Q&A Flue temperatures for wood stoves

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QandA

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Nov 27, 2012
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Question:

Just a quick question in regards to flue temperatures for wood stoves. I have an Osburn 2200 freestanding wood stove going into about 4 feet of double wall stove pipe and then into 6" stainless chimney. My manual for the stove states not to let the stove top thermometer exceed 850 F...which mine doesn't. However, when my stove top reads 500 F my flue temperature is around 950 F.(making me wonder what my flue tmeperature wood be with the stove top reading 850 F?)

This is with the stove damper in the closed position. This seems rather hot to me. I am just curious if others operate in the same temperature range. My wood still lasts a very long time...it just seems to put out an incredible amount of heat. Which I guess is a good thing:)Anyways thanks for any info.




Answer:

I assume that either:
1. You are taking the internal stovepipe temperatureor
2. This high temp on the pipe lasts only a short while.If you stove has a single wall steel top, then the temp should easily reach above 500 for parts of the burn. A good hot burn is 650-800 degrees. The stove pipe temp will vary greatly, depending on a few things:
1. how close to the stove you place the gauge
2. Type of wood
3. Amount of air
4. Strength of draft...and more.
If you have an overdraft situation, then you may be running a higher stack temp than you need. Solutions are to install either a manual or barometric damper in the stove pipe to slow things down. At the beginning stages of a fire, wood put off more gases (flames) which tend to be long and reach up into the flue causing higher temps. During the middle and later stages of the fire, more heat is in the embers and stack temps should drop.BTW, to add to a recent discussion of catalytic vs non-cat, cat stoves generally do not reach these high stack temps since the catalytic and baffles tend to squeeze the heat out of these gases, cooling them somewhat before they enter the stove pipe.Having some stove pipe exposed in the room, as in this case, also helps increase the efficiency of the stove.
 
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