Found my limit with the insert

[jatoxico]

It's 10 deg F here now and the Jotul 550 is running at right around 500. The temps are about 68 in the room it's in, 65 upstairs and 62 in the far reaches. of my 2800 sq ft.

Medium load of locust and I can't raise the temp. I'm fairly impressed considering it's a flush faced insert. Keeping the oil burner off until the am then let the heat come on and even things out. All in all it's good but if it gets any colder I can't keep up.

When it was 20 earlier I could raise the temp in the house, now I can just maintain. I'm lucky the heat distributes pretty well naturally in my house or I'd probably bust a pipe, it's cold enough.

 

[KarlP]

Can you add a stove to the other end of the house? I started with a Vermont Castings Madison in one corner of my house and added a 550 to the fireplace in the opposite end. Right now it is 4 outside and 74 in the dining room half way between them. ​

 

[HaTaX]

That's pretty great distribution of the heat in a large house! Normally the room that the insert is in rides around 90 if the stove is hot, and warmer up towards the ceiling. I use lots of ceiling fans and sometimes the furnace blower on low to move the air around, and typically the bedrooms are right around 63-65 if the fan in them aren't going.

I'd love to move even 20 degrees worth of the heat from that room to the upstairs and it sounds like your house was designed well for airflow between living spaces. Each level is about 1250 sq ft and it's a pain to move the air into the top level back bedrooms. Even so, I've never had the temps drop below 64 on the stove alone, even when it was -13 outside. With -10 outdoor temps in the middle of the burn cycle, upstairs temp was normally 67. (I took it up to a bit over 700 degrees top temp for a clean burn and the upstairs jumped to 70 for an hour or so)

Is the Jotul stove your first insert in that space?

 

[jatoxico]

That's pretty great distribution of the heat in a large house! Normally the room that the insert is in rides around 90 if the stove is hot, and warmer up towards the ceiling. I use lots of ceiling fans and sometimes the furnace blower on low to move the air around, and typically the bedrooms are right around 63-65 if the fan in them aren't going.

I'd love to move even 20 degrees worth of the heat from that room to the upstairs and it sounds like your house was designed well for airflow between living spaces. Each level is about 1250 sq ft and it's a pain to move the air into the top level back bedrooms. Even so, I've never had the temps drop below 64 on the stove alone, even when it was -13 outside. With -10 outdoor temps in the middle of the burn cycle, upstairs temp was normally 67. (I took it up to a bit over 700 degrees top temp for a clean burn and the upstairs jumped to 70 for an hour or so)

Is the Jotul stove your first insert in that space?

Karl, I could add another stove but I don't know if I want to run 2 stoves. I guess I would probably put that money into a high efficiency boiler like I did in my last house. If I ever do add a stove or insert to the other fireplace it would have to be something that got loooong burn times or maybe pellett or coal. Problem is that's kind of a formal room and fire view and looks would matter.

HTX It's the first insert in this house. I ran an old Elmira years before that in the house I grew up in. In that case the room overheated and you couldn't get the heat to the rest of the house. In this house it's really difficult to toatally overheat the stove room, just how it works out.

 

[crh704]

That seems really good. Just out of curiousity how high are you running the insert fan to achieve this? I have a FPX 33 and always struggle with how high to run it to help the air move around the house.

 

[HomeBruin]

I'm in the same boat with my new Regency HI300 insert. It was 2.5 degrees this morning, and the insert is struggling in my 2300 sq ft colonial. Oil burner kicks on now and then, but not nearly as often if the insert was not burning. Still happy with it, these temps are well below normal even for January in NJ.

 

[thewoodlands]

Karl, I could add another stove but I don't know if I want to run 2 stoves. I guess I would probably put that money into a high efficiency boiler like I did in my last house. If I ever do add a stove or insert to the other fireplace it would have to be something that got loooong burn times or maybe pellett or coal. Problem is that's kind of a formal room and fire view and looks would matter.

HTX It's the first insert in this house. I ran an old Elmira years before that in the house I grew up in. In that case the room overheated and you couldn't get the heat to the rest of the house. In this house it's really difficult to toatally overheat the stove room, just how it works out.

Before we bought our woodlot we had a Pellet Stove installed in the basement, after buying the woodlot we had the Lopi Liberty installed in the basement in the opposite corner.

This week we have had temps -20 with the windchill being -30, we had both going in the basement so when the wood stove was down to coals the Pellet Stove was throwing some nice even heat out, this morning we had -20 with the basement at 83 and the livingroom upstairs at 71 and the bedroom at 68.

We buy 50 bags of pellets a year just for cold snaps like this.

 

[TradEddie]

Impressive heat distribution, wish I could get that. Last night was the first good test for my insert, and it did very well, no way my old slammer would have kept the house above 70 all night. It's nice to go to bed at 10:30 and eat breakfast 8 hours later with the kitchen still at 74F. I do need to set aside bigger splits to extend that burn time, but I'm pleased. 10F is obviously not the bottom limit for me.

TE

 

[jatoxico]

That seems really good. Just out of curiousity how high are you running the insert fan to achieve this? I have a FPX 33 and always struggle with how high to run it to help the air move around the house.

I don't usually run the fan flat out unless the stove is running away a little. At 500+ I go to 3/4. The Jotul has a dual fan set up BTW.

 

[btuser]

I've got the same scenario. 2800 sqft that is struggling at the current temps. I could feel bad, but then I remember that day trip to Stawberry Bank in Portsmouth NH. The average Winter temp for a home in New England 120 years ago was around 40 degrees. You'd have to break through the surface ice to take a bath.

At 68 degrees I'm livin the Viva Loca.

 

[BrotherBart]

The average Winter temp for a home in New England 120 years ago was around 40 degrees.

The reason I held out sixty years to get born.

 

[begreen]

The reason I held out sixty years to get born.

The average Winter temp for a home in New England 120 years ago was around 40 degrees.

It's the reason many of them moved into the cellar for the winter and put a second kitchen down there.

My wife grew up in a log house in CT that had no central heating. There was a kerosene heater for fall and spring, but the place was not setup for winter heating. She like to tell me of the mornings when she woke up and found the goldfish bowl frozen. The goldfish survived, but she does not like being cold ever again.

 

[jatoxico]

I've got the same scenario. 2800 sqft that is struggling at the current temps. I could feel bad, but then I remember that day trip to Stawberry Bank in Portsmouth NH. The average Winter temp for a home in New England 120 years ago was around 40 degrees. You'd have to break through the surface ice to take a bath.

At 68 degrees I'm livin the Viva Loca.

Yikes! Couple of recent threads have been started where owners redid their older home with modern insulation, have 2 stoves and the house is still at 60 deg. What was it like to live in those places with open fireplaces as the only heat source? Well I guess we can imagine .