Moving beyond stuffing the smoke dragon

[Bobbin]

I'm curious. How did you get interested in moving beyond "stuffing the smoke dragon"? (damn pinkie, sorry about the title). So many people start with a crappy stove/"smoke dragon" and never move beyond it. And yet, a lot of us do.

 

[Chuck the Canuck]

How did you get interested in moving beyond "stuffing the smoke dragon"?

Well, I stumbled across Hearth.com and started gettin edumacated......

 

[Bobbin]

We were just plain lucky. I flatly refused to have some homely "yard sale special" in our living room (lol). And the good man didn't like the ivory enameled stove I had my heart set on... he saw the Fireview 201 and commented, "now that's a good looking stove". It was twice our budget and that gave us time to save and set the wood aside... blind luck, I tellya. Funny how that happens...

 

[BrotherBart]

The big Sierra cracked in a spot where I couldn't get to it to weld it.

 

[tarzan]

I got tired of cleaning the flue every month and lying awake two weeks afterwards worrying about it.

 

[mark cline]

It took 32 yrs for me to make the switch to an EPA stove. From day 1, I wanted a Hearthstone, but could not afford it. Now we have it and we love it . So clean burning and beautiful to look at. We bought it for our 2100 sq.ft . handcrafted log home , which we will be in about 2 yrs. Now its in our 1200 sq ft ranch until we move . Compared to the old Fisher Grandma Bear , the Mansfield puts out way more heat and uses 15 % to 20 % less wood , burns clean and is beautiful to look at. I found it on Craigslist , brand new with warranty, last years model , but with the tax credit , we saved almost $1000.

 

[SteveKG]

I began to think of how much wood I could save with a newer, more efficient stove. Read: climbing steep hills with a heavy chainsaw, running the splitter, smacking with the Fiskars, hauling wood indoors. I enjoy all those things, but if I could cut down the amount of such chores I need to do, all the better. How long can I keep it up as I grow older??? So, in answer, using less wood was my impetus. I am still using the old stove, and this winter might've pushed me for an upgrade anyway [like others, burning much more wood this season than normal]. The new stove is sitting in the other room, waiting for spring to be installed. Actually, the old stove, a Shenandoah, gives off virtually no visible smoke, but it eats wood like nothing else. When it's minus 15 F. outdoors, seems I drop armloads of wood into it about every two hours.

It helped matters that Woodstock had sale prices this last fall, along with the Fed. tax credit their stoves qualify for.... So I jumped on a Keystone.

 

[CenterTree]

I owe it all to HEARTH.COM.

Never even heard of an EPA stove until I logged in here a few years back to get info on my pellet stove.

 

[Seasoned Oak]

I used to think "How the hell do these wood stove owners ever get any sleep"
I got tired of loading the smoke dragon every 2-3 hours. I didnt know there were stoves that burned longer than that,till i got on hearth and read the posts of happy EPA stove owners burning overnight and blaze king owners burning even longer.

 

[TradEddie]

My smoke dragon insert came with the house, and dire warnings about the dangers of "slammers". I used it for 8 years and probably would not have made the switch to a modern insert if the top baffle/shelf welds hadn't cracked, but hat was all the excuse I needed. I was already running my dragon very cleanly before I found this site but I learned to run it even better.

I do miss being able to throw fresh wet oak into it, I don't miss reloading every 2-3 hours, or having to pay a sweep to pull the monster out and clean the chimney.

TE

 

[Bobbin]

Wow! great stories/reasons for your moves to more efficient use of wood. Thanks for sharing them. I have no local friends who have the slightest interest in moving beyond "shove it in the smoke dragon" and it makes me sad. The rest of my friends still think "the smell of wood smoke" is meaningful. They're the same crowd that thinks a fireplace will keep them warm... (sigh)

Many work so much harder than they need to. Just burning seasoned wood would improve efficiency, lessen cord requirements and lessen pollutants. Seasoned wood means you burn less... how do we spread the word without making the "old timers" feel really dumb?

 

[Osage]

I'll keep my old smoke dragon. Load it up around 8:30 in the evening and have enough coals at 6:00 in the morning to start another load. Get home from work around 6:00pm. Reload on coals that are left to get her going again. House has never been below 60deg. Have had some nights at 10 below with 40 mile per hour winds. Never get up in the middle of the night to stoke. The old stove treats me well.

 

[tcassavaugh]

Well, I was brought up on a Montgomery Ward box stove with blower so when I got a place of my own after I got out of the army, I borrowed a little home made stove welded out of a truck frame that sat on my hearth with a pipe up through the smoke shelf. it would burn so hot I could sometimes see the damper through the pipe....I know, not good. I then graduated to a barrel stove, once again home made but very functional none the less. was a lot like the volgulzang kit but fabricated back in the early 80 by a local welder and fitter. it was a good little stove. I left rural n.y. and went to work in the big city in d.c.. I bought a house and put a buck insert into it with a proper direct connect....after I had a couple of smoke shelf fires from the bad install of the previous owner. when I sold the house a few years after that....we won't go into why, I moved into a little split level that already had a connect for a free standing stove, in the living room. as luck would have it, my wife, who never experienced wood burning, had a friend that offered her a little jotul 602....free. she asked "should I get it" my response was immediately yes.....and so began my love affair with jotul. it kept us warm through the winter of 93, cooked our dinners when the power was out and saved us "ton-O-bucks" keeping the electric heat to a minimum. moving again, to a house with no wood stove, I got an Adirondack stove by DW and while it was a good stove, it wasn't quite the BTU that I needed and I gave it to my brother that used it for at least 10 years. Liking the cast iron, I got a CDW 2461 because I heard of these "new fangled" contraptions that burned the smoke too giving longer burn times and more heat. I placed it upstairs on the main floor where it almost overpowered the space with long-lasting wonderful heat.......until my wife suggested it was just too big and too hot to keep upstairs. So, I moved it downstairs and punched a hole through the basement for a new 6" double wall chimney....to which I connected the 2461 and it gave us good heat most of the time but it wasn't quiet big enough to do the job.I continued to burn the 2461 and got my small Jotul F3 CB based on my earlier love affair with the 602 and put it upstairs in the livingroom. i have not been disappointed as i use it for shoulder season and when it gets really cold out to supplement the basement stove .... or when I get low on wood...like now.....so, after reading a lot about stoves on this forum, I became a member started doing some research on a bigger stove.......Blaze King King...... is what I really wanted as it was very similar to the "mother earth" stove in size and volume with an approximately 90 pound payload if I remember correctly and a forever burn time.....yup, that was what I was gonna get until.....I saw it needed a 8" connector. Drat, I only had the six and I wasn't going to put in an 8" chimney. . So, after more research into big stoves, I decided on the PE Summit, which I've had for a couple of years now....third season I think. I must admit that it wasn't my "soul mate" and I became frustrated with the stove and was ready to yank it and throw it over the bank and go get a monster Jotul. Patience and reading here in the forum prompted me to think that "hey, most ideas of seasoned wood are WRONG" after I realized that and started feeding good wood to the Summit, we kissed and made up. We occasionally have a problem with draft or a back-puff here and there but for the most part, its a pretty good match and she keeps the house at a comfortable 70-72 degrees although I wish her appetite wasn't so big.
So, thanks to a lot of folks on this fourm like begreen, brother bart, backwoods savage, webby and a host of others too numerous to count, I learned how to burn all over again, learned what to look for in a stove and how to perform proper maintenance of the system.......and that's how I moved beyond stuffing the smoke dragon.
.......sorry I got carried away.....my name is tom and I"m a fourm-a-holic.

 

[Warm_in_NH]

What defines a "smoke dragon"?

I'm new to wood stoves this year with my Hearthstone Shelburne. I'm assuming this is not a "smoke dragon"??
GF has a jotul Oslow; smoke dragon??
When did these "EPA" stoves come around?
Are all stoves with secondary burn tubes part of the newer EPA breed or is there more to it?
What about CAT stoves and their place on the smoke dragon scale?
main differences between a smoke dragon and non dragon?

Just curious about how all the above play in. I've seen the terms around on here a bit, just not entirely clear on the specifics. Any clarification would be appreciated.
Not being sarcastic just trying to be educated on the definition and differences.
Thanks.

 

[Bigg_Redd]

I'm curious. How did you get interested in moving beyond "stuffing the smoke dragon"? (damn pinkie, sorry about the title). So many people start with a crappy stove/"smoke dragon" and never move beyond it. And yet, a lot of us do.

I like a lot of the old "smoke dragons" and if I had had a good one - old Blaze King, Buck Stove, Fisher, Earth Stove, etc - I'd likely still have it. I bought a PE Spectrum Classic in 2009 because my previous stove (which came with the house) was a completely clapped out pile of ess.

EDIT: there's an echo chamber effect here that all pre-EPA stoves = all pre-EPA stoves. Pre-EPA, much like EPA stoves and unlike men, were not all created equal.

 

[BEConklin]

I just got rid of a smoke dragon today.....an Atlanta Stoveworks Franklin stove that was in my office in the cellar of the new (to us) house. What a PITA it was getting it out of my basement. Too heavy for me to handle so I had to take it apart....using a torch on every other bolt.

There's a nice brick platform under it, 75"X40" I'm planning to put an Englander 17VL there soon.

 

[tfdchief]

The big Sierra cracked in a spot where I couldn't get to it to weld it.

Yeah, and admit it BB, if ya could have gotten it welded back up, ya would have kept burning it.

 

[pen]

Yeah, and admit it BB, if ya could have gotten it welded back up, ya would have kept burning it.

I can't speak for BB, but in my case, I had 2 cracked flue tiles and the chimney wasn't large enough to line and keep running the fisher I had. If it were, I would have lined it and kept the old girl as I loved it......

However, I found out that the grass really was greener on the other side in this case. Now with a number of years on an EPA stove under my belt, I wouldn't go back to that fisher in the house for anything. When it comes to the part time cabin,,,,, that's a different story.

pen

 

[tfdchief]

I'm curious. How did you get interested in moving beyond "stuffing the smoke dragon"? (damn pinkie, sorry about the title). So many people start with a crappy stove/"smoke dragon" and never move beyond it. And yet, a lot of us do.

Well, for some I am sure that was the situation and a move to a new stove was certainly the way to go. For some of us though, "stuffing the smoke dragon" was never an issue. I have both an old "smoke dragon" and a new EPA stove (see my signature) I despite what some would like to or ever acknowledge, my old "smoke dragon" doesn't burn any more wood than my new EPA stove, and, puts out more heat per load. Now I will acknowledge that my old "smoke dragon" is bigger than my new stove, so not a fair comparison. But anyway, as everyone on here already knows, you will never talk me out of my Buck! Although many have tried and will continue to try.

 

[BrotherBart]

Chuck the Buck Chief.

 

[BrotherBart]

I will always have to wonder what it would have been like with the old stove, no crack and dry wood. I went so far as to install a liner on it and that is when I found the crack when it ran away on me twice in a row.

But I am just as happy that it is retired. After 21 years heating this barn and putting up with how hot I ran it, it owed me nothing.

The night it ran away.

 

[Dustin92]

Stumbling across this site while searching for instructions on how to properly use a wood insert. The only wood stove I had used previously was my Grandma's Wonderwood Circulator- just throw in wood every 1/2 hour and wait for it to glow. When we moved in this house, my Dad had burned wood before, but that was when I was really young, and he ran a homemade stove in our basement... To heat the house all winter... and never once swept the chimney. I didn't even know how to properly start a fire, and couldn't figure out how to get the smoke UP the chimney. No clue on whether wood was properly seasoned or green as grass. Had I not found this site, Either myself or my Dad would have probably burned the house down last year.

 

[tfdchief]

Chuck the Buck Chief.

I often have late night talks with my ole Buck as I load her for the night, because she sometimes get a little down due to BB's comments. But I always tell her not to worry, He is just jealous 'cause you are still going strong.......We will go down together ole girl, warm and secure.

 

[BrotherBart]

Hell I still talk to Old Brownie and it ain't even in the house anymore. I do miss that old hoss. I could set it up for a night load half asleep or half drunk. The last half.

But then I look at that big beautiful fire view in New Brownie and get right over it.

 

[Hickorynut]

Combination of reading about newer stoves here plus having an ever thickening layer of tarry creosote forming in the upper part of my chimney flue. Basically afraid of the inevitable chimney fire. Not going into them here but there have been pluses and minuses in going from the country flame 1980's insert to the lopi freedom I have now. Still though the piece of mine of no more creosote forming in my ss liner is huge !!