Englander 30-NCH Update

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leeave96

Minister of Fire
Apr 22, 2010
1,113
Western VA
Here's where I stand with the Englander 30-NCH:

1. I suspected an air leak in my flue pipe. Don't know if someone bumped it or some sealant fell out, but a whistle developed over the past week and half. Pulled the cover that finishes the "look" from the single wall to the double wall class A chimney pipe and found a significant leak where the two pipe are not quite concentric. I put some stove cement in the gap and the stove quited down. I also got much better secondary action with this little fix. With at least 23 ft of vertical class A, I knew I had plenty of draft potential, but now it's much more pronounced. I don't know what the pressure drop across the secondary tubes are, but I feel it was defiantly compromised with the stove pipe leak upstream.

2. I abandoned any dedicated N/S or E/W burn technique. I am burning the wood in whatever configuration it fits. If I got N/S across the bottom and want to do E/W on top of that - great. Reason for this is all of us in this house get hung-up on "how I should burn" vs. simply burning the stove hot for a clean burn. I should/can get both regardless of the wood orientation.

3. Regardless of the amount of wood in the firebox, I am upping the minimum stove temp before I damper down to at least 600 degrees, maybe 575. That's just a point of reference. If I go a bit higher or lower, I need to be farther above 500 it seems to get the wood and stove coookin' before backing down for a sustained burn.

4. I don't think I'll ever get some of the web video burns with glowing logs and secondaries only - with secondaries maintaining the firebox temps. I think that's a characteristic of my set-up.

5. Stove pipe damper is now always open. What I'm finding is that if I get the fire going for a long burn, the stove pipe damper works fine keeping more heat in the firebox, but as the fire dies down, but not to charcoal, the air flow being slowed down, doesn't allow enough air for the spits to burn and I loose firebox temps, secondaries and get smoke out the chimney. The doghouse air is also open too.

Bottom line is that I am going to burn this stove hot and hard to get a clean burn regardless of how much firewood I chew through. My plan is to run this stove like a gear drive garden tractor - full throttle, but regulate the speed via the gears. I'll run the stove hot and ultimately regulate the temp/btu output via the number of splits in the firebox.

That's all for now - until I change my mind on how to burn this stove again... ;)

Bill
 
Welcome to my first season with the big boy back in 2006. Over thinking it is fun but can drive ya nuts.

Next year you will burn a cord less wood in that stove than you will this year. First year I went through four and it has been warm in this joint with three cords every year since. In colder winters than that first year was. We had a warm Fall my first year with it too. The last warm Fall we have had until this year.
 
There seem to be a lot of folks this year that are trying to get the "secondaries only" burn, thinking that this is how the stove is supposed to burn all the time.

I think there are some problems with expectations due to those cool videos. To get that type of burn, you have to have a solid coal bed, and a very hot stove. In fact, at that point, the stove is bordering on wanting to run away.

The trick is to back off the air until you have good stable secondaries with a little bit of flame coming from the splits. You will find that unless the stove is going nuclear, going past that balance point will make the scondaries start to destabilize and you will have trouble keeping the stove burning hot enough to burn clean.

Those videos are short for a reason.

-SF
 
I kind of agree with you Sly, I usually have a couple of active flames on the wood with very nice secondaries but the firebox is by no means going wild with flames coming off of the wood everywhere.
 
Yep. The beauty of a non-cat. You can have a nice looking fire and heat your house. Drama free. In fact those blast off light shows will leave you with a cold stove in the morning a lot more than just settling in a nice burn and going to bed.
 
Glad you are here Sly. We have a whole raft of new 30-NC burners this season.
 
leeave96 said:
3. Regardless of the amount of wood in the firebox, I am upping the minimum stove temp before I damper down to at least 600 degrees, maybe 575.l

Maybe I'm still thinking about getting the max heat out of my 13, but I like to run it up to 650 or even a bit more, and then settle in for a nice cruising temp of 550-600.
 
I am burning east/west and think I get more heat. Burning east /west about doubles my burn time. The only drawback is I dont get much if any secondary burning. But with north/south I get great secondary action, but most of the heat must be going up the chimney, because it burns too quickly.
 
I can load the stove no more than to the top of the firebrick N-S and come back up to 14 hours later w/ coals to reload on w/ no kindling. During the active part of that same fire the stove top is over 600 - 650 That's leaving the air control out about 1/4 of an inch (spring flush w/ tip of ash lip).

That is with 1.5 - 2 year cut / split / stacked seasoned cherry / maple / beech / ash.

I've tried E-W and maybe need to revisit it but I just can't get a clean burn out of it and it takes longer for me to get a handle on getting the air adjusted. I'll play around more when the weather is cold but just can't figure needing too much longer than a 12 hour between reload burn out of this stove (which you should be able to do no problem) anyway.

pen
 
When I load E/W... the first piece closest to the doghouse gets burnt in half from the doghouse air, then again the whole way through the stack.
 
I always load N/S, and I try to make sure I leave a passage to the back of the stove for the doghouse air. If I don't, the air circulation in side the firebox doesent seem to work right.

Same goes for not loading much above the firebrick. That air space seems to be helpful for good secondary combustion.

-SF
 
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