New to wood burning.... tips and tricks?

[fishki]

Hello everyone. I have recently purchased and installed an Englander Madison wood stove from Lowes, new double wall stainless chimney, and new double wall stove pipe. This is my first time burning wood, about a month so far. I'm burning a mix of seasoned oak and hedge, the stove is undersized for my house but I knew this when purchasing since I plan on installing a second stove this summer in the back part of the house if all goes well this winter.

I run the stove top temps around 500 - 550, sometimes up to 600. I only have smoke coming out of chimney when I load new wood or start the fire back up in the mornings. Right now its a chilly 16 degrees out and my house is sitting at 71 degrees. (except for the second living room in the back part of house, its in mid 60's).

So far I believe I am doing everything right? But my only issue is the big pile of coals that build up and take forever to burn down so I can scoop out ashes, hope fully that is normal or is there something I am missing?
I usually scoop out about 2/3's of what is in there in the mornings and leave some glowing coals to help start up the fire again in the mornings.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Stubblefire]

The coals account for half your heat output in the later stages of the burn cycle so I always let's them burn down before a reload. I reload while the coals are still warm enough to ignite the new splits. The coals seem to slowly burn down to ash for me but if you don't have enough fresh air they may not burn down completely. Also wood that isn't dry enough may effect this.

 

[firefighterjake]

Stubble offered good advice ... another thing you can do if you have a large amount of coals, besides loading later rather than earlier in the coaling phase, is to toss a split on to the coals and open up the air control. When you look back in a half hour or so the heap of coals should be smaller. I particularly like using a softwood split when doing this ... but a hardwood split works as well.

 

[St. Coemgen]

Good advice from both Stubblefire and firefighterjake.

A picture being worth a thousand words, here is a photo montage "how to" reduce coals as explained by Jake:

http://woodheat.org/charcoal.html

 

[fishki]

Thanks for that information everyone. I was simply just pushing tho coals around and off to the sides some and loading more wood, letting them burn down overnight. Will try raking them in a pile and and burning a split on them with this evenings pile of coals.

 

[WayneN]

Fishki I'm much like you with the Madison and first time wood stove user. I've learned the type of wood makes a HUGE difference in the amounts of ash / coal. When I burn maple, it burns off almost completely as ash. When I burn cedar / poplar...it burns fast but coals up a lot.

When I get piles, I rake them around ( mixing them ) and open the door a bit for air. Once the coals burn down enough I try to pull the coals to one side ( or front ) and put a small split on them.

Every once in a while I'll sweep to the middle and load a small split on either side ( north south ) and then build a little platform on top. That seems to burn them down fast if there's larger chunks.


I usually clean out the stove about once a week with this method.

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