HELP- Room not getting warmed.

[Elisurfer4]

Howdy Y’all,

I’ve posted here a few times along my journey from shopping for stoves, to installing, to gathering wood. Now I’m in the actual operating phase and I’m running into problems...

I live in a 1500 sqft cape cod in VA and my insert (century CW2900) is located on the first floor in the living room. It is installed into my existing masonry chimney with a full run insulated oval liner capped on top. I stuffed Roxul around the liner and my sweep cut a hole in my existing damper plate to make a sort of block of plate and I stuffed more roxul in any open spaces. Also, I put roxul on the back and sides of the masonry walls.

The thing is... I’m running super dry, great liberty bricks as they are intended, but even when I push the stove to 600+ on a mild day, the highest I can get the room to is 70-71F. Our house was built in the 80’s and I’m sure it’s not sealed to perfection but it’s not terrible by any means.

So what’s the deal here?? My living room is maybe 22’x10’ rectangular room, I figured we should be roasting down here! And I really want to make my wife feel cozy and like we made a great investment... the more help you guys can provide the better.

Ps I know there are threads on this and I’ve read them all, but I would love some more personalized advice on this.

Cheers and happy weekend!

 

[edyit]

the sort of block off plate sounds like its sort of not working, cutting a hole in the damper plate was most likely more for getting the liner to fit through than anything else. also you didn't mention if you're using the blower at all, most inserts rely on this to move the heat into the room.

 

[jetsam]

First impressions:

How airtight is the blockoff plate "of sorts"?

Are you using the fan? Flush inserts won't put out much heat without some help.

Are you using the fire screen? Don't expect a warm house with an open stove door.

 

[Elisurfer4]

To answer all those questions.. yes I use the fan, no I’m not using the fire screen, door is always closed. The block off plate is not as bad as it sounds it’s almost airtight

 

[djkeev]

Big blazing fires?
They send the heat out of the chimney and if you are burning room air, suck the warm air from around the stove out too.

Can you close off your 22x10 room or is it open to other rooms?

I heat a small house with a Jotul F3CB. When we arrive on Friday late afternoon the house is often about 40-45* (though last night it was 38*! Brr)

The stove is in a 26 x 15 room. But I can close doors and isolate it. Until I get the big room warm, I'm NOT opening other doors! I built the space to allow me to isolate the room on purpose.

Once the big room is comfortable, I'll crack open other doors but you can really feel the temperature drop when I do so!

By Saturday morning, the whole house is comfy.
We're almost hot today...

Most on here would Look at my install and exclaim "You'll never get heat off of that!” But I do, lots of it.

If you have doors, close them.
If you don't have doors, install some.

You might consider an outside air kit, that will minimize the stove sucking out the rooms warmth.

Get a good fire burning and throttle it down, let the heat in the firebox "linger" before going up the chimney.

Dave

 

[Elisurfer4]

My living room opens to the kitchen. The way our furniture is arranged, the only solution would be to install two pocket doors in the opening which makes me sigh even thinking about doing..

 

[djkeev]

Try hanging a blanket over the doorway, fully cover the opening top to bottom, side to side.
Cheap way to find out if pocket doors are in your future!

Dave

 

[DuaeGuttae]

Howdy Y’all,

I’ve posted here a few times along my journey from shopping for stoves, to installing, to gathering wood. Now I’m in the actual operating phase and I’m running into problems...

I live in a 1500 sqft cape cod in VA and my insert (century CW2900) is located on the first floor in the living room. It is installed into my existing masonry chimney with a full run insulated oval liner capped on top. I stuffed Roxul around the liner and my sweep cut a hole in my existing damper plate to make a sort of block of plate and I stuffed more roxul in any open spaces. Also, I put roxul on the back and sides of the masonry walls.

The thing is... I’m running super dry, great liberty bricks as they are intended, but even when I push the stove to 600+ on a mild day, the highest I can get the room to is 70-71F. Our house was built in the 80’s and I’m sure it’s not sealed to perfection but it’s not terrible by any means.

So what’s the deal here?? My living room is maybe 22’x10’ rectangular room, I figured we should be roasting down here! And I really want to make my wife feel cozy and like we made a great investment... the more help you guys can provide the better.

Ps I know there are threads on this and I’ve read them all, but I would love some more personalized advice on this.

Cheers and happy weekend!

Are you loading it fairly full and keeping it running, or are you looking for it to keep things toasty with just one load?

I’m not familiar with your insert, but it looks like it’s bigger than the one we used to run in our basement in Virginia, and on mild days we could heat the whole house (2,500 sq ft). We originally just bought it to heat the basement and didn’t expect it to do most of our heating, but it did. I’m feeling a little mystified as to why you can’t get beyond 71 in a 220 sq ft room.

Our insert was 2.2 cubic feet, and it certainly could heat its one room on the first load, but we usually had to crank up the blowers to move heat fast. We kept it burning 24/7 to heat the whole house, and the overnight load could easily roast us out of the basement. We had a full masonry firebox on the north side of the house with no block-off plate or insulation at the back of the firebox. (We had planned to insulate the liner and make those changes this summer but ended up moving instead). Those things are certainly good, so it sounds as though your setup is better than ours was.

I really don’t see you needing to install pocket doors if you have a 2.4 cubic foot insert in a 220 sq. ft. room. I’m assuming you don’t have vaulted or unusually high ceilings there trapping all the heat.

I will say that our house was very well insulated and air sealed before we installed our insert. We redid all the windows a couple of years later. I’m wondering if you have more convective heat loss than you realize. I understand cape code often have problems with attic air infiltrating conditioned spaces, but I could be wrong about that. Not my area of expertise. Have you ever considered having an energy audit done? Following recommendations will yield savings year round.

Probably nothing that I’ve said has helped you, but at least it might bring it back to the top to get other eyes on it.