how is this thing going to heat when it gets really cold??

[ad356]

I have been running my US stove company small log stove seems like it will put out some good heat but its difficult to keep it at a constant temperature. after I got some hot coals I was able to maintain 65-70 degrees and not have to mess with it. the firewood is of good quality but I think it has too much moisture, I don't think its helping my cause. when I put the firewood in, it will hiss for 20 minutes or longer while the water burns off, during this time it really isn't putting out a whole lot of heat. what kind of luck have people here had with this stove just using it to heat a barn not expecting it to heat a home (I would never do that with one of these stoves, I think they are not designed for that). how do I know if I am overfirring the stove?

the guy I bought the firewood from said give the firewood 2 weeks sitting dry and he said I will be amazed at the difference. the trees have be down 2 years but firewood was cut and spit recently. I know these are a lower cost stove but are they at least good at what they are intended to do or am I going to have to replace it? it seems like its a sturdy, simple little unit. I do know that it does not put out any heat until the cast iron gets good and hot.

if I did ever replace it what would be a good unit UNDER $700??

so this stove keep the room 65-70 without any trouble when its sub 40 degrees outside, am I going to be able to at least keep it at 60 when it gets down into the teens or single digits?

structure is an old barn about 7-800 sq foot, loft can be closed off only have to heat the downstairs which is probably 400 sq foot; insulated plank walls, a layer of tarpaper outside, along with a layer of singles and new metal; so there is several layers out material on the outside of the building and I don't know if that has any heat retention value. I had the building resided and had a new roof done last year; I did not have the old material removed; why bother.

does the fact these stoves have no blower make a difference? am I going to notice a huge difference if this firewood dries up?

 

[HotCoals]

I never use my blower unless I was away for a few days and then just to help the house heat up...I hate hearing them run.

You need a moisture meter and to get a good reading you need to re split a split and then check MC.
I can tell from here your wood is to wet.
Try to stay around 20% or lower.
If you can't get some good seasoned wood mix in some old pallet wood maybe.
Whatever you do check the flue..a lot.

 

[ad356]

what about buying the optional grate, does that make a difference?

 

[HotCoals]

what about buying the optional grate, does that make a difference?

Don't do it.

 

[brenndatomu]

If your wood is sizzling for 20 minutes...you, my friend, have just put your finger on the problem. Get some truly dry wood (or supplement with a lil pallet wood as suggested) and you will see a BIG difference

 

[ad356]

explain what is wrong with buying/using the grate? doesn't that improve airflow around the wood?

 

[HotCoals]

explain what is wrong with buying/using the grate? doesn't that improve airflow around the wood?

You said on your first post that the fire was better with hot coals under it..I rest my case.
It is your wood.
Grates are for fireplaces imo.

 

[BrotherBart]

Tell us exactly which stove we are talking about here? And yes, hissing for 20 minutes means that wood is way too wet. I would worry less about heat than what kind of crap is collecting in the pipe.

 

[ad356]

http://www.amazon.com/US-Stove-1261-Small-Logwood/dp/B000C6L0GK

crap isn't going to allowed to collect in the pipe very long. I already purchased a 6" stove chimney cleaner/sweep and two extension rods. I can open the cleanout, I can sweep the chimney from ground level. I can also look straight up the chimney pipe and visually check to make sure nothing builds up. very easy to clean and inspect this chimney. I plan on doing it regularly anyways, I have no intention of a chimney fire... ever. I will probably check it once a month, or even weekly if you guys think I should considering how wet the wood is.

 

[RockyMtnHigh]

You should stack that wood and save it for next year. Two weeks isn't enough to make it right

 

[HotCoals]

Well with a outside chimney besides the wet wood at least bi-weekly till you get a feel for it.
Great move with the brush! Cheers!

 

[Seasoned Oak]

I dont imagine your going to get any kind of useful burn times out of this stove. Even with dry wood .You will get tired of loading it constantly. I had their (US stove) NON -EPA King stove when i first started with wood stoves and i could not get more than about 2 hours of burn time out of it. Almost gave up wood burning till i found out others were getting way longer burn times out of quality stoves.

 

[ad356]

does this company make anything good. i had one of their pellet stoves, a "king" 5510, well i found out it wasnt the king of anything. i bought that stove new, what a waste of money. the harman P61 is what i have in the house now, what a difference in stove quality and performance; man if harman woodstoves are just as good i would love a harman cordwood stove, but i would have to buy one used and get a deal on it, not spending $2,200 to heat a barn. i bought this small "logwood" stove for $60 used, so im not out a whole lot of money. i can tell you it puts out ALLOT more heat then piece of crap pellet stove that it replaced. i have had some decent heat out of it, not saying its anywhere near the best or even a good wood stove just saying i think it might be an improvement over what i had been using there. so if i cannot use much of that wood this year what do i do for wood this year? what about biomass bricks, they look interesting but they arent cheap.

i also figured that im not using this stove in my home, so i can load wood more often, its not like im worried about the fire going out after 8 hours overnight. on the other hand i dont think this stove is going to be very efficient, it might waste allot of wood.

as far as the chimney cleaner goes i bought it from the same place i bought the chimney, its a poly brush. for me it was well worth the $30 to NOT have creosote, not have chimney fires, and not have to pay for a professional chimney sweep because i let it go. cleaning this chimney is no different then cleaning my pellet vent. periodically take the brush and clean it out, it takes what 5-10 minutes if it hasnt gotten out of hand. i also have a metal bucket and metal ash scoop. i might be new to using a wood stove but i wasnt born yesterday. im not looking to burn my building down

 

[weatherguy]

I'd look for a better used stove and try and find some dry wood, if not mix in some bio bricks with the wood along with the pallet wood.

 

[ad356]

there are a couple of used harman cord wood stoves on craigslist going for $600. are they a decent unit? that's about the price of a brand new englander

 

[branchburner]

Harman will not be a good choice if your wood is not perfectly seasoned, and may not be a good choice on a used stove if you need a new combustion package (a $300 part). A low-priced burn tube stove (like Englander) would be a better choice: inexpensive new, even cheaper used, and easy on the wood (if not too green).

 

[Nick Mystic]

I bought a near identical stove to yours about 40 years ago at Montgomery Wards down in Florida for $99. It was my very first experience with wood burning. I was renting a house that had a huge oil heater hooked into an fireplace chimney through a thimble. I asked the landlord if he'd remove the oil heater and let me put in a wood stove. He agreed and it was a lucky thing I didn't end up burning his house down! I still have that stove out in my shop and fire it up on occasion. As others have said, this type of stove is not a serious heater and is more for standing around warming hour hands when you come in from the cold. It will never heat a structure of the size you mention having.

 

[Seasoned Oak]

does this company make anything good?.

Actually they do. I bought a US country hearth 2000 at TSC Supply for $499 which also included the blower. Its an EPA with a 2 CU FT stove fire box and quite a capable heater for a smaller space. IT shoots right up to 600 degrees stovetop from a cold stove on a few pieces of wood and puts out a lot of heat.Its an attractive stove as well. Im not sure of the burn time overnight as i dont usually use it overnight but plan to try it this year. For the price i think its a very good value.

 

[Seasoned Oak]

Harman will not be a good choice if your wood is not perfectly seasoned, and may not be a good choice on a used stove if you need a new combustion package (a $300 part). A low-priced burn tube stove (like Englander) would be a better choice: inexpensive new, even cheaper used, and easy on the wood (if not too green).

I love my harman. My burn tube stoves only wish they were as capable a heater.

 

[ad356]

so this stove isnt going to be able to heat a 4-500 sq foot space, jeeze that's a small space, its it completely worthless?

 

[eclecticcottage]

I'd pick up an englander new, or check CL for a used stove, I've seen some nice stoves pretty dang cheap lately if you don't mind a little drive. I saw a Republic 1750 on there last month for like $500 with some of the pipes.

Oh, and your wood isn't seasoned. It shouldn't sizzle that long. If you weren't so far south (2-2 1/2 hours) of me I'd give you a few pieces of our seasoned stuff to try (we're reading 9-14% moisture content with our brandy-new toy-moisure meter-that we just picked up for like $30 from Lowes). You could always try a few pieces of pallet wood, or just as a test (and only use a piece or two) you can cut up a 2x4 and burn that. We save our wood scraps from remodeling and burn them mixed with the regular wood.

As for the over fire, you could get a stove top thermometer and see what you're reading. We've only had one incident that I'm aware of, and there was a faint reddish glow on the top of the stove (too much dry driftwood as kindling). It was at night, so with the lights out it was just visible, barely.

 

[branchburner]

I love my harman. My burn tube stoves only wish they were as capable a heater.

I love mine too. That doesn't change the fact that it needs dry wood, good draft, and a sound combustion package. Without those, a $600 used Harman may not give the same performance as a $600 burn tube stove (like the US country hearth 2000 you mentioned). Such a used Harman could function as an inefficient smoke dragon (as mine first did when I tried burning sub-par wood with a sub-par CP).

If you wanted to spend $2k on a new Harman (and had dry wood, good draft) that would be a different story.

 

[ad356]

problem is I don't really know what a good stove is and what a junk stove is. I know Harman is a great brand and there is one available for $600 but I keep reading about the combustion package issues, im not even sure what that entails. I know Englander is a good brand, but is the summer's heat line any god; that's what they sell at lowes and home depot. then again which one would be sufficient for my needs. I don't intend on continuing to buy stoves if I buy one, that's the one im going to have for 20+ years. I see allot of junk on CL, which ones are any good which ones are crap. I could take the stove I have now and put it on craigslist for $100 and some people wouldn't even know the difference. I paid $60 for it so if I could get most of my money back and buy a better stove I would be happy.

 

[eclecticcottage]

Yeah, I can totally relate to that. We bought the Republic new for that reason, having removed an old Fisher that we knew nothing about. I wouldn't have kept it anyway, knowing what I do now, since the clearances wouldn't have worked out for us and I wanted viewing glass anyway. Fishers are good stoves, but it didn't meet our needs nor would it. We sold it for $200, no pipes (rusted) and needing new firebrick. As far as I know, it's heating a house in PA now. We have two Lopi DV stoves at our old house and I have oogled the Endeavor (Republic 1750's sister stove) for YEARS whenever we went into the stove shop. Even considered the Spirit DV instead of the Heritage Bay but it was "oversized for our space" according to the stove shop (WRONG, it would have been FINE). We originally had the Endeavor ordered but switched to the lower cost Republic based on how much the install and pipes were going to be.

Are you trying to heat 24/7 in the barn, or just when you're out there (what kind of burn times do you need)? An EPA stove is likely to have longer burns with less wood used than an older/nonepa stove, although some folks using "smoke dragons" report pretty good burns. Vermont Castings had some pretty off years from what I've heard. Lopi usually gets pretty solid reviews, I can't complain too much about ours (I still think the stove shop's install caused some of the issues but that's another story). Englander is a solid stove from what I've heard. Same for Blaze King.

 

[Hardrockmaple]

You sure do not need a 3 + cu.ft. stove to heat 4-500 sq.ft. Englander and Summers Heat are the same stoves.

http://englanderstoves.com/index.html