Good day,
We built our ~1000sqft 1.5 story camp in Northern Ontario in 2015 and to save money at the time and to learn exactly what we needed for heating, installed an older used ~2cuft wood stove in it. As expected, the stove was too small and struggled to heat the space at our lovely minus temps we get in the winter.
After about a year of research and analysis paralysis, I pulled the trigger on an Osburn 2300. I’ve seen many reviews claiming heating whole houses comfortably with this unit at minus temps.
After several trips to camp and many frustrating and cold hours we can’t seem to get this stove to operate with consistency, any extended high heat output, or efficiency. I will explain more later.
First, some details about our camp. 24x40 main floor is insulated with R22 Roxul. 2/3 of inside ceiling is scissor trusses insulated with R22 Ruxol and finished with T&G pine. Back 1/3 is room-in-attic trusses with a ~11x11 upstairs room insulated with R22 Ruxol and covered with poly. Walls are all standard 2x4 insulated with standard R15. We have a glass patio door, large front windows and 3 larger size side windows (all vinyl) in the main room. 3 bedrooms downstairs each have small windows and the room upstairs has a fair size window. The camp sits up off rock on concrete piers and is not skirted. All and all, a big place with a fair bit of windows. The stove has a straight flue up through the center peak of our roof. Inside its ~12’ double wall black pipe then double wall insulated pipe the rest of the way past the ceiling kit.
Our wood is well seasoned hardwood ~6 year old hard wood mix mainly consisting of Maple. After years of being in log piles we bucked, split and stored in a well ventilated wood shed.
So, on with the stove. Not impressed at all. The old smaller “non-efficient” stove heated just as good or better in some instances. It was smaller so not as much wood could go in however whenever the stove started getting cool a split or two was fired in and away it went with little to no operator input. The coal bed was relatively small and the new splits would fire quite quickly. It kept the camp at about 63°F with outside temps in the -20’s.
New Osburn 2300, can’t get the camp to stay over 60°F. Spent several days there recently to play with it and just so happened outside temps were down to -36°F at night….-13°F during the day. Sure, at that temp I would expect any stove/camp to struggle a bit however like I said the smaller stove would heat to the same capacity. So, what gives here?
After reading the manual many times over I tried doing full heating cycles. No dice. By the time the coal bed burned down the camp was down to 45°F.
I tried burning down coals to an amount where I could put 3 splits in. This worked better however the camp would get down to ~55°F before being able to do so.
The most glaring observations at this point was that I had a lot of coals (quite large) and it took a long time for the flue magnetic temp gauge to get up to the optimum burn zone (300-500°F). I had to keep the door open all that time (~25 to 30mins) and wood burnt rapidly (almost as if it was dry softwood) to get the temp up into the zone (~400°F). I would close the door and start throttling back the primary air. By the time I got down to ¾ open primary air the flue temp would start dropping rapidly. A couple times I tried reopening the door to stoke it back up however the stove would never stay in the burn zone for more than like 45mins. Another time at reload, I got the temp up to ~275°C and shut the door with the primary air at 100%. The wood smoldered for quite a while without good flames or much secondary burning. The temp dropped and the stove top was cool and the coal bed wasn’t glowing bright anymore. Too hot stove burns wood too fast and leaves massive coals. Too cool and stove doesn’t really burn.
Since I returned home, I found that the temp gauge being used is not the correct one (“only to be used on single wall pipe”). Oddly we are using the same pipe as with the previous stove….I’m guessing we were over-burning with the old stove?
I’ve also learned that with the new stove, flue temp gauges aren’t the best way to measure the performance of the Osburn stove.
So, does anyone on here have experience with this stove or similar unit?
Am I over-burning the wood on start-up/reload causing all my heat to go up the pipe, burning my wood down rapidly and turn to large coals?
Should I relocate the temp gauge to the top of the stove? If so, should I get it to about 500°F or so?
When reloading, approximately how long should I have to keep the door open along with full open primary air? Do I turn the primary air down to like ¼ open first then open it back up as the wood is being consumed or do I start turning down from full open?
Is it possible that our old dry hardwood is too dry? Absolutely zero moisture comes out of the ends when being burned. Also sound hollow when hit together.
Draft issue? Flue cap plugged? It’s way up there and I can’t really see much other than that smoke is coming out. The old stove didn’t seem to have an issue.
One thing I know for sure is that this stove makes some beautiful coals.
Thank you in advance!
(sorry for the long post)
We built our ~1000sqft 1.5 story camp in Northern Ontario in 2015 and to save money at the time and to learn exactly what we needed for heating, installed an older used ~2cuft wood stove in it. As expected, the stove was too small and struggled to heat the space at our lovely minus temps we get in the winter.
After about a year of research and analysis paralysis, I pulled the trigger on an Osburn 2300. I’ve seen many reviews claiming heating whole houses comfortably with this unit at minus temps.
After several trips to camp and many frustrating and cold hours we can’t seem to get this stove to operate with consistency, any extended high heat output, or efficiency. I will explain more later.
First, some details about our camp. 24x40 main floor is insulated with R22 Roxul. 2/3 of inside ceiling is scissor trusses insulated with R22 Ruxol and finished with T&G pine. Back 1/3 is room-in-attic trusses with a ~11x11 upstairs room insulated with R22 Ruxol and covered with poly. Walls are all standard 2x4 insulated with standard R15. We have a glass patio door, large front windows and 3 larger size side windows (all vinyl) in the main room. 3 bedrooms downstairs each have small windows and the room upstairs has a fair size window. The camp sits up off rock on concrete piers and is not skirted. All and all, a big place with a fair bit of windows. The stove has a straight flue up through the center peak of our roof. Inside its ~12’ double wall black pipe then double wall insulated pipe the rest of the way past the ceiling kit.
Our wood is well seasoned hardwood ~6 year old hard wood mix mainly consisting of Maple. After years of being in log piles we bucked, split and stored in a well ventilated wood shed.
So, on with the stove. Not impressed at all. The old smaller “non-efficient” stove heated just as good or better in some instances. It was smaller so not as much wood could go in however whenever the stove started getting cool a split or two was fired in and away it went with little to no operator input. The coal bed was relatively small and the new splits would fire quite quickly. It kept the camp at about 63°F with outside temps in the -20’s.
New Osburn 2300, can’t get the camp to stay over 60°F. Spent several days there recently to play with it and just so happened outside temps were down to -36°F at night….-13°F during the day. Sure, at that temp I would expect any stove/camp to struggle a bit however like I said the smaller stove would heat to the same capacity. So, what gives here?
After reading the manual many times over I tried doing full heating cycles. No dice. By the time the coal bed burned down the camp was down to 45°F.
I tried burning down coals to an amount where I could put 3 splits in. This worked better however the camp would get down to ~55°F before being able to do so.
The most glaring observations at this point was that I had a lot of coals (quite large) and it took a long time for the flue magnetic temp gauge to get up to the optimum burn zone (300-500°F). I had to keep the door open all that time (~25 to 30mins) and wood burnt rapidly (almost as if it was dry softwood) to get the temp up into the zone (~400°F). I would close the door and start throttling back the primary air. By the time I got down to ¾ open primary air the flue temp would start dropping rapidly. A couple times I tried reopening the door to stoke it back up however the stove would never stay in the burn zone for more than like 45mins. Another time at reload, I got the temp up to ~275°C and shut the door with the primary air at 100%. The wood smoldered for quite a while without good flames or much secondary burning. The temp dropped and the stove top was cool and the coal bed wasn’t glowing bright anymore. Too hot stove burns wood too fast and leaves massive coals. Too cool and stove doesn’t really burn.
Since I returned home, I found that the temp gauge being used is not the correct one (“only to be used on single wall pipe”). Oddly we are using the same pipe as with the previous stove….I’m guessing we were over-burning with the old stove?
I’ve also learned that with the new stove, flue temp gauges aren’t the best way to measure the performance of the Osburn stove.
So, does anyone on here have experience with this stove or similar unit?
Am I over-burning the wood on start-up/reload causing all my heat to go up the pipe, burning my wood down rapidly and turn to large coals?
Should I relocate the temp gauge to the top of the stove? If so, should I get it to about 500°F or so?
When reloading, approximately how long should I have to keep the door open along with full open primary air? Do I turn the primary air down to like ¼ open first then open it back up as the wood is being consumed or do I start turning down from full open?
Is it possible that our old dry hardwood is too dry? Absolutely zero moisture comes out of the ends when being burned. Also sound hollow when hit together.
Draft issue? Flue cap plugged? It’s way up there and I can’t really see much other than that smoke is coming out. The old stove didn’t seem to have an issue.
One thing I know for sure is that this stove makes some beautiful coals.
Thank you in advance!
(sorry for the long post)
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