maximizing efficiency - what settings to use

[Courtney]

Afternoon! Just enjoying my two quadrafire Santa Fe's today with a temp of 32 and blustery. I have a rancher (small) with one stove upstairs and one in the finished basement. Heat pump back up - hope to be off that grid this winter. Used to run the heat pump fan on circ on the thermostat to circulate air when I only had one in the basement, but now I don't really need to. Question: for max efficiency, should I burn these stoves on low or med (fan)? when on med, they do shut on an off regularly as they reach set temp of 68 easily. But I do use a lot of energy to start them back up often - could I burn out the igniter faster too?. On low, they run with less shut off time (pretty much continuously) but I know they burn dirtier on this setting. Your thoughts on this? Many thanks!

Ps the forum really saved my but last winter when I was had no back up heat for 10 days and only the one stove in the basement. Our daytime high was 7 deg. I was afraid to run the one stove on high and burn it out...but you all said go for it. Thanks!

 

[Courtney]

Let me not try to over complicate things. First where do you spend your time? If it is in the finished basement I might run that one now and let the fan recirculate the warm air throughout the house. If you like it upstairs then I would run the upstairs stove. If it was me, I would only run one stove until there was a need for the second one. If your family is all around the house then I guess you would have to run both stoves on a low setting. My personal preference is to run my stove on, say a medium setting as long as possible. It just burns cleaner but I have no problem running it on low if that is what is needed. I just make sure I'm diligent in keeping the chimney clean. You are in an enviable position with two stoves. As I said before, my first choice would be to run one stove until you really needed the second. Do some experimenting and see what combination works for you. But IMHO the stoves were designed to run on low and high and everywhere in between and good maintenance is important whatever setting that you use.

Many thanks Gary! Appreciate your feedback and thoughts. Very helpful.

 

[boosted3g]

This is what I did and it works perfect. Being a sheetmetal worker I have all metal duct that is properly sealed. The return duct is run directly to the discharge of the stoves blower. A half inch of clearance is at the stove. The door is able to be opened fully and the elbow is quickly removable for deep cleanings. It's not the prettiest thing but it's well made and serves its purpose. I have temps to within 2 degrees throughout the entire house on both floors.

 

[boosted3g]

Click on the pic to view it all. I don't know what I did wrong but the entire pic is not showing up in the post.