How to control the heat...

[doug crann]

Tossing around the idea of a wood burning stove when we build our house. Last wood burner I was around was the fireplace in my folks home 30 years ago. How do folks regulate the heat? Have been in a neighbors place when it has been 35* or so, place is either like a furnace or a freezer. I understand that having a slow burning smoldering fire is not good for the chimney so how do you only produce a low heat on warmer days???

 

[mfetcho]

There will be a lot of Catalytic stove users replying to this one. Cat stoves run on low for longer periods then a Non-cat stove. Fans can help tremendously move air and keep a house at a uniform temperature.

There are so many factors: size of stove, size of house, floor plan, insulation, and climate.

Answering the above items will help folks give you a good answer.

 

[jatoxico]

Well for starters it depends on the stove. There are stoves that are better at longer cooler burns. Some excel at long slow burns by using a catalytic converter some use soapstone that retain heat and release it slowly as fire dies down. If you have secondary burn tubes you can vary wood species so there are ways but it's not as easy as setting your thermostat but hey, where's the fun in that?

 

[Beer Belly]

gets too hot....can always crack open a window

 

[Hoozie]

At 70*, I start the fire. In shoulder season I burn (much) smaller wood that dumps a lot of heat quick, then goes out. Stove room usually doesn't go much above 80*, then slowly drops back to 70*, when I start it again. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Makes a Cat stove sound real nice.

 

[firefighterjake]

As folks have said . . . depends on the type of stove.

Cat stove owners report excellent burn times and good low and slow burns . . . which are still clean burning.

You can regulate the heat with secondary burners as well . . . just a little more of a challenge. In the Spring and Fall when I need to just take the chill out of the air I keep the house from getting too warm through a variety of techniques . . . not loading the stove to the gills, not reloading the stove (even though every fiber of my being is telling me to keep the fire going) or reloading as often, using the punks, chunks and uglies (which typically leaves a lot of air space in the woodbox vs. tightly compacted splits and rounds) and using lower BTU woods (especially softwood which tends to produce a hot, fast fire). The idea for me in the Spring and Fall is to heat up the stove . . . and then let that big ol' hunk of metal radiate heat out for several hours.

On days like we have been having lately with temps slightly above freezing the main things I do is to not do full loads and not load quite so quickly . . . waiting until the coals are rather small before doing a reload.

 

[oldspark]

Has a lot to do with the house also, smaller fires, primary air set lower, its a learning curve, your neighbor sounds like he is still in it.

 

[Nick Mystic]

Heating with wood is just like any other pursuit in life. Some people will take the time and make the effort to master their craft. Others will learn just enough to get a fire started and then do a lot of complaining about how poorly the stove is heating. By coming to this forum you are off to a good start in your quest for knowledge on how to heat your home efficiently with wood. There is no general answer to your question since different situations will require different behaviors on you part. When I first stumbled across this forum when I was doing research on finding a new insert I spent several days reading hundreds of archived posts just to begin to round out my knowledge base. If you do decide to heat with wood you'll get as much out of it as you put into it. Good luck with your quest.

 

[Saddle Mander]

place is either like a furnace or a freezer.

As Nick said, I think that has more to do with your neighbors than it does with their stove.

 

[Charles1981]

Highly depends on house as well. Poorly insulated will experience significant rises and falls in temperatures depending on weather conditions, where as the same stove in a very well insulated house may hold and retain the heat much more efficiently.

Get a catalytic stove and it can burn low and slow and keep a house warm all day with one or two loads, but if the insulation is crap it may not produce the desired effects other than heating the immediate room it is in and constantly losing heat to the draft and insulation requiring you burn it hotter and reloading more often and being unhappy all the time.

 

[Sons924]

whats the climate like where you are building the house? whats the square footage of the house? how do you plan to obtain your wood supply? you won't be unhappy with wood heat, but there are many factors to doing so.

 

[WarmBluthner]

If your house is new it probably is well insulated.
We're in the same situation but against all knowledge found in this forum we put a jotul oslo in an 800 sq ft room.

Of course this stove is way to large. But round noon I stuff it loosely with palletwood or other softwood. It runs hot for 90 minutes and keeps the room warm for 4 hours minimum.

My neighbour just installed a small stove and is going to heat with scraps, I wish him luck in refillimg the stove once an hour.

I agree, its all about discipline, burning is so much fun that you easily go over the top.

Most women love warmth though, so actually there is no problem, besides the cost of wood.

 

[Saddle Mander]

Most women love warmth though

Yup. It will be 80+ in the stove room and I will be tempted to grab my chainsaw just so I can cut through the oppressive heat. But at the same time my wife is on the couch saying, "It is SOOOO wonderful in here now!"

(My oldest son is thinking about moving into the stove room for the winter so he doesn't have to leave the glorious heat, while my daughter is trying to figure out how she can sleep in the attic to escape it.)

 

[Backwoods Savage]

Tossing around the idea of a wood burning stove when we build our house. Last wood burner I was around was the fireplace in my folks home 30 years ago. How do folks regulate the heat? Have been in a neighbors place when it has been 35* or so, place is either like a furnace or a freezer. I understand that having a slow burning smoldering fire is not good for the chimney so how do you only produce a low heat on warmer days???

Doug, just to touch on another part of the equation here, you probably need to know a bit more about the wood. The way most folks burned wood 30 years ago or longer is not good. Especially with today's new stoves. Dry wood is necessary so no more cutting wood this fall and burning it this winter. Same thing goes for buying wood. Never buy wood that you need to burn right away because it won't be dry. While you are on hearth.com, please visit The Wood Shed as there is much information there on cutting, splitting, stacking, drying, etc. Remember if nothing else that most wood needs at least a year to dry and that is a year after it has been split. Even if a tree was cut and then it or part of it laid for another year. Do not count that as drying time. Count the time only after the wood has been split and stacked outdoors in the wind. Top cover the wood stacks but never cover the sides or ends. Good luck.

 

[doug crann]

Sorry it took so long to respond....house will be between 1200 & 1400 square foot. One level, 8 foot ceiling height. R38 ceiling, 21 walls. Stove will be in the center of the house (?), one side of it will be an open great room. The other side will be a bed/bath. There will also be a room off of the bedroom for my Ernestina to sew in. Will also have my treadmill & elliptical. Plans are to have the older Quadrafire Mt. Vernon in the sewing room and the Mt. Vernon AE in the great room. But am thinking I might want a wood stove, perhaps just in addition to them. Bit overkill, but the wood stove would just be for days/nights like what we are experiencing right now in the Spokane area.....single digits or below at night. And for the power goes out. Anyway, call me strange but I don't want to pay to heat the air then crack a window to let the paid for air escape when the temp goes up to high....why not just regulate the temp to avoid it? This is the reason I really like a pellet stove....but I would really like a wood burner.....I have not read the above responses yet, so if my answer is above I apologize for not seeing it...

 

[Rickb]

Being in Washington I would look at the blazekings they are made near you and being cat stoves can be run very low.

This is my first season with my blazeking and I can not believe how easy it is to control.

 

[Excavator]

We burn a VC Encore with a CAT and some days it just gets toooo hot the way the stove heats. We do get 8 - 10 hour burns with right wood and cat engaged so we can afford to open a window or door when too hot but the cold air comes right back when sun goes down and the hot Encore is ready to take back over the situation

 

[Oregon aloha]

A non-cat will serve you well also. A small fire to warm the thermal mass near your stove and it will hold and disburse the heat quite well. You won't have 30 hour burn times, but an easier learning curve and a better looking fire with a clean window. I don't like paying utilities. A pellet stove to me is a utility plus the need for indoor storage and if the power goes out you have no heat.

I would use a wood stove in the great room with a ceiling fan as my primary heat source and have the pellet stove as a back-up or for the times with very low heat need. Your new home won't take much to heat and in time you will learn your house and wood stove so you won't be over or under heating your home.

 

[Excavator]

Today is one of those TOO HOT days lol

 

[andybaker]

There are some good answers here. Again, I say most of it is up to you and what your willing to put into it. I'll give you an example of how I started. I built a house, had it built. We wanted a fireplace like I grew up with. My dad burned a lot of wood and I did most of the splitting and stack and hualing, and ash dumping...and so on. But for some reason I loved it, and still do. Well, we move in, I start to burn like I use to and I have all kinds of trouble. The next year we have a chimney fire. This is after I have the chimney cleaned once a year. Well, I decide the piece of crap the builder put it had to go so I started research for a replacement. I didn't know anything about EPA stoves and still didn't understand much when I bought one. I got a zero clearance insert from Kozy and the guy that helped me purchase it lead me to have it properly installed. That said, I tore out the old one, and ended up needing a everything new including the brick around it and hearth. Well, after it was installed and I broke it in I had a lot of trouble burning wood and keeping good fires going. Once they got going all was great but then I'd get into a new wood and lots of problems. I complained about having to clean the glass every day and lots of ashes. About that time I found this site and forums here. Wow, what an eye opener. I learned to cut ahead and dry wood properly, Thanks Dennis, you probably have helped me not burn my house down. Now I too deal with how to handle so much heat. I am still learning. Like many said, open a window if you have to and you'll learn what else to try. The glass? I now clean it 4, 5, 6 times a year. The wood is burning great, after burners are working great, and they burn down without much ash to worry about. I very much enjoy coming home and making a fire and having some time in front of it. Sometimes just watching is a show. I like cutting wood and look forward to it. There's a lot to consider when burning wood to do it right. I would make lots of changes if I could do it over. The biggest would be to have the burner in the middle of the house. If it is one of these newer fireplace installs then you can also add piping to run to other parts of the house to dump heat off the box and get it to where you need it. If you decide to go this way and put in a wood burner your smartest move will be to bookmark this site and come here often. The guys here are the best you'll find anywhere.

 

[Log farmer]

Just don't fill the stove up all the way and just do short hot burns and that would work just fine. I do that with my cat soapstone stove and its great! And just like backwoods said minimum 1 yr for drying the wood out!

 

[doug crann]

There will be a lot of Catalytic stove users replying to this one. Cat stoves run on low for longer periods then a Non-cat stove. Fans can help tremendously move air and keep a house at a uniform temperature.

There are so many factors: size of stove, size of house, floor plan, insulation, and climate.

Answering the above items will help folks give you a good answer.

Stove is undecided as I am just kinda stinking about things right now. House will be in the 1200-1500 sq ft area. Stove in the middle, perhaps, have to start another thread about me and my ocd issues with holes thru the roof, perhaps the stove will be on one end of the house, but it will be more or less hidden behind a few doors if I do this. Will scan/post a sketch of what we are thinking about in regards to the floor-plan when I get a chance. Will be R38 roof, r21 walls. We are in Eastern Washington, about an hour west of Spokane. Cold spell right now, been no warmer than teens for a week or so. Normally this time of the year we are in the 30's during the day, 20's at night.

Well for starters it depends on the stove. There are stoves that are better at longer cooler burns. Some excel at long slow burns by using a catalytic converter some use soapstone that retain heat and release it slowly as fire dies down. If you have secondary burn tubes you can vary wood species so there are ways but it's not as easy as setting your thermostat but hey, where's the fun in that?

Not wanting to spend a fortune on a stove. Want something that is somewhat traditional looking. No pedestals, has to have legs. Have had a pellet stove since we moved up here. Like the convenience of a t-stat but the constant humming bothers me a bit. Plus knowing that at some point one of the blowers is going to go on vacation has me a bit concerned. Most folks burn tamarack and red fir around here so not much available as far as wood choices. In our immediate area there is nothing but Ponderosa Pine.....aint no way I would even think about burning this sappy stuff....

gets too hot....can always crack open a window

Kinda goofy in regards to this....why "pay" to heat the air only to let it out? Which is why I am asking about regulating the heat. Sorry, did not mean to sound like a smart a**, just no other way to put it..

At 70*, I start the fire. In shoulder season I burn (much) smaller wood that dumps a lot of heat quick, then goes out. Stove room usually doesn't go much above 80*, then slowly drops back to 70*, when I start it again. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Makes a Cat stove sound real nice.

That it does, if a cat stove will indeed allow a more slow, cooler burn.

When you folks mention "stove room", safe to assume you are not talking about a "dedicated room" type of deal, that you are just calling the room that your stove is in a "stove room"? Just kinda wondering...

 

[Beer Belly]

Kinda goofy in regards to this....why "pay" to heat the air only to let it out? Which is why I am asking about regulating the heat. Sorry, did not mean to sound like a smart a**, just no other way to put it...

I'm just saying, if someone complains it's too hot in the room.....you can crack open a window.....I've had to do this plenty of times.....and I never worry about the cost....I get the wood for free (scrounge), granted I need to work it, but it something I enjoy....and no, nobody thinks you're sounding like a smart arse

 

[doug crann]

As folks have said . . . depends on the type of stove.

Cat stove owners report excellent burn times and good low and slow burns . . . which are still clean burning.

You can regulate the heat with secondary burners as well . . . just a little more of a challenge. In the Spring and Fall when I need to just take the chill out of the air I keep the house from getting too warm through a variety of techniques . . . not loading the stove to the gills, not reloading the stove (even though every fiber of my being is telling me to keep the fire going) or reloading as often, using the punks, chunks and uglies (which typically leaves a lot of air space in the woodbox vs. tightly compacted splits and rounds) and using lower BTU woods (especially softwood which tends to produce a hot, fast fire). The idea for me in the Spring and Fall is to heat up the stove . . . and then let that big ol' hunk of metal radiate heat out for several hours.

On days like we have been having lately with temps slightly above freezing the main things I do is to not do full loads and not load quite so quickly . . . waiting until the coals are rather small before doing a reload.

Tamarack and Red Fir (?) seem to be what is mostly available here. We are surrounded by Ponderosa Pine, I have been warned by several of the local retailers to stay away from it. So using different species of wood is going to be tough for me, but I get the idea of it.

Has a lot to do with the house also, smaller fires, primary air set lower, its a learning curve, your neighbor sounds like he is still in it.

Neighbor, Ed, just burns the Ponderosa from his property. his wife is after him to stop burning it, they had to remove the chimney cap due to it getting plugged with all the sap from the Pine. There house is over 2100 Sq. Ft. with the stove on one end. They try to get the stove hot enough to heat the entire house. When we go over to have dinner & play Canasta I am often only 6 feet or so from the stove. Seems like when we are there the sliding glass door is always cracked open. I can say that when we are there I never see Ed "tending the fire", he just loads it and lets it burn at full tilt. I can say I get a bit nervous when I am over there. Another neighbor, who burns nothing but the Ponderosa as well has had several chimney fires. None that got beyond the chimney but....

Heating with wood is just like any other pursuit in life. Some people will take the time and make the effort to master their craft. Others will learn just enough to get a fire started and then do a lot of complaining about how poorly the stove is heating. By coming to this forum you are off to a good start in your quest for knowledge on how to heat your home efficiently with wood. There is no general answer to your question since different situations will require different behaviors on you part. When I first stumbled across this forum when I was doing research on finding a new insert I spent several days reading hundreds of archived posts just to begin to round out my knowledge base. If you do decide to heat with wood you'll get as much out of it as you put into it. Good luck with your quest.

I am truly grateful I stumbled upon this fantastic site. I am normally the one that gets involved in something prior to learning about it, sort of learning as I go. This often leads to less than satisfactory results, and often $$ wasted...

Highly depends on house as well. Poorly insulated will experience significant rises and falls in temperatures depending on weather conditions, where as the same stove in a very well insulated house may hold and retain the heat much more efficiently.

Get a catalytic stove and it can burn low and slow and keep a house warm all day with one or two loads, but if the insulation is crap it may not produce the desired effects other than heating the immediate room it is in and constantly losing heat to the draft and insulation requiring you burn it hotter and reloading more often and being unhappy all the time.

Long story, but I have learned that how well insulated a structure is will be important in the comfort equation. I have a bunch of questions that I need to find answers to in regards to the insulation end of our future home...but that is a whole different subject....

 

[Saddle Mander]

When you folks mention "stove room", safe to assume you are not talking about a "dedicated room" type of deal, that you are just calling the room that your stove is in a "stove room"? Just kinda wondering...

Correct.

If I say, "it's 75 degrees in my living room", then everyone would wonder where my stove is. (Living room? Kitchen? Basement? Den on the other side of the house?)

But if I say "it's 75 degrees in the stove room" then everyone knows what I'm talking about.

But that was a very fair question. I'm sure other folks also wanted to know for sure but didn't want to ask...