Negative temps..How often do you load?

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Bwhunter85

Feeling the Heat
Hearth Supporter
Aug 21, 2010
259
Sunfield, MI
With these negative temps in Michigan, those 12-14 hour burns are long gone. Still have a bed of hot coals, but boiler has a hard time staying up past 175-180. Woke up and went out this morning after a 13 hour lapse in loading and was down to 138.
 
As often as needed . . .

But that said . . . more often than I do in the more balmy temps in the 20s and 30s. When temps are in the single digits or below the donut I generally don't let the coal bed go down as much.
 
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when it gets his cold I just load on how the house temp feels. I want to be warm. But I'm going about 6 to 10 hours depending on what I'm burning and size of the wood.
 
I do what ever it takes....if that means taking out some coals to stuff the stove again....so be it.
 
I can still get a good 6 hours on a full load of ash and oak. Less with cherry mixed. No doubt we use a good bit more wood when its cold, but the house is never chilly.
 
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Much like everyone else, burn times are less when it is colder out. The wood mix makes a big difference also.
Right now, we are in the 20' s and I am burning white oak and pine mix. Probably a 60/40 oak to pine and it is lasting 4-6 hours. That being said, the room with our stove is currently 81 and the far bedrooms are about 64. The wifey is toasty and happy so...life is good.
Straight up oak will go 6-7 hours but I find mixing in pine helps in a couple of ways. Quick immediate heat from the pine gets house warm and the oak burning well. Oak gives sustained heat and I am left with enough coals for a full reload without being overwhelmed by coals.
Edit: I forgot to mention, I do not have a boiler but a wood stove, but I think it still applies.
 
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With how "loose" my house is and how little insulation there is, im loading 4-6 times a day when I'm home. Not always stuffing it full though. I can't wait to get more insulation here...hard to believe anyone who lived here before me just "fixed" the issue by turning the thermostat up rather than considering tightening up the house.
 
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I'm burning twice a day, Batch burns. Bad insulation on my storage tanks and only about 1/3 the insulation needed for my garage ceiling. I have a pretty good snow melt system for my garage roof. <>

Next year will be better with more insulation for everything.
 
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2 1/2 times, full load before work, 1/2 load when I get home, full load before bed... temps in teens during the day, single digits at night, inside is 70-72
 
a full load before work at 5am, full load again at 3pm when i get home and again around 9pm before calling it a day. the difference between real cold and not real cold is the 3pm load, when its real cold its a full load and run pretty hot, when its not real cold the 3pm load is just a few splits.
 
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Usually twice a day. Im using a central boiler OWB. The coal bed really builds fast but I can push it towards the back of the firebox, just hate any heat source so close the exhaust. Thats why I usually only fill the front half of the firebox when i do load.

Last night it got down to 3 above. I loaded around 9:00 in the evening and woke to the temps at 182 but there was barely any fire so it wouldve dropped pretty quickly after that. Im going to load with locust and oak when the next cold snap hits this weekend/early next week.
 
I just refilled the garage rack from the shed and I can now say ive burned 1 full cord so far this year
 
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When it is really cold outside, I have to reload more often and I operate the wood stove about 200 degrees higher than normal. Instead of a 12 hour reload, I can run 6 to 8 hours between reloading.
 
Steady feed other than the overnighter.
Close to 2-3 mid sized per hour to maintain upper 70's/ low 80's
in the stoveroom. I catch myself running the fans more too so
we can push some btu's into the far reaches of a loose 1958 ranch house.
 
[Hearth.com] Negative temps..How often do you load?
Todays high was a single digit. Loaded four times. Also stocked up on white oak, red oak, ash and cherry before the snow flies again fri night. Bring on the fun, its warm inside.
 
We are looking at a stretch of negative temps in the evening, will burn oil just to keep the pipes warm, but will burn wood in the afternoon.
 
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I had to clean the ashes out of the stove yesterday so I figured while to stove was cold I would do a quick chimney sweep, climbed the ladder, to the roof, clean the cap and sent to brush down the pipe 4 times, went inside took the black pipe off the stove and vacuumed out about a coffee can of black powder. Put the stove pipe back together and relit the fire, all in all about 20min from start to finish and I can rest easier now while im running the stove nice and hot in this cold snap. Also good point @Beer Belly, when it gets to be cold like this (prolonged) its always a good idea to run the baseboard zones twice a day for 15 min a cycle to make sure nothing is freezing up, especially if you don't need the heat because the stove is carrying the load.
 
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If I’m working, I load one stove 2x per day, and the other 1x per day. I just set them to run thru that wood in the required respective 12 and 24 hours, and let the oil heat pick up the slack.

However, since I’m home this week, I’m doing 3x per day in one stove and 2x in the other. It’s exceptionally cold this week.
 
When temps are like this and my mother in law is watching the girls there is never enough wood. She does keep the house warm. It was 14 outside yesterday when I got home the house was just about 81. The girls far back bedrooms were pushing 72. She has told me on many occasions that she loves the small rounds of that brownish orange wood that burns real hot (locust). I just tell her that stuff is pretty good. I have to keep the big rounds away from her or she would burn it all day every day. It doesn't matter if it was 5 or 55 she would burn it.
 
@heavy hammer how about a Kuma review. w/ and w/o blower running
 
What would u like to know kennyp2339. I do not have a blower on my Kuma just the natural convection one that is built in the stove. No electrical after blower just the stove.
 
I went from loading at 7 am when I'm getting ready to work, and at 6-7 pm after dinner to loading at 7 am, 5 pm (when I get home) and 9 pm I top it off.

It technically would make it doing just 7 am/pm loads (literally by it's last burn cycle) but the boiler recovers much better if it has a big bed of coals in it.