I still don't get my Fisher :(

[Yamaha_gurl]

Buring for exactly one week and I still don't quite understand how to maintain my temp. Yes, add more wood...get more heat. Have some questions, and just so you know I have a temp gauge on the flue 18" from the stove, single wall.

1) Once I reached my desired temp do I turn my air intakes down, or my flue damper?
2) If I am getting in the too hot range, what should I do to reduce a little bit? Damper or intake? Top intake or Bottom?

I can make kindling like a pro, but I just don't get the maintaining temp part...lol.

Thanks all :D

 

[BrotherBart]

Send a PM to forum member "Dave_1". He is the master of all things Fisher.

 

[Todd]

When I had my old Woodsman air tight, I use to do a little of both. When I started or reloaded the pipe damper and air intakes were wide open and as the fire came up to temp I'd reduce the air and close off the damper to about 3/4. Most of the time after that the damper would just stay put and I would tweak the air from time to time. Those old stoves are kinda hard to get use to, lots of trial and error.

 

[Yamaha_gurl]

Send a PM to forum member "Dave_1". He is the master of all things Fisher.

Thanks, sent him a message. In general though, if your wood is slowly burning away should you slowly open up the damper? Meaning get a good fire going, flue temp around 450 and then close the flue damper 3/4 off, then when you get to say 350 open it a tiny bit more...and so on, does that sound right?

 

[Yamaha_gurl]

When I had my old Woodsman air tight, I use to do a little of both. When I started or reloaded the pipe damper and air intakes were wide open and as the fire came up to temp I'd reduce the air and close off the damper to about 3/4. Most of the time after that the damper would just stay put and I would tweak the air from time to time. Those old stoves are kinda hard to get use to, lots of trial and error.

I know about having them open, but I'm just not too sure which one to start closing off once the temp starts to drop down.

 

[Todd]

I would leave the damper closed while you have a good fire going. The pipe temp should come down after you close the damper and the stove temp should maintain or rise some. The idea of the pipe damper is to keep more of the heat in the stove. Your going to have to watch your temps and experiment with the air controls. My old stove had two spin dial type air controls on the lower part of the doors and when the stove had a good bed of coals and dry wood I'd just barely open both. I don't remember what kind of temps I ran maybe 350-550 stove top and tried to keep the pipe in the no creosote zone.

 

[Dave_1]

Send a PM to forum member "Dave_1". He is the master of all things Fisher.

To quote Red Skelton: "The heaven you say!" :wow: :red: :roll: %-P

 

[pen]

I run a fisher grandma bear as you can see in my sig.

Here are some pics to show how I run.

First off, never clean out all ashes from the stove. I find my stove is very slow to get up to temp if all ashes are cleaned out. So, even after emptying, I leave about 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch at the bottom.

Then start my fire log-cabin style like this (note, this is getting set for about an allnighter 8-9 hour burn). I find that my wood works best as long as there are 2 layers (such as 2 blocks on the bottom and one on top of them) you don't need to add this much, but one layer alone across the bottom never burns well.

here is the pic, you could use 1/2 as much wood, just make sure you have an upper and lower layer.

after 5 mins with the damper and drafts wide open

For my stove and my good quality wood, my next step is to take and only close the damper so that it is pointing at about 1pm on a clock face or about 20 degrees from vertical. Then, I adjust the dampers to as little as 3/4 a turn open each for an overnight burn t about 325degrees stack temp to 1 - 1 1/4 turns open as seen here for a day time burn at this temp. Once set, it will burn for 2 1/2 hours at this temp, then slowly drop off. I never touch the stove again until the chimney thermometer hits 125-100 degrees, then I rake coals and start all over again.

I also have found that with my setup, my stove pipe leaves the top of the stove and goes up 24 inches, then a 90 out the wall to the thimble. I get the best stack readings on my thermometer just after this 90 degree section. When I had my thermometer in the vertical just above my damper (18 inches up), I would get very irratic readings. Remember, our stoves are pre-epa so things burn and work a little differently. Basically, these things are not as consistent as the new stoves.

Also, in the past I have learned that stack velocity of the flue gasses is as important as stack temperature. For example, I have in the past tried (while burning premium seasoned/dried hardwoods) closing the damper nearly to 3pm (closed all the way) and burning the stove to get the most heat out of it. Even though I had very good flue temps in the 325-450 range, I still built up a lot of 3rd stage creosote. Apparently our old stoves do not burn as clean as the new ones. So by closing the damper so much, I was slowing down the flue gasses. Even though they were very hot, this gave them a better opportunity to deposit hot or not. Since I only close my damper to about 1pm now I no longer have a creosote problem. And really, it does not change my burn times or my heat output. Basically, with the damper closed, I had to open the primary drafts more. All said and done, it is 6 one, 1/2 dozen the other. But since I get essentially no creosote build up with hardly using the damper, I opt to go that route.

Good luck..

pen