need help understanding. I know the Drolet has pluses over the old Jensen, but so far it's not working for the house/me. I've called Drolet and they ask about the chimney, the draft, the damper. I need for the stove to slow down at night, is all. Even using very dry wood in it, and getting the fire well along, it still ran too hot. Normally at that point I would slow down the draft of a manual stove.

 

[EbS-P]

It’s all guess work and trial and error unless you measure the draft. I found a got a 0-.25 manometer of eBay for less than $50.

if I your shoes I’d use what I consider the best community on the internet to learn and help you give the Drolet one more season before you give up on it.

 

[brenndatomu]

That 40' chimney is not helping the matter, at all! You must control that beast. Get a cheap Dwyer mark II model 25 manometer (can find them for $30-40 on eBay) and get a draft reading on it when burning...like has been mentioned, I'd bet anything you'll need a key damper, on top of the baro!
Also, it's kinda counterintuitive, but burn high coaling wood (oak, for one example) not the low btu stuff that usually doesn't coal much at all.
What I'd did to help stretch things out when heating on low btu requirement days was to shut the furnace (air controls, not blower power) down after the wood has burnt to the coaling stage... to automate the process I simply wired in an Auber temp controller to a thermocouple in the stovepipe. (Like $50 worth of parts)
The way it works is that I have a 60 minute spring wound (bathroom fan) timer that is wired in parallel with the temp controller, that allows power to furnace controls for a cold start/warmup, once warmed up the Auber takes over, then cuts off power to the furnace controls at a predetermined (after some experimenting) temp, which preserves the coals, allowing for some long term low level heat...otherwise the HC will go until the coals are just ashes and the firebox temp drops until the controls finally close things down.
It was simple to do on our Kuuma, it may not be as simple on the HC with it's fully integrated control board.

 

[brenndatomu]

It almost sounds like you'd do better with a large cat stove, or a soapstone stove.
If you are stuck on using a furnace and just want to go old school, look for a nice used Englander 28-3500, they sold a bazillion of them, they were cheap back then, and you do see them pop up for sale, sometimes lightly used, and often pretty reasonably priced. (Like well under a grand)
In my opinion (and many others) the Englander was probably one of the best old school wood furnaces out there...lots of fans on Hearth I know!

Either way, you've got to control the draft on that monster chimney, that almost certainly heavily contributed to the demise of your old furnace.