Filling up with coals

[Dagoof]

I'm new to this game, and we we installed a new Enviro Venice 1700 with hopes that it would be big enough to heat most of our house and run overnight, but when I run it continuously, it basically fills with coals until you almost can't get any more wood in there.

Any tips for how I should be handling things differently?

The coals burn down to ash if you leave them for a couple of days, but I'd prefer to keep a hot fire going so the house doesn't cool off.

Is my stove just too small? Do I just need to clean out ashes / coals more often to make room for more wood?

Also,
I was hoping to be able to have it burn strong for 8-10 hours overnight, but that seems to be longer than it will go. I'm wondering if I have too much draft being in the basement.

 

[Dagoof]

Forgot to mention, I'm burning a mix of wood, but it's mostly May Tree and Maple.

 

[jatoxico]

Excessive coaling is a sign of wet wood or too little air or both. Some coaling is inevitable, use some kindling or small splits to burn them down and get some heat. With a good amount of air add 3-4 small pcs of kindling or a couple small splits and you will burn down coals in 45-min to an hour or so.

 

[begreen]

Agreed. This doesn't sound like too much draft. It sounds like partially seasoned wood or weak draft. When was the wood cut, split and stacked? Does the fire burn hotter if you open a nearby window a little?

Put a 2x4 cut off or two on top of the big coal bed and open the air to 50 or 100%. Let the coal bed burn down for an hour or so, then reload.

 

[Dix]

D : ) All of the above.

First culprit is wet wood, count down from there.

 

[CincyBurner]

when I run it continuously, it basically fills with coals until you almost can't get any more wood in there.

Your situation sounds what happened to me when I first got my stove. It took me a couple weeks to realize my problem was wet wood. This was before I'd heard of hearth.com, and that EPA stove's need for dry wood. I ended up opening-up my primary draft more than I wanted to burn down the coals and raked/ pulled coals in front of the primary. Burns improved when I mixed in some drier wood.
You can burn high MC wood, but it is a miserable, frustrating experience. Much of the heat from the fire is expended driving off excess moisture before fuel (wood) can burn. If high MC wood is your issue, you'll find that your woodstove will burn like a different stove with properly seasoned wood.

To ascertain if high moisture content (MC) wood is the issue - get a moisture meter. Measure a few chunks of wood on a freshly split surface.
As others have stated on similar threads:
* Mix dry wood, perhaps a couple bio blocks into your fires.
* Get ahead (2-3 years) on your wood supply. Stock up on quick drying firewood (e.g. silver maple)

 

[Dagoof]

I'm no expert, but I don't think the wood is too wet. It was split and stacked six or eight months ago and Idaho is pretty dang dry.

The little bit of frost and snow that got on the wood wouldn't be an issue, would it?

I do tend to get less coals when I open up the air supply, but if I do that it will burn through a stove full of wood in about three to four hours.

 

[BrotherBart]

The other thing that causes it, besides the fact that even in Arizona wood takes more than eight months to dry, is constantly putting more wood in the stove instead of loading it and letting it go through the burn cycle of at least six to eight hours before reloading. Down to around a stove top temp of 250 and then reloading.

Stoking like a freight train all day just builds a huge pile of coals that never get a chance to burn down.

 

[pen]

The other thing that causes it, besides the fact that even in Arizona wood takes more than eight months to dry, is constantly putting more wood in the stove instead of loading it and letting it go through the burn cycle of at least six to eight hours before reloading. Down to around a stove top temp of 250 and then reloading.

Stoking like a freight train all day just builds a huge pile of coals that never get a chance to burn down.

If stoking the fire every few hours, instead of letting things burn in cycles as BB suggests, is necessary, then it sounds like the stove isn't up to the task due to size (assuming the fuel is truly seasoned)

pen

 

[rwhite]

I'm basically in the same climate as you and I can't get maple to season in 8 months (usually 2 years). I scrounge maple now and again so basically it either just died or was living and someone cut it down. Doug fir and pine are another story because if you cut off of public lands it has to be dead and likely has been for a few years. Split and stacked by June it will be good by end of October.

 

[CincyBurner]

The other thing that causes it, besides the fact that even in Arizona wood takes more than eight months to dry, is constantly putting more wood in the stove instead of loading it and letting it go through the burn cycle

This is what I was doing my first season. Moist wood, so I keep putting more wood in the stove, which created coals, add more wood, which created more coals . . .

 

[BrotherBart]

If you get into that spot you can rake the coals forward and place a small split on top of the coals to maintain heat while burning down the coals. According to how many coals you may have to repeat it with another split. I do it often when I blow it timing the coal bed for the overnight loading or if it is nasty cold outside.

That 1700 is a primo heater. Just takes time to learn to make a new to you stove walk and talk.

 

[Dagoof]

The other thing that causes it, is constantly putting more wood in the stove instead of loading it and letting it go through the burn cycle of at least six to eight hours before reloading. Down to around a stove top temp of 250 and then reloading.

Stoking like a freight train all day just builds a huge pile of coals that never get a chance to burn down.

Guilty as charged.

Sounds like you're recommending that I let it burn all the way (almost out) before reloading?

 

[Dagoof]

If stoking the fire every few hours, instead of letting things burn in cycles as BB suggests, is necessary, then it sounds like the stove isn't up to the task due to size (assuming the fuel is truly seasoned)

pen

Not up to the task?

Are you suggesting that the 1700 may be too small?

 

[BrotherBart]

Yeah. You don't need to constantly have flames to have heat. In fact fully half of the heat in the wood is in the coals. A burn cycle is in three stages. The burning of the gases released when fresh wood is plopped on hot coals. The wood fiber then giving off more gases that burn and then the coal stage.

We don't know what size place you are heating, how well insulated etc. But that puppy properly operated is heating more than a few homes in Canada and the States. People here that have'em, love'em.

 

[BrotherBart]

Guilty as charged.

Sounds like you're recommending that I let it burn all the way (almost out) before reloading?

If you are there to keep stoking it, then you are there to use the single small split method I recommend above to keep the temp up as the coals burn down. For overnight burns that stove, with a fresh night load, shouldn't be down to but around 250 after a eight to ten hour burn cycle. If you are burning around the clock everything in the house soaks up heat that is slowly released overnight while the stove temp is going down.

 

[Dagoof]

Thanks for the advice. I'll adjust accordingly and report back.

Maybe my concern over burn time and to many coals is all the same from not accounting for the full burn.

Like I said, I'm new to this world.

 

[BrotherBart]

This place can help you out with how you manage that burn cycle too. Lots of people here that have saddled the same horse that you are. Everything from how ya light it to how you load it and control the burn contributes to how well it burns and heats the house.

Like my sig line says: "Lots of people make'em and lots of people sell'em. Hearth.com shows you how to use'em.". You are going through what every new burner does. The hard ones to help are the "I have been burning wood since Moby Dick was a sardine and this new fangled stove is a piece of crap." ones.

 

[Simonkenton]

Wood is not dry enough. I had the same thing happen to me. Go to Lowes and get a moisture meter and learn how wet the wood is.

 

[TedyOH]

I could be way wrong but I think Daagof means he has a stove full of glowing hot coals and no fire, with no fire the thinking is "time to load more wood on top of the red hot glowing coals due to the lack of fire, but I have no room", coming from a open traditional fireplace 2 years ago, this was exactly what I was doing last year, not letting the coaling process burn down / expel it's energy.

 

[CincyBurner]

I think Daagof means he has a stove full of glowing hot coals and no fire,

Yes, this is what was happening to me (very thick bed coals) because of: 1) initially using moist wood; and then 2) adding supplemental wood too frequently as Brother Bart mentioned.

 

[Dagoof]

I could be way wrong but I think Daagof means he has a stove full of glowing hot coals and no fire, with no fire the thinking is "time to load more wood on top of the red hot glowing coals due to the lack of fire, but I have no room", coming from a open traditional fireplace 2 years ago, this was exactly what I was doing last year, not letting the coaling process burn down / expel it's energy.

Bingo. Just trying to keep a good fire going.

I think you guys may be right though. I'm probably burring the coals that would otherwise keep burning under more and more ash and coals, cuz it seems like once it gets full enough for me to have to take a break, it takes about two days for it to cool off and ash to settle all the way down. Even then, you can still dig through the ash pile and find coals that will glow again once they get a little air.

I'll try and adjust my procedure and report back in a few days.

Do you guys let it burn all the way out, or are you reloading at a point where you still don't have to add any kindling?

 

[TedyOH]

With me and my stove, the soonest I would re-load from a 3 - 5 split previous load would be 4 hours or so, no kindling necessary, on a next morning reload I need kindling, as of now I'm burning soft maple, once I switch to the oak and hickory next year that may change.

 

[Dagoof]

BTW,
Does anyone think that I should have considered a bigger insert? (if they even make one bigger)

My fireplace is in the center of my 1,900 SF basement. We've got an open stairwell on either end of the house leading up to another 1,900 SF on ground level. The insulation isn't the greatest ever (1972 2X4 walls), but its reasonably tight, so I figured that if I had a good hot stove right in the middle, we could circulate air with the HVAC fan and keep it's heating to a minimum.

It's been -20 here in Idaho, so I'm learning quickly on the fly.

 

[TedyOH]

From what others have said who know 1000 times more than I do, sounds like you'd would need 2 stoves to heat all of that space.