In loading up my insert tonight, I overfired the stove. It’s cooling down now, but wanted post my experience so others can avoid this.
I mistimed loading the wood in so that I had about 1/3 firebox of wood that was flaming or very hot coals. I wanted be able to load stove for night- didn’t have any good sized splits to put in at the moment so put about half a dozen thinner long splits of very dry ash. Although I turned stove air down fairly soon after loading, the wood really took off. Secondaries really blazing almost like the couldn’t get out of each other’s way. Put me on alert. Put lights out in room and looked for glowing on insert top. At first nothing, but few minutes went by and saw that insert top starting glow a faint red color
( had to block my view of the fire with a book in order to see the very faint glow of small part of stove top). Knew had to something, so opened door all the way and sat there on gaurd in case anything fell out of stove. I kept open for a minute or so and then closed door and made sure blowers on high. I did this procedure a few times, as there was a fair amount of wood that needed to offgas. This was effective and the overfiring got under control relatively quickly I suspect with no damage to stove.
A big lesson learned for was that taking the lazy route is never a good idea with stove. This was easily avoidable by either better planning or simply not loading stove before bed and maybe have house get cooler overnight. I really created the perfect storm by loading thinner dry splits on already chugging along fire.
Another lesson was that the opening the stove door wide open trick does work. The flames are surprisingly low when stove door opened wide open. note that having stove door only partly open could make things worse and makes stove hotter, but the opened all the way procedure draws in the cool room air into stove and brings down the high temp.
I really want to thank the contributors to this forum where I learned about how to address an overfire. No doubt that the overfire would have gone on much longer had I not taken that action.
I mistimed loading the wood in so that I had about 1/3 firebox of wood that was flaming or very hot coals. I wanted be able to load stove for night- didn’t have any good sized splits to put in at the moment so put about half a dozen thinner long splits of very dry ash. Although I turned stove air down fairly soon after loading, the wood really took off. Secondaries really blazing almost like the couldn’t get out of each other’s way. Put me on alert. Put lights out in room and looked for glowing on insert top. At first nothing, but few minutes went by and saw that insert top starting glow a faint red color
( had to block my view of the fire with a book in order to see the very faint glow of small part of stove top). Knew had to something, so opened door all the way and sat there on gaurd in case anything fell out of stove. I kept open for a minute or so and then closed door and made sure blowers on high. I did this procedure a few times, as there was a fair amount of wood that needed to offgas. This was effective and the overfiring got under control relatively quickly I suspect with no damage to stove.
A big lesson learned for was that taking the lazy route is never a good idea with stove. This was easily avoidable by either better planning or simply not loading stove before bed and maybe have house get cooler overnight. I really created the perfect storm by loading thinner dry splits on already chugging along fire.
Another lesson was that the opening the stove door wide open trick does work. The flames are surprisingly low when stove door opened wide open. note that having stove door only partly open could make things worse and makes stove hotter, but the opened all the way procedure draws in the cool room air into stove and brings down the high temp.
I really want to thank the contributors to this forum where I learned about how to address an overfire. No doubt that the overfire would have gone on much longer had I not taken that action.
