Jotul F500 Oslo - 1st report

[jotul8e2]

Our new Jotul Oslo is, even as I type, heating our new house.

I've been burning wood for 30 years and have experience with fireplaces, steel stoves, soapstone stoves, and cast iron stoves and this is the best one yet!

I had a bit of a concern that the radiant heat through the glass would be too much for our family room sitting area - not a problem.

Although centrally located in the family room, I was afraid that the stove would not move heat through the house (our floorplan is not open, but we do have large openings off the family room to the kitchen, front hall/stairway, and bedrooms, which helps) - and it seems far more even than I could have dreamed, aided no doubt by the large ceiling fan in the family room.

I thought the heat might just run right up the stairs and overheat that 600 sq. ft. Nope, its 74 deg. down here, 72 deg. up there.

I was concerned that I might not be able to hold coals overnight for morning startup - and this one is going to take a bit of care. It looks like if I load up a couple of whole logs at 10:00 pm and throttle it back I can juuusst barely make it to 6:00 am with enough left to get the fire going.

I really had no idea how finicky the Oslo might be about the quality of wood. Apparently, it does not care. I've been burning a mix of white oak, red oak, ash, hickory, cherry - much of it a couple of seasons old - and seldom touch the air control. Of course I am lucky (well, not lucky, it was planned) to have a very good flue and draft.

I was expecting to clean the glass at least every week. Except for the lower outside corners, it has stayed amazing clear; I have no idea when it will need cleaning.

Problems? Startup from stone cold to operating temperature is 60 to 90 minutes, if that is a problem. The air intake is the loudest of any stove I have ever used. , which is not to say it is objectionable. Until I mentioned it my wife had not noticed it made any noise at all. Ummm - that's it, I think.

Surprises? The heat from the Jotul is much more even than the old cast iron Dutchwest I have in my shop, certainly much, much more so than the steel stove I had years ago. It is 100 lbs heavier than the Dutchwest and has more firebrick inside, which likely is most of the difference. Frankly, it reminds me very much of the Hearthstone my parents used for 25 years. But then again I am running it right now around 350 to 400 degrees. If I bumped it up to 600 I bet it would be a different story. I also love being able to simply open the door and put in more wood - no controls, no dampers, just open the door and in she goes!

Favorite feature? Has to be the large ash pan. The design really captures the ashes nicely, unlike my old Dutchwest which requires a good bit of raking out of ashes just to get the pan to fit back in. It also is large enough to hold around three days of ashes!

Well, its not been really, really cold yet, so we will see if it can handle the heating load of 2100 sq. ft. of basement, 1900 sq. ft. of main area, and 600 sq. ft. of unoccupied rooms upstairs once it drops to 10 deg. outside. I have my doubts, but then again if I can keep the temperature from dropping too low that basement provides a huge heat sink.


Mark

 

[johnnywarm]

i almost sit in front of my f400.its nice that the window holds the heat and sends it up then out at me.so far i'm very happy with the yotul.i will be looking at a larger one soon.

Good luck John

 

[ansehnlich1]

Sounds right on to me!

Looky here, I loaded mine yesterday when I got home, at 4 pm, with some sycamore, kinda light weight wood, then at 8 pm I loaded it with chunks of oak and ash, stuffed it pretty good, went to bed at 9 pm. Just raked it at 7:30 am this morning, threw 5 pieces of kindling in there and 4 splits of boxelder and it's currently coming back up to temperature.

Now, that right there is sweet eh?

I usually have it run up to 600 or 650 degrees f. then throttle her back for the secondary cruise............

 

[jbrown56]

Mark,

Congrats on your new stove. Last year after using the same steel box stove for 26 years, we decided to get a new stove. I was pretty nervous about changing as the old stove did a great job heating the house. What a pleasant surprise. I also heat 2100 sq. ft., 24/7. More heat with less wood and the secondaries are fun to watch. What a great stove.

Jim

 

[birdsnest]

We are in our third year of a Jotul 500 and this month several pieces fell right off. The metal pipes fell down and even after we re tightened them, the stove now smokes terribly.
I do not know if we have the baffle plate in the wrong position. I am deeply dissapointed and somewhat sickened by the awful smoke in our environment. Our flue is clean. We just split logs which were cut a year ago.
As far as holding fire overnight, I find the firebox and door too small to load really good size night time logs and we often have to load the stove four times a night when it is really cold just to have coals in the morning.
I heated for years with a Fisher Papa bear stove and never had these complaints.

We loved the idea of having the fireplace glass, which always stays dirty. It is cetainly not self cleaning.

If anyone has any ideas please let us know.

 

[johnnywarm]

We loved the idea of having the fireplace glass, which always stays dirty. It is cetainly not self cleaning.

If anyone has any ideas please let us know.

What is the moister content of the wood your using?? it sounds like the same situation i have with my f400 this year when i used what i thought was seasoned wood.

 

[potter]

I'm a newbie- but I think "just split" above may be the problem. Newer stoves need dryer wood...

 

[colebrookman]

We are in our third year of a Jotul 500 and this month several pieces fell right off. The metal pipes fell down and even after we re tightened them, the stove now smokes terribly.
I do not know if we have the baffle plate in the wrong position. I am deeply dissapointed and somewhat sickened by the awful smoke in our environment. Our flue is clean. We just split logs which were cut a year ago.
As far as holding fire overnight, I find the firebox and door too small to load really good size night time logs and we often have to load the stove four times a night when it is really cold just to have coals in the morning.
I heated for years with a Fisher Papa bear stove and never had these complaints.

We loved the idea of having the fireplace glass, which always stays dirty. It is cetainly not self cleaning.

If anyone has any ideas please let us know.

"We just split logs which were cut a year ago" probably means not dry enough to burn, which means lower temps and dirty glass. It should easily go to 500 or 600* before cutting back on draft. Smaller splits means hotter and faster burning. Also at night leave some ash in the fire box and don't clean the ash pan until it's full and best in the AM to get nice coals overnight to ease morning starts. You can't beat nice dry wood which will let you get those temps up. Good luck and be safe.
Ed

 

[potter]

We are in our third year of a Jotul 500 and this month several pieces fell right off. The metal pipes fell down and even after we re tightened them, the stove now smokes terribly.
I do not know if we have the baffle plate in the wrong position. I am deeply dissapointed and somewhat sickened by the awful smoke in our environment. Our flue is clean. We just split logs which were cut a year ago.
As far as holding fire overnight, I find the firebox and door too small to load really good size night time logs and we often have to load the stove four times a night when it is really cold just to have coals in the morning.
I heated for years with a Fisher Papa bear stove and never had these complaints.

We loved the idea of having the fireplace glass, which always stays dirty. It is cetainly not self cleaning.

If anyone has any ideas please let us know.

Lots of happy Oslo owners on this site. I'd post a seperate thread here with details of set up, chimney, house size so the "Old Masters" like BeGreen, Jags and others can problem solve. Lots of help available here, very generous folks.

 

[johnnywarm]

Lots of happy Oslo owners on this site. I'd post a seperate thread here with details of set up, chimney, house size so the "Old Masters" like BeGreen, Jags and others can problem solve. Lots of help available here, very generous folks.[/quote]


I'll second this

 

[jotul8e2]

We just split logs which were cut a year ago.
As far as holding fire overnight, I find the firebox and door too small to load really good size night time logs and we often have to load the stove four times a night when it is really cold just to have coals in the morning.
I heated for years with a Fisher Papa bear stove and never had these complaints.

We loved the idea of having the fireplace glass, which always stays dirty. It is cetainly not self cleaning.

If anyone has any ideas please let us know.

Clearly something is wrong.

While I am burning well seasoned oak and hickory, much of it is in very poor condition from having lain upon the ground too long. Even so, I can keep a pretty decent fire going from 10:00 pm or so until 4:00 am. This represents no hardship as at my age I am up briefly about then anyway. If I let it go I still will have enough coals to get started at 6:00 am. The only problem I am having is I cannot get a really hot fire - say 600 deg., without really small splits. I attribute this to the quality of the wood I am burning, for when I throw on a couple pieces that are good and solid the temperature jumps up to 500 plus pretty quickly.

Mostly it burns at 350 to 400, which has been PLENTY! Even when the outside temps never got above 28 for a couple days last week the stove kept us at 72 inside (and I mean 72 back in the bedrooms) without ever running over 400 deg.

Meanwhile, I have been amazed at how clean the glass stays. Based on my past experience with glass doors I had very low expectations. So far I have cleaned it once. I came prepared for a lengthy session and it turned out to need only a quick wipedown. There was not a drop of creosote even down in the corners. By far the worst part of cleaning the door was cleaning up the ash that spilled out.

Mark

 

[Lanningjw]

I was looking at the picture of the stove and they have it sitting in a fire place. If I wanted this stove could I use my one piece 6 inch SS flexible liner that I am using for my Century Insert?

 

[begreen]

As long as there is adequate height, you can either top connect and set it back in the fireplace a bit, or you can rear exit connect the stove into a 90 and then the liner. The second option will bring it forward on the hearth for better convective heating. The hearth may need an extension to do this option, but it will get more heat out of the stove. In either case I'd also add a lintel level block-off plate to stop heat from pooling up in the smoke chamber below the damper.

 

[Lanningjw]

lintel level, Is that a differnt type of block of plate or are you describing the location of the plate?

 

[ansehnlich1]

yeah, something ain't right with this oslo, cuz I loaded mine yesterday morning at 5:30 am and when I got home at 5:30 pm there were still enough coals in that bad boy to fire it back up. Now, it wasn't throwin any heat, the stovetop thermometer was at a 100 degrees or so, but hey, waddya expect after 12 HOURS :bug:

 

[firefighterjake]

We are in our third year of a Jotul 500 and this month several pieces fell right off. The metal pipes fell down and even after we re tightened them, the stove now smokes terribly.
I do not know if we have the baffle plate in the wrong position. I am deeply dissapointed and somewhat sickened by the awful smoke in our environment. Our flue is clean. We just split logs which were cut a year ago.
As far as holding fire overnight, I find the firebox and door too small to load really good size night time logs and we often have to load the stove four times a night when it is really cold just to have coals in the morning.
I heated for years with a Fisher Papa bear stove and never had these complaints.

We loved the idea of having the fireplace glass, which always stays dirty. It is cetainly not self cleaning.

If anyone has any ideas please let us know.

Three years with this stove . . . have you had these problems all along or is this a new phenomenon and other than fixing the stove has anything else changed (i.e. how you process your firewood, wood type, change in chimney, etc.)?

I can't speak to the baffle plate or secondary tubes . . . however it seems as though you're burning up a lot of wood quickly. I mean I'm primarily filling my firebox at night with medium splits and rounds (next year's wood will be having a lot more large splits and rounds now that I know what size I need for longer burn times) and even so I'm getting 4-5 hours of good burn time (i.e. in Firefighterjake's World a "good burn time" = adding fresh wood to a fire and the time it takes before that wood is reduce to coals which are still putting out a decent amount of heat, but need fresh wood added before the temp starts to drop plus the coals are able to quickly ignite the fresh load of wood without the need for kindling).

Is it possible that the air control needs repair (there are some reports of issues with the air control lever getting unhooked) or are you running the air too high . . . this would keep the flue clean by having more heat directed up the chimney . . . but you would also be burning through wood more quickly. Would a leaking gasket also be a possible cause for this . . . just wondering aloud here. I'm not really much of an expert.

Using wood with too high a moisture content (i.e. freshly split) could also be a possible culprit for the dirty glass window. I know I had some issues earlier in the heating season . . . but it was because I was shutting down my air flow too soon before I had a good, rip-roaring fire going . . . and/or shutting it down too quickly in one step instead of shutting down the air flow in measured steps. Now dirty glass is rarely an issue . . . now ash building up and then falling down when I open the front door is an entirely different story.

 

[johnnywarm]

if you had a very humid rainy summer like we did that would explain it.warm temps also(no draft)