Help/Advice for successfully burning in a Hearthstone Shelburne

[sheepdog000]

OK, I am a rookie in here and have been reading until my eyes have pretty much started bleeding. I have a thermometer (magnet kind) that the store that sold me my stove gave me. They told me to put it on the stove top closest to the pipe (double walled). I will load up the stove and get get a fire going and about 3-4 hours later, burned up ashes. I have been using mostly ash. Some 75% seasoned BL has been mixed in. However, for amusement sake, I threw in a piece of Oak that I split the other day. GONE! I put in two pieces of Cherry that a buddy gave me, they were about 90% seasoned. Got hot as Heck, then GONE after about 3.5 hours. My stove is like a finely tuned Heckler & Koch Pistol, it's a damn garbage disposal for wood. I will stack the wood pretty tight and throw a few pieces of fatwood in there to help get the fire going. I'll have to flu all the way open and crack the door to get more air in the box. After it's rip roaring for a few and won't die when I close the door, I leave it alone. Then I close the flue about 40% and go to bed. I have woken up 4 hours later to find nothing but ashes, not even coals really. Then I have to start over. I'm worried about getting to much creosote built up. I have only been burning for about a month on and off & about a week strait round the clock.

Here's the $64,000 Question What am I doing wrong? I thought I would get an "overnight burn." I have the opportunity to get some truly seasoned (2 year old split & stacked) Maple for a good price. I'm wondering of I shouldn't buy a face cord to supplement the ash. My oak & cherry is fresh and will need a year or two. Can someone please give me some sound advice here. I really hate getting up in the middle of the night and having to get yet another fire going. Especially when it takes me about 15-20 minutes to get it to the point where I can shut the door and dial it down. It's not even that cold out yet. We had our first frost this past weekend.

Thanks in advance.

 

[begreen]

It sounds like you need to try closing down the air more than 40% What happens if you wait about 10 minutes at the 40% closed point, then close it more, maybe all the way? Also, what size are your splits? Bigger splits will burn slower and longer. And a tightly packed firebox will burn longer than a loosely packed one.

 

[shawneyboy]

BG nailed it. You need to shut her down more. At 40% closed not only are you burning that fuel at an extremely rapid pace, you are sending, most likely, the lion's share of the heat up and out. Try closing it down and see what happens. I would bet a dollars to donuts that you will find a longer burn with more heat in the envelope of the home.

Shawn

 

[DanCorcoran]

I have a Shelburne and agree with both previous comments. Get the fire roaring (I don't even open the front door, and NEVER open the ash grate/drawer), then shut it down in increments until it's almost completely closed (takes 15-30 minutes to do this, which counts towards burn time). My temps then on stovetop are just above the creosote level. I've never had a fire last 8 hours, but I've certainly had coals after 6.

I get my best fires by putting two short splits N/S at each side of firebox, then all the other large ones E/W on top of them. The "tunnel" down the middle, between the N/S splits, creates a real furnace to get the load started (again, with door closed but air open fully).

 

[sheepdog000]

Thanks for the replies fellas. If I close it down most or all of the way, there will be no air to fuel the burn. I'm just trying to understand this. I'll give what you guys say a shot as you haven't done me wrong yet. :cheese: DanCorcoran, I'll give that method of starting a fire a shot. Are you lighting it from the bottom? When you say just above creosote level, what temp are you talking about? I've been doing top down fires .

So choking it down will produce a nice bed of coals and optimum heat?

Thanks again for all the great advice. I love this site.

 

[shawneyboy]

Thanks for the replies fellas. If I close it down most or all of the way, there will be no air to fuel the burn. I'm just trying to understand this. I'll give what you guys say a shot as you haven't done me wrong yet. :cheese: DanCorcoran, I'll give that method of starting a fire a shot. Are you lighting it from the bottom? When you say just above creosote level, what temp are you talking about? I've been doing top down fires .

So choking it down will produce a nice bed of coals and optimum heat?

Thanks again for all the great advice. I love this site.

Not so. In modern stoves it is almost impossible to shut off the air. You are lessening the amount coming in, usually directing the air to the secondaries, but these stoves are designed to be burned in this manner.

 

[DanCorcoran]

Thanks for the replies fellas. If I close it down most or all of the way, there will be no air to fuel the burn. I'm just trying to understand this. I'll give what you guys say a shot as you haven't done me wrong yet. :cheese: DanCorcoran, I'll give that method of starting a fire a shot. Are you lighting it from the bottom? When you say just above creosote level, what temp are you talking about? I've been doing top down fires .

So choking it down will produce a nice bed of coals and optimum heat?

Thanks again for all the great advice. I love this site.

Yes, the idea with the EPA-approved stoves is to get a roaring fire going first (preferably, on a bed of hot coals from the previous fire, which you have let burn down). You do this by putting in your next load of wood (as I've described, if you like. I put a piece of Super Cedar or other fire starter underneath, in the center, if the bed of coals is not hot enough to light it on its own.) After 5-10 minutes your flue temp (I have single-wall flue with a Condar probe thermometer inserted) will start to climb. Just before it gets to "too hot", I start shutting down the air, about 1/4 at a time. Let it stabilize for another 5-10 minutes or so, then shut it down a little more. What you are doing is trading off the hot gases going up the chimney (and mostly wasted) for hot gasses that stay in the firebox and heat the stove. Over the course of 30 minutes or so, you'll see the flue temps start to drop and the stovetop temps rise.

As you shut down the stove, you are causing a smoky fire in the firebox, due to incomplete combustion. At that point, the secondary air tubes at the top provide more air to burn the smoke, which produces the dancing flames at the top of the box. The slow burn of the wood, combined with secondary burning of the smoke, produce a long, slow burn, with most of the heat staying in the stove, instead of going up the chimney.

You don't want to keep adding wood to the fire at this point. When you add wood, you cool the firebox, since the heat is now used to heat up and dry the new wood so it can start offgassing. This interrupts the burn cycle. Once you have the air 3/4 or more shut down on the original load, you can let it burn down to coals. If it's during the day, I'll sometimes pull unburned wood from the back to the front to help it burn better, since your primary air is entering from the front. You can also open the air back up to finish burning down the coals, if you awake at this point (usually hours later).

I suggest getting a flue thermometer, since the flue temps can really start to soar quickly, before any big temp changes show on your stovetop thermometer. I'll try to find a photo of my thermometers and post it, since I'm in Richmond today and my stove is 2 1/2 hours away in WV.

 

[DanCorcoran]

No photo, but the stovetop thermometer shows the best burning to be 400-650 degrees. When my air has been shut down 3/4 or so and the stove is beginning its long burn, the stovetop is usually 400-450 (but has been above this during the startup).

The flue thermometer, on the other hand, shows the best flue gas temps to be 400-900 degrees. I begin to shut down the intake air (with the roaring fire in the firebox) when the flue temp is approaching 900 degrees, which it can do surprisingly quickly. At this point, the stovetop thermometer is still only showing 300-350, so you can see why having two thermometers is a help. When the stovetop is showing 400-450 during the long burn, the flue temps are dropping slowly, from 900 down to 400 or so. At this point both temps begin to fall below 400, but there is no smoke from the chimney since you have mostly just glowing embers.

 

[BrotherBart]

In the stove shop today and had to make my usual stop to look at the Shelburne. I would dearly love to take one for a test drive. One thing I have noticed about the stove is that slick heat exchange chamber in the top. I would bet that it would be operating at an efficient level at a lower measured stove top temp because of the convection in that chamber.

 

[shanermad]

This is my third season trying to master my shelburn, but I have learned that when I clean the ashes out my burn time is cut about in half, possibly due to leaks in my air tight stove. So try letting the ashes build up at least to the air inlet hole (without blocking it) and see if you get a longer fire life. I also don't use the ash pan i just leave it full and shovel out the firebox. After I clean and vacum my shelburne it takes about a half face cord of burning to get enough ashes built up so I can still have a nice bed of coals in the morning. Seasoned wood is a must hope I helped ya

 

[DanCorcoran]

This is my third season trying to master my shelburn, but I have learned that when I clean the ashes out my burn time is cut about in half, possibly due to leaks in my air tight stove. So try letting the ashes build up at least to the air inlet hole (without blocking it) and see if you get a longer fire life. I also don't use the ash pan i just leave it full and shovel out the firebox. After I clean and vacum my shelburne it takes about a half face cord of burning to get enough ashes built up so I can still have a nice bed of coals in the morning. Seasoned wood is a must hope I helped ya

I've never vacuumed my Shelburne. I shovel out the ashes, but leave at least an inch-thick layer on the bottom as insulation. I've never used the ash grate or ash pan.

Where is the "air inlet hole"? I know there must be one, but I've never seen it.

 

[stoveguy13]

the air port is just inside the front door on the vertical wall that drops down to the fire box it should be about the size of quarter

 

[DanCorcoran]

the air port is just inside the front door on the vertical wall that drops down to the fire box it should be about the size of quarter

Not on the left wall or right wall, but on the front of the stove? Below the door, correct?

 

[shanermad]

yes if you stick your head in the stove and look down you will see it, and save some money on a haircut. its hard to see but its there. now for my $64000.00 question, my shelburne seems to leak. when stove top thermometer reads 275 i will get a smoke smell, if the temp is higher or lower than that there is no smell, obviosly the cast is moving but i cant find the leak. my pipe is 6 inch all fuel strait up two stories so its unlikely to be a draft problem other than too much draft

 

[DanCorcoran]

No idea where the leak might be, but if there's a smoke smell, something must be coming out of the stove. You might try turning off all the lights at night, when you're getting the smell, and use a powerful spotlight or flashlight to look for smoke. A lot of times, you can see smoke in a bright beam of light in a darkened room.

Seems to me, though, that if there is something coming out of the stove, then the pressure inside the stove must be greater than the room pressure. A strong draft would produce the opposite, no?

 

[stoveguy13]

the air port is just inside the front door on the vertical wall that drops down to the fire box it should be about the size of quarter

Not on the left wall or right wall, but on the front of the stove? Below the door, correct?

yes correct

 

[shanermad]

This is whats troubling me, the smoke smell is only when the stove is at 275 degrees and it seems to lose draft or negative pressure. Once the stove cools down or heats up (10 degrees) the oder is gone and draft is good. I have been waiting to see a reply to your baffle question, when I asked my local dealer how to remove the ceramic baffles, he was not sure but said if you order new ones they will have instructions. I believe the leak on my stove to be above these baffles. Thanks for the tips I have put a large worklight inside the stove and looked for leaks but not the flashlight trick on the outside.

 

[stoveguy13]

try checking around the flue collar there should be a gasket could be leaking at that spot

 

[shanermad]

The oder is coming out of the rear right corner and only happens at 275 degrees. I believe that if I was smart enough to get the baffles out of my stove the repair would be fairly simple. The other question I have is after cleaning the chimney there will be a small pile of dry creosote underneath the intake for the scondary burn tubes. Is this normal? Maybe a gasket missing somewhere in the secondary manifold and that may be the tempature that the secondary kicks in so thats when it starts smoking(built on a monday)

 

[stoveguy13]

i would highly doubt it was leaking in the corner of the stove you could put a flashlight pointing into the corner you think is leaking above the baffle and shut the light off to check