New Liberty install and a question

[Pagey]

My dad just put this stove in for his mother. The dealer sent home literature recommending a series of 6 burn in fires. He's completed the first four or five, can't recall exactly...it's been a long week already, and I'm beat. He achieved his very first secondary burn tonight, and I could tell it pleased him, as he is a natural skeptic by nature. I tried to get him to look at a new EPA stove first about 2 years ago with no luck. Anyway... Impressive stove! In any event, once you're properly burned in, how are you Liberty/Lopi owners achieving all night burns? Do you close the air intake down completely once the wood is charred? Or do you leave it a bit open? If open, how far? And what are you using a guide for a "measure" of how far open you leave the intake? Thanks, and enjoy the photos!

Liberty in the living room!

A bit of secondary burn:

Closer pic of the secondary:

 

[daveswoodhauler]

Nice looking setup....you will enjoy the stove.
How much clearance do you have from the bookcase....looks as though it would be ready to go up in flames....just asking for safety sake.

 

[begreen]

Pagey, looks like you are doing great. 6 breakins in a steel stove is nonsense in my book. I say you are good to go, burn away.

There was an earlier thread today about Liberty burning that may be of help to you.
https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/27564/

And hopefully Rick will drop in shortly with advice on how he runs his Liberty for longest burn times.

 

[Pagey]

I know it's difficult to tell in those pics, but the bookcase has good clearance. The lighting conditions and the color of the rock make it difficult to tell. My paternal grandparents built that house in 1975, and in the living room you see they hauled stones from the pastures as they cleared them (80 acre cattle farm on the Cumberland Plateau of TN). The real adventure will be teaching my 81 year old grandmother the proper operation of the stove. She is intimidated by new things, but once she gets the hang of it she'll enjoy this stove far better than the old Fisher, I think. No more getting up at 1am to fiddle with things.

Thanks for the link to thread!

 

[daveswoodhauler]

Yeah... after I looked over the pics again...it looked like you would be ok..just airing on the side of caution.
Good luck with your Grandmom and the stove...been trying to get my dad to fire his up..much younger I might add, and he says its too much work.
I love the stonework on the rear...great that it was harvested from the property...great stuff.

 

[Pagey]

Yeah... after I looked over the pics again...it looked like you would be ok..just airing on the side of caution.
Good luck with your Grandmom and the stove...been trying to get my dad to fire his up..much younger I might add, and he says its too much work.
I love the stonework on the rear...great that it was harvested from the property...great stuff.

I'm glad you pointed out the bookcase. I'm definitely here to learn, and it could have been that we didn't take that into consideration! As for my grandmother, she was one of 16 kids who grew up in a 3 room cabin in the mountains of North Carolina. Only 8 lived past their teen years, and she is in fact the last one living today. She still puts out a huge garden every year, and to her, "sleeping late" means 4:45AM. She does more between 4:30AM and 8:00AM than most people do all day, I sometimes believe. She is sharp and active, and I'm convinced she'll learn to use this stove, even if she does so at her own pace, in her own way, and on her own schedule.

 

[fossil]

We love our Liberty. It's our primary source of heat in a ~2600 square foot two-story house (upstairs partially lofted/open to the great room where the stove is). We have an electric forced air central furnace, but hardly ever turn it on unless we're going to be away from the house for a while in very cold weather. Here in the central Oregon high desert country, our only available sources of fuel for woodstoves are softwoods...Pine, Juniper, Fir , Larch (Tamarack), like that. They tend to burn quickly and hot. Achieving what the easterners with their wonderful hardwoods refer to as an overnight burn is a real challenge, even with the Liberty's big firebox. I have another stove with a smaller firebox that I use every day as well, so almost all my wood is about 16" splits/rounds, even though the Liberty could swallow a 24 incher. I can't say I've ever really "stuffed" it full of wood, but I have gotten it pretty darn full atop a really nice bed of coals, waited for it to engage nicely, then damped down the primary to nearly shut (not all the way shut). This will extend the burn for a number of hours, and there will be some coals left in the morning, in a stove that's warm to the touch and not difficult to start back up. I'm quite sure that with a different fuel, this stove is more than capable of an honest overnight burn of maybe 10 hours, or so. Send me a few cords of Oak or something and I'll forward the results of my testing in February. Rick

 

[Jfk4th]

No matter how many times I have seen that pic Rick, I still love the site of your setup and stove

Bravo!

 

[BJ64]

WOW! I love the rock work.

Oh yea, nice stove too.

 

[Pagey]

I'd still love to hear from some more Lopi owners about how you achieve your longest burn times! I'm sure we'll be experimenting all season, but we're definitely hoping to hearing from those with more experience.

 

[pyro68]

where you set your air control for the longest burn depends a lot on how much draft your chimney has. A chimney that really pulls hard requires the draft closed more ect. ect. I recommend getting a ripping hot fire, filling the stove w/ good wood, closing the air control completely then pushing it back in maybe 1/8 to 1/4 inch as a starter. You can test performance and make adjustments from there. When it gets really cold you may opt to leave the draft open more and sacrifice longer burn times for more heat into the house. I have had liberty owners tell me they get better performance cutting their splits short enough to load north to south. happy burning!!

 

[Pagey]

where you set your air control for the longest burn depends a lot on how much draft your chimney has. A chimney that really pulls hard requires the draft closed more ect. ect. I recommend getting a ripping hot fire, filling the stove w/ good wood, closing the air control completely then pushing it back in maybe 1/8 to 1/4 inch as a starter. You can test performance and make adjustments from there. When it gets really cold you may opt to leave the draft open more and sacrifice longer burn times for more heat into the house. I have had liberty owners tell me they get better performance cutting their splits short enough to load north to south. happy burning!!

Thank you for that insight! I assume by 1/8 to 1/4" you mean visually measuring by the little gap created as you push the air intake handle back towards the stove, right? That's what we were using last night as a measurement. I should have taken a pic!

 

[pyro68]

Thank you for that insight! I assume by 1/8 to 1/4" you mean visually measuring by the little gap created as you push the air intake handle back towards the stove, right? That's what we were using last night as a measurement. I should have taken a pic!

no problem, actually just a physical measurement if you pull the draft control all the way out (closed) then just bump it so it moves about 1/8" or 1/4" back in, see how that works and then go from there, if your chimney has a really strong draft you may be able to just pull it all the way out & leave it. Often that little "bump" back in helps if the draft is not that strong.

 

[Pagey]

I think it's going to be a while before we get to really test an all night fire. It's 77F out today, and even with a cold front coming through later in the day, highs are still going to be in the 50s.

 

[Pagey]

Is there any need for concern when a split comes to rest against the glass as your pile burns/settles?

 

[fossil]

Is there any need for concern when a split comes to rest against the glass as your pile burns/settles?

Not gonna physically damage anything, but it's gonna tend to blacken the window. When I see that happen, I very carefully open the loading door and coax the wood back away from the window with my poker. Rick

 

[Pagey]

Is there any need for concern when a split comes to rest against the glass as your pile burns/settles?

Not gonna physically damage anything, but it's gonna tend to blacken the window. When I see that happen, I very carefully open the loading door and coax the wood back away from the window with my poker. Rick

Thank you kind sir!

 

[Pagey]

I think Granny was mainly concerned that the coals would damage the seal/gasket around the door. It was resting right against it when I got there. I eased the door open and raked things into a better position. I was surprised that the wood I put in at 11:18 was burned as far as it was by 12:40, though. I loaded up 5 or 6 good splits (didn't want to get up into the tubes) and let it burn with the damper and intake for about 12 minutes. Then I closed the damper and left the intake open for 5 minutes. This had a hot bed of coals and the wood was charred black on the outside. Then I closed the air intake all the way down, got a good secondary going, then pushed it in maybe 1/8". I left it like that and came back to work. I was hoping that load would go further, but I think we're on the upslope of a steep learning curve here. :-/

Thoughts?

 

[fossil]

The door seal gasket is not going to be damaged by a split rolling into the window, or by the hot coals that may accumulate there. It (the seal) may need to be replaced every few years or so, depending on stove use. It's always a good idea to keep the fire back away from the window a couple of inches, just to let the airwash system do its job of keeping the window as clean as it can. Also makes it safer and more comfortable to open the loading door when required. What type of wood are you burning? All we have where we live are softwoods, so we don't get nearly the burn times between reloads that the hardwood burners experience. It will take some time to learn the operation of your stove and the limitations of your fuel, but you're already on your way up that curve. Rick

 

[Pagey]

Living on the Cumberland Plateau of TN, we're burning exclusively hardwoods in her stove. I know dad always has some mix of oak, but I'm sure there could be other stuff in there as well. The wood she's burning now consists of tops that dad cut up from clear cutting. We split and stacked this wood back in March, and it's been in a covered shed outdoors drying since then. The wood caught up almost immediately when I put it on the bed, and by the time I closed the air intake I had a nice secondary going. When I left her house, I couldn't see any flames under the wood - everything was dancing away nicely on top. I started that fire at 11:18AM and left around 11:40AM. I went back at 12:40PM because she called, concerned about the piece against the glass. I was surprised to see how much had burned in that hour.

The splits are probably 16" to 18" long, as it was clear they were much shorter than the 24" limit the Liberty accepts. Longer splits would probably help with getting a fuller load, you think?

 

[fossil]

Well, sure, for a given "burn rate", the more fuel you initially load, the longer it will take to be consumed. I can't really give you any definitive empirical data, for a number of reasons. I burn softwood, and I've never really tried to stuff my Liberty to the gills (we're both retired, so we're "lazy woodburners"...we watch the fire and add a split or two from time to time as we feel like it, rather than trying to find just exactly what to do to get the longest unattended burn time we can), and I burn in two stoves. Yes, the Liberty will (theoretically) take a 24" split...but my little shop stove will barely swallow a 17"-er. I don't want to go to the trouble of keeping two separate wood supplies, so everything I burn is about 16" length. Because it gets a little dicey to be wrestling with loading splits when you've got a red-hot bed of glowing coals in there, I'd think that you might want to go about 18"-20" max for your wood. If it was a side-loader, that might be a different thing. There are other Liberty/Olympic burners on the forum in different situations, I'm hoping we'll hear from some of them about their experiences. I think you're doing real good! Rick