Lots ! and I mean LOTS of coals left over

[The Cank]

I've seen it brought up here before and I've tried a few things with no success .

As I bring my stove up to temp my process is as follows :

- I have air control completely open , and I close the Door as soon as I can without the fire going out

- it takes my stove about 40 minutes or so to hit 350 - 450 as I start to close down the air control in 1/4 increments

- After I get the Air Control completely closed ( half of my wood is now gone ) I get temps around 520 - 570
It only stays in this range for about an hour maybe a little longer no matter if I have a full load of wood or only a few pieces.

- Now the temp drops fairly quickly to between 350 and 450 where it likes to sit and I either add more wood to the large pile of coals that is accumulating or I open the Air Control back up and try to burn some of the coals down a bit more but by doing this I lose more heat from the stove dropping the temp down even further. If I just keep adding wood eventually I have a fire box that is 8 inches of coals and no room for wood and obviously the coals underneath are not burning so I have to Stir

Weather I leave the air control closed or I open it to let the coals burn down I am still left with a large pile of
un burnt coals unless I sit there and stir them up every 10 minutes or so... Now from load up to this undesirable pile of coals only takes about 4 hours even if I cram it full of wood so I am getting maybe an hour of good 500 - 600 degree heat output and the rest of the time is spent getting up to temp or dropping in temp drastically ..

Now I can't be around this thing every moment of the day to baby sit. Last night I got up every 3 hours to adjust the thing to keep it burning all night and the coals had cooled off so much that it took me another 45 minutes to get it going again then wash, rinse, repeat .Needless to say my route at work today was not the most fun.

My buddy runs his stove all winter and he said my coals should not be accumulating like that and he cant figure out why they are not burning down . He cleans his box out once every few weeks... I clean mine every day and its all un burnt coals. never thought it would be so hard to start and maintain a fire

My set up is a Napoleon EPI3 insert with a 6'' x 25' Pre Insulated liner m flex kit ....

Sorry for the long story but I like to be thorough . Any and all help is very much appreciated !
I may sell stove and pay my electric bill for the next 3 years and let my new hi efficiency furnace do the work...

NA I won't do that but this thing is killing me .

 

[tarzan]

I'm going to ask what you probably excpected.

How's your wood?

From your description it does sound like a classic case of wood not being properly seasoned.

 

[TheRambler]

Are there any air inlets inside the stove that are plugged up with ash, creosote etc?

However, epa stoves have probably half of their "burn time" if not a little more as the coaling stage. Yes your stove will cool off from the high temps you see when you have active flames, but 300-400ish is an average coaling temp i would say. The stove still puts out adequate heat during this stage though it is obviously much reduced from when it is a roaring fire inside.

How long is your stove staying in the 350-450 range with just the coals?

Your stove is rated at 8 hours burn time. So lets just assume its really 6 hours. You are burning an hour at startup, and an hour at max temp, so you have 4ish hours left at this point. Is your stove staying above 300 for at least 3 of those remaining hours?

If your coals arn't burning down then there is some kind of airflow issue going on i would assume. The wood is dry by the time it gets to the coaling stage, so wood moisture would not affect your coals not burning down. If you open the air up more during the end of the coaling stage, your coals dont begin to burn down more rapidly?

My Hampton H300 takes about 30 min for a cold start, 1.5 hours over 550, 1 hour around 450-500, then 3 hours 300-450, then it tapers on off from there when its time for a reload. I will still have enough hot coals for a restart after 7 or 8 hours though. If I open the air around 350F a bit more i can keep it in the higher temp range for an extra 45m or so but burn down the coals much faster.

 

[tarzan]

Rambler, I can tell you put lots of thought into your post but I promise I put lots of experience in mine.

Large, unburned coals accumulating in the fire box is most certainly a sign of incomplete combustion due to wet wood.

Not sure if that is the cause of the op's problem but it usually is.

 

[Fod01]

+1 on wood. Lots of hot coals comes from running a stove hard. Cool, black coals from sub-par wood. Why not ask your friend to trade armfuls and see if there is any difference.

Also noticed that the air goes to 'completely closed'. I rarely run my insert that way, but I've got an uninsulated liner in an external chimney.. Try running a full load with air slightly open.

Gabe

 

[Thislilfishy]

My Napoleon 1400 will do the same thing, with wet wood, and certain types of wood. In particular I have some very wet cedar that I just split, every once in a while I'll put a split of it in with my very dry (almost dry rotted) maple to slow the fire down a bit. Every single time I do this, at the end of the burn cycle I will have an almost intact black lump of coaling cedar, I can break it up and make an excellent coal bed with it for the reload that will light things right up. If however I run the stove hot with loads of very dry wood, after 8-10 hours the stove will be cold with very tiny embers and bits of coal left over in the ash. I am waiting on my stove top thermometer to really see what's happening during my burn cycle, as I think I can run my stove hotter then I have been. Lately I have not been closing the draft all the way, instead leaving it about 1/4" or more open. This seems to balance the heat in the stove with the flue temps, often boiling the water in the kettle instead of just simmering it.

Ian

 

[Jags]

Sounds like your stove is a classic case of needing a bit more air than "fully closed". It is not unusual for a stove to need the primary opened 5-10% for it to maintain a good burn. Try opening the primary just a bit more and monitor the stove so that no overheating occurs.

 

[JayD]

Agree with the above, Get some ECO wood bricks from tractor supply, or menards, and mix 1 or 2 in with your wood load, that should help with not so good wood. Jay

 

[McKeznak]

The "fully closed" issue is definitely worth looking into in addition to the wet wood, I have virtually 2 of the same stove just one is freestanding and one insert. The insert is main floor, the Freestanding in the basement. The difference in the draw I get off these two very different lengths of chimney turn them into two unique beasts.

I can shut the basement air control fully without issue, but the upstairs I need it keep it out about 2-3 cm.

 

[The Cank]

Hey guys sorry I had to crash I was so tired after work.. Ok thanks for all the responses ! I kind of had an epiphany of sorts right after I typed this all out. I had been using wood that I had bought from a guy while the 5 cords of cherry and maple I have split dry out a bit more ( my wood is at 10% - 23% depending on size of the split ) the wood I bought is real dry on the outside but its all very very heavy so I got to thinking that the wood is so dense its not getting hot enough to burn up so I split a few pieces of the dense wood ( by dense I mean one split of this stuff weighs as much as 3 splits of my cherry ) I stuck my moisture meter in and the inside of the smaller splits I just did from the dense stuff and its reading 17% which isn't terrible but its just so damn heavy.

So before I went to bed I decided to try and run a fresh new fire from cold start with a bout 7 pieces of my cherry/maple wood that is at 12%-15% moisture ... I didn't worry so much about temp as I did just getting it to the point where I could shut down air control and I went to bed... I did take one temp reading after I had shut the air down and it was at 450 and climbing with awesome secondaries I've never gotten before.... Woke up this afternoon so a 90% completely burned to ash fire box MY EXCITEMENT !

So is it possible that the wood I bought from this guy is just too dense ??? and if so how can I go about using it ? I have about a cord of it left . Should I just split it down to smaller size ? Its funny because when I split a piece down it almost as thin as Kindling but weighs as much as a whole split of my other stuff .

Also I am doing a run tonight with all my cherry/maple wood and I am going to play with the air control and leave it open slightly as I don't feel it has been putting out enough heat ...

What is everyone's thoughts ?

 

[NinjaTech]

What kind of wood is it? Do you know? I'm right across the river from ya, I'll take it if you can't get it to burn right in your stove.

 

[The Cank]

LoL Ninja .. Its sassafras,oak ,walnut ...I started splitting it up into smaller splits and its wet.... all wet .... above 20%

 

[NinjaTech]

Can't fault me for trying! Sounds like your problem, and explains why its so heavy.

 

[The Cank]

Update :
loaded up half full with my cherry that I split down even smaller . walked into house from cutting wood with air control full open and stove was 580 degrees...It has never gotten that hot before with air fully open lol. closed down air control to about 10% open and temp are climbing So far so good !! also wood isn't burning up so quickly so we will have to see what kind of ash it puts out.. Hopefully the fully burnt coal kind of ash .. If all I have to do is cut down my splits to dry a bit more my 4 cords just turned into 8.... I have enough to give you and a few other people Ha Ha Ha

 

[Ram 1500 with an axe...]

Not only is the wood wet but I think you are reloading to quickly, you really need to burn down those coals before adding a bunch more or you will end up with a load of clinkers.....keep working on getting your wood dry for the future, it gets better down the road in a year or two....

 

[Highbeam]

When you are impatient or want heat and keep reloading before the coals burn out you get this. If the wood was dry, it will burn down to ash.

 

[The Cank]

Thanks guys for the help ! I am already getting 100% better results today with your advice . Now that I know the wood is wet I will just have to burn thinner pieces of split down splits and it seems to be burning up more completely ...My stove is at temps of 600-650 still and its been that way for an hour with no signs of letting up. I have air control about 10% open and all of the wood inside is turning an ash white . Sound like its working properly now ?

 

[FionaD]

Hi Cank,

I had exactly the same problem as you this week with a load of oak, see the opening post in my thread 'Advice on Burning Oak', which could be a mirror to yours in many ways.

I had also wondered at one point if the oak was just somehow too dense for my stove or something like that. I was grateful for advice from others here to check for %moisture. Turns out some of the splits weren't too bad in moisture % but a few of the bigger ones, when I re split and tested them inside, were well over 20%.

What has been working for me today is to pack the logs in less tightly. Normally I leave no air between the logs at all when I stack EW. Now I'm adding a few smaller splits on the coals and then several bigger ones on top at various angles, so the air can get in between them. I leave the air open till the stove top hits 600 then I turn half down for around 10 minutes, then just a hairs breadth above fully closed. Sometimes I can close it right off five minutes later, sometims I need to open a tiny bit again for a little while. But it's working... Infact the difference has been phenomenal. It will see me through this pile of oak with no more trouble, I hope.

Becuase the oak is so dense I'm not noticing much less of a burn time per load, despite packing the logs in more loosely than I normally do, so all's well on that front. Long secondary phase too.

Maybe something like this would be worth a try - it would mean you wouldn't have to re-split all your wood.

 

[The Cank]

Thanks Fiona !! I just loaded it up with re split cherry and once that burns down I will try it this way.. I also noticed it didnt matter if I had 4 logs or 9 it still burned about the same amount of time as well... After my last load I still had some un burnt coals but nothing like before.. I just cracked door open and let them burn down then loaded up about half full and I did leave some space in between .. I'm about to shut the door now and see how she does, I am also load mine NS so I can get a good amount of air underneath

 

[tarzan]

Sounds like you have figured out your problem and more importantly how to make the best of what you have.

North-South loading will almost be a must in your current situation. Be aggressive on your wood supply and you will be shining like a diamond next year.