f400 operating temperature

[Revturbo977]

some may have read that i had a small chimney fire the other night. i know my wood isn't very good and was the route cause of the cresote problem. my father in law believes i don't run the stove hot enough . he has an old fire breathing dragon and runs the stove top at 800-1000 and beleives i should do the same .

i run between 450 and 600 on a good day. i figure anything above 400 is a good burn and up to 650 is ok for the stove. this is what the manual says and I've been living too it. 500-550 is optimum in my eyes for heat output.

am i doing this wrong?

 

[prezes13]

I don't have a jotul stove but 600df on a top stove sounds right to me. Is your glass getting dirty? By dirty I mean black. That's one indication of runing the stove too cold or basically starving it out of air. Do you get a lot of visible smoke coming out of your chimney? Is your screen cap getting clogged? That's just few indications that you want to avoid. If your wood is wet give it up for this year. It's not worth it. You not getting heat out of your stove or at least not what you should be getting and like you just said it's dangerous. If you have to run your stove get some dry stuff. Cut up pallets or compressed wood bricks are better than wet wood.

 

[prezes13]

800 or even worse 1000 that's overfireing theritory.

 

[begreen]

Hopefully dad's thermometer is a bit off. At 1000F the stove would have a dark red glow and the paint will become chalky white. The F400 is comfortable cruising at 650F. Ours went up to 750F on a couple occasions without incident. It liked to peak at 700F fairly frequently with a good load of dry wood.

 

[prezes13]

On a side note my buddy told me that his brother used to run older Vermont casting stove for five or more years heating his ranch style house from his basment so hard that it was glowing on a daily basis. I don't know how much true it is. I am not even sure if there is a stove that would take such an abuse but he had to run it really hard and mostlikely had it glowing on few occasions.

 

[begreen]

We've seen many Vigilants that have been rode hard and long. They are white as ghosts.

 

[barnuba]

I run my Castine up to 600!

What type of wood? Is it dry? How often do you clean you chimney?

 

[ailanthus]

If you're getting creosote, you may want to use an IR thermometer to verify your temperature measurements. It should be burning clean in the 400-600 range stated in the manual. Any chance your fires are dying down and smouldering when no one's around? Having well seasoned wood makes everything easier.

Definitely don't try to burn at 800°+.

 

[ailanthus]

Ours went up to 750F on a couple occasions without incident. It liked to peak at 700F fairly frequently with a good load of dry wood.

This is good to hear. I have been skittish about letting the temperatures get above 600 degrees.the wind chill right now is like minus 15 degrees so the extra heat would be helpful. I may just let it get a bit hotter today.

 

[Kevin Dolan]

some may have read that i had a small chimney fire the other night. i know my wood isn't very good and was the route cause of the cresote problem. my father in law believes i don't run the stove hot enough . he has an old fire breathing dragon and runs the stove top at 800-1000 and beleives i should do the same .

i run between 450 and 600 on a good day. i figure anything above 400 is a good burn and up to 650 is ok for the stove. this is what the manual says and I've been living too it. 500-550 is optimum in my eyes for heat output.

am i doing this wrong?

I like to see mine run at around 500 to 550 as long as I can with a full load of dry wood. I am burning 24/7 with these cold temps and load up at 10 pm and have enough coals at 6am to easily restart without kindling, with good wood you can easily get an overnight burn with the castine. So I agree that your 500-550 is optimum.

 

[Creekheat]

I have a Jotul F55. I load around 275-300 when possible. It will top out usually around 700 briefly then fall into a 550-625 cruise and eventually drop into the 400's as it coals. I've had it too about 750 without incident but I wouldn't go near 800-1000. Way too scary for me. Lol at 750 my DW pipe was very hot.

I would bite the bullet and pay for some good dry wood or stop burning this year. Burning wet or green wood is hurting you and dangerous.

 

[begreen]

I like to see mine run at around 500 to 550 as long as I can with a full load of dry wood. I am burning 24/7 with these cold temps and load up at 10 pm and have enough coals at 6am to easily restart without kindling, with good wood you can easily get an overnight burn with the castine. So I agree that your 500-550 is optimum.

The F400 was a bit undersized for our old house. I liked to run it at 600-650F when the temps dropped below 20F outside. Trouble is that led to frequent refills when burning softwood. I was stoking it every 4 hrs..

 

[Creekheat]

I know the feeling. It's 10* here today so instead of two loads plus a couple splits it will be 3 loads with a few splits lol