Englander 32-NC Overheat?

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I just ordered a cheap one off Amazon. It is supposed to be here tomorrow. Depending on what the infrared thermometer says I may return this stove top one and get one that goes directly into my stovepipe. It seems that may be the consensus here. Is there any advice for where to install the probe in the stove pipe? Especially if I plan to add a damper to the pipe later down the road?

There should be directions on the new probe meter. I've read between 18 and 24" above the stove.
 
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Caveat emptor, cheap tools can lead to cheap results.
 
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Many of us use both. Probe tells you immediately what the fire is doing, stove top thermometer tells you how much heat is being produced. The difference between the two varies depending on where in the burn cycle you are. For example on a fresh load taking off I can be at 850 flue and 300 stt. As I shut down air and damper the flue temps stabilize, drop, rise again, etc.; stt rises. Depending on heat needs I might want to cruise different stt temps which can be adjusted based on air supplied.

Probe is recommended 18-24" above stove top. Some stove top pipe adapters have dampers in them, so the old one without the damper is removed and the new one with the damper is installed. Note that my old one without and the new one with were slightly different heights and I had to adjust my telescoping pipe.
 
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So update is that I have not ran the stove that much the past few days. I did receive the heat gun and it is saying that the stove top is about 100f below what is being read on the thermostat. I have used it on it several times to check and this seems pretty accurate. Having this in mind I have not fully loaded the stove since I got the infrared gun.
 
Ok, so you are running hot; just not as hot as the thermometer indicated. Dollar bill test the door seal. Are there any dark streaks on the glass indicating a bad glass or door seal? I would expect air fully shut should control if not kill the fire...
 
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Due to the secondary intake plus the 2 ports underneath up front and the fact that the damper control does not, in fact, completely close the main intake there is still a lot of combustion air available , mine has gotten away from me twice this year once awhile back around 800 infared gun and this morning at apx 900 . niether time did i see anything glowing ( must have caught it soon enough, and i know what that looks like as i had happen years ago with a different smaller stove. it does take awhile for things calm down after completely closing damper. against nature but you can open the door and leave open for awhile, keeping an eye on things. the larger amount of air will help cool things down a bit faster.

You likely will notice a bit of color change to the black paint top center infront of flue. Mine was not stuffed to the hilt this morning either but there were 2 rows af splits in there about equal to the top of the fire bricks. guess the fuel is drier than I thought, so a lot of off gassing going on. Oak, Maple ( hard), and Ash was the mix. after around 10-15 minutes things were getting back to a safer area and there were no active flames. No wind out side 25-30 ft flue apx 32 F or so degrees out. reset damper control at flush with ashtray , hopefully the house is still there when i get home apx 1 hour from now. the other stove was becuse what i was told were hard wood blocks were in reality hard connifer blocks so a lot of pitch. that time the double wall pipe from the stove to ceiling was faintly glowing red apx 4 in the morning.

this in a mobile home. icing on the cake: a mobile home about 30 yards on a diagonal from mine went up in smoke that same day/ time period - electrical short. I could not leave until about 10am due to all the fire trucks and equipment that home was a total loss. when i got home that evening all that was left were the main frame carriage rails. ya, I was sweating blood as at the time i never had that happen before plus being a trailer they go up quick. Like where I live now, out in the boonies, tanker trucks are the only water supply for fire fighters and the departments are all volenteers. So it can be scary.
 
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Maybe Leroy, Kekoskee, Farmersville and Knowles should band together and get a full time FD or run water mains along all the country roads...🤣. I was in Brownsville last weekend.
 
Thanks for all the awesome replies. This community never disappoints.

1.) This is the ash drawer you see in the first picture. I could not get a good picture but this is a half inch, maybe 5/8" gap there. I could not get a good picture so I had to raise the drawer up. To be clear, this gap is present at the top when not lifting it and I can pretty much squeeze part of my fingers through it when it is fully closed. Guessing this is by design but it is definitely there.

2.) So you guys advise here but I think the stove top thermometer is obviously off. I was hoping this was the case but you can see here that there is approximately 200 degrees difference. I tend to believe the infrared digital gun is much closer to being accurate. This was also partly accidental as I got a fire going and left the air open too long. So when I came back I decided it was the perfect time to take a reading. My fire is clearly hot right now but if you look closely it does not have much in it at all.

3.) I did the dollar bill test. My findings were that I could not pull it out near the latch. I thought if I tried harder I may tear it. However, as you start getting towards the middle and left side of the stove (hinges) it does become possible to pull the bill out. I would say there is good resistance but there are some parts where I can pull it out pretty easily. All sides do give resistance though.

[Hearth.com] Englander 32-NC Overheat?[Hearth.com] Englander 32-NC Overheat?[Hearth.com] Englander 32-NC Overheat?
 
Don't know about your stove but air tight is what you're shooting for otherwise you have no control. I'm sure airtight is an unattainable but that's the ultimate goal.
 
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Don't know about your stove but air tight is what you're shooting for otherwise you have no control. I'm sure airtight is an unattainable but that's the ultimate goal.
Yes I understand. It is the whole reason I got rid of my previous stove. This house is not perfectly square and there is a lot of 'custom work' if you catch my drift so I guess the phrase I am looking for is our basement is drafty. I do not think any stove is close to air tight but I get the point that the more air leaking into the stove the less control you have over it.
 
Check to make sure that the ash plug is seated properly and doesn’t have a gap. My stove doesn’t have that gap on the ash pan. When it is closed there is no gap on it.

That’s surprising how hot that stove is with not much fire going on inside. Mine doesn’t get that hot unless it’s a full load and roaring secondaries.
 
ashes sift down and seal the bit of gap on the plug. sealed combustion chamber - depends on your definition i guess, certainly not like a good gas or propane furnace where the combustion chamber has no access to the inviroment of the area to be heated.
Brownsville about 6 or so miles north of me. Between Brownsville and Waupun they are constructing a huge solar panel farm on the north side of state 49, closer to Waupun than Brownsville.
 
I suspected the issue was the stove thermometer. Toss it in the metals recycling bin. It's worthless.
Don't know about your stove but air tight is what you're shooting for otherwise you have no control. I'm sure airtight is an unattainable but that's the ultimate goal.
The stove is not really airtight, more like controlled leaks for startup air, the air wash, and secondary air. If there is resistance when pulling out the dollar bill then the gasket is sealing. It's not untypical that it's tighter by the door latch.
 
Hey guys,

So I think it is universally agreed that my stove is still getting a little hot. I have been looking around and have seen pipe that can be added that has a damper pre-installed. I am going to take a couple measurements but I do not think I am going to be able to add a piece of pipe to this stove without it coming out more than I would like. I also say it is possible to just drill a couple holes in in the pipe already there and add one yourself?

I guess my next question would be if I plan to drill into the pipe to add a better quality thermostat do I need to be weary of how I install the damper as to not throw off the reading of the thermostat?
 
it could be above or below the damper as long as it dosen't intefer , it going to get as hot as the flue gases.
 
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It's been a few months since the last response, but I also bought a nc-32, I burned for a whole season no issues that I was aware of *besides* not getting the fire to burn as low as I wanted.

Once I went to fire it up last fall I noticed the gasket needed to be replaced so I did that. *side note* you have to use englander brand gasket for this stove because it's a high density rope gasket. I thought just could get away with sizing up with the local box store brand rope gasket and it doesn't work, there isn't enough fibers that make the gasket, and it ends up squishing too much. So I ordered from englander and their high density rope gasket was the key....that helped with the stove not quite being able to settle down and get the burn under control.

Also, my door hinge pin holes were egg shaped, ovaled out. The air damn above the door was actually sticking out too far and pushing against the glass slightly. I had to take a heavy duty pair of vice grips inch by inch across the air wash plate and bend it down. And because of it the door would technically seal but not pass the dollar bill test. I contacted englander and sent pictures and they sent me a whole new stove.

I would check the air wash above the door and change out your gasket with a new englander brand high density gasket and see how you end up
 
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It's been a few months since the last response, but I also bought a nc-32, I burned for a whole season no issues that I was aware of *besides* not getting the fire to burn as low as I wanted.

Once I went to fire it up last fall I noticed the gasket needed to be replaced so I did that. *side note* you have to use englander brand gasket for this stove because it's a high density rope gasket. I thought just could get away with sizing up with the local box store brand rope gasket and it doesn't work, there isn't enough fibers that make the gasket, and it ends up squishing too much. So I ordered from englander and their high density rope gasket was the key....that helped with the stove not quite being able to settle down and get the burn under control.

Also, my door hinge pin holes were egg shaped, ovaled out. The air damn above the door was actually sticking out too far and pushing against the glass slightly. I had to take a heavy duty pair of vice grips inch by inch across the air wash plate and bend it down. And because of it the door would technically seal but not pass the dollar bill test. I contacted englander and sent pictures and they sent me a whole new stove.

I would check the air wash above the door and change out your gasket with a new englander brand high density gasket and see how you end up
Yeah I have heard about the air wash thing causing problems but the ones that I read said they are more likely to cause the fire to go out. It is worth looking into though. I am still in the process of buying one of the rotary type weed wacker brushes to clean it out. Several of the manufacturers said that you are not suppose to use it if you have even one 90 bend. I have the one 90 bend where the tee is that goes up the chimney. I have seen other users say they got it to work though.

I think I am going to clean the stove and chimney and use it this year and report my findings. Because it seemed like when I was using properly dried wood, even with the air completely shut off it seemed like the fire could get really hot and burn fast. May still look into adding a damper to it.
 
when installing rope gasket do not stretch it out rather compress it linearly as you reinstall it.
 
You can get high density gasket from places other than OEM, but most hardware store don't stock it...a few dealers might, maybe.
 
Just being high density doesn't mean it will work well. At the suggestion of a local Jotul/PE dealer I tried a Meeco Gold high density gasket on our stove. They didn't have the OEM part in stock. It was immediately and dangerously apparent with the first fire that this was a bad idea. The gasket was too stiff and leaked air badly causing the stove to overfire. I had to open the door to cool it down and then remove hot burning splits.

When I got the proper OEM gasket, I compared it's construction to both the innexpensive Rutland gasket, hardware store "high density", and the Meeco Gold. None of these gaskets had the same construction. The PE OEM door gasket for our stove has two layers and a tigher weave. It's like a gasket in a gasket. That's all I'll use now.
 
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Just being high density doesn't mean it will work well. At the suggestion of a local Jotul/PE dealer I tried a Meeco Gold high density gasket on our stove. They didn't have the OEM part in stock. It was immediately and dangerously apparent with the first fire that this was a bad idea. The gasket was to stiff and leaked air badly causing the stove to overfire. I had to open the door to cool it down and then remove hot burning splits.

When I got the proper OEM gasket, I compared it's construction to both the innexpensive Rutland gasket, hardware store "high density", and the Meeco Gold. None of these gaskets had the same construction. The PE OEM door gasket for our stove has two layers and a tigher weave. It's like a gasket in a gasket. That's all I'll use now.
Exactly, I tried Rutland and another brand "high density" and they didn't suffice like OEM gasket did
 
One man's high density gasket is another man's low density gasket.