Overfireing Wood Stoves

[Fire Bug]

Hi Heat Seekers,
Can anyone tell me,( I'm sure someone can), if the new wood stoves are easier to control and prevent overfireing of the stove?
My old Fisher Pappa Bear was a constant job to keep the stove from overfireing. I know the new model stoves are more advanced with catlytic combusters and secondary burn tubes but are they still easy to overfire?
You still have to control the air going into the stove, to much air too hot of a burn, to little air to cool of a burn.
I am curious to know if the new stoves are much easier to control and adjust.
Thanks,
John

 

[jtp10181]

On the new ACC QUAD units they have a timer that controls the startup air. If you use it correctly you only have to set the controls when you load wood and then forget about it. I don't think you could over fire it unless you left the startup air locked open or you were burning wood that is burning extremely hot even with the startup air closed. Suppose you could also do something silly like open the ash door or the one of the other doors and over fire it. With proper use though the fire should be easy to control. I would assume most other modern stove are similar, and might not all have automatic startup air but you just close it after 10 minutes or so manually.

 

[elkimmeg]

The problem you are having with the Fisher stove is that you cannot fully control the air input. The doors are not gasketed so even closed all the way down, air leaks
by the door feeding your fire. Many fisher stoves had a groved area in their doors. If one was to install a gasket in that grove making a tight seal ( my experience a 5/8 or 3/4" thick gasket )will return controll of that stove to the air dials and give you control

To answer your original question: normally I would say one can controll a modern stove that it does not over fire. One has to make adjustments when first starting and getting a good burn going , then cut back the air. One may have to open the air upon reloads let that load get going and start cutting back air.

What I like about my stove is the secondary air is controlled automatically. It open and closes the secondary air in effort to maintain my original primary air setting.
Say I want to get 8 hours of 500 degree heat . I build a good bed of coals, fully load the stove ,open the air up a bit get the load up to 500 plus degrees and also charing of the surface.
I close the damper which activates the Cat combustor and let it run at 500 degrees. If I want more heat I go back and open the primary air a little bit and watch the stove top therometer,
if it rises to 600, I have nothing left to do for the next 6 plus hours, but let it burn and it is controled by the secondary air thermatically

 

[jtp10181]

Got any links for good articles or reading about Cat stoves? Being as my dealer only sells QUAD I know nothing about catalytic stoves, how they work, etc...

 

[Fire Bug]

Hi Elk,
For all the years I burned my Fisher Papa Bear, I always wonder why there was no door gasket in the groove of the stove body and the door.
All I know, it was probably the thing I hated most about using a wood burner. I would have to constantly get up off the recliner to adjust the two air knobs.
I would try to keep the stove pipe temp around 500 degrees but as soon as i got it there and sat back down to relax in heat from the stove, the darn thermometer would either start to climb or start to drop. It was worse than a baby, you had to constantly fiddle with it.
It was probably the biggest down fault I had with the stove. It really threw a lot of great, dry, heat.
I was just wondering if the new wood burners were better disigned for this problem and from what I have read so far, they are.
Jtp's info. on the quadrafire is amazing to have an automatic setting.

Thanks,
John

 

[Highbeam]

Well I would say they are easier to control than the fisher you describe. Your fisher, when gasketed, should be capable of smothering any fire meaning you can just go spin those knobs shut and the fire will go away. You can't do that anymore since the new stoves don't allow complete closing of the main air inlet. Furhter, the secondary air inlets are always wide open so overfiring is very possible in high draft situations. Because of this, the old fisher was more controllable and less likely to overfire but the flipside is that you have to fiddle with it more to keep the temp you want.

I would rather have the new one. In the meantime, put a gasket in teh door and see how you like it.

 

[RonB]

I recently switched out a Vestal double door step top with the air spin controls on the doors. Mine had the gasket material installed on the doors. However, even when the doors were shut there was still a small air gap in two places. I seldom tried to control the fire with the spin controls other than at start up. I used an in line stove pipe damper for controlling rate of burn. You might want to try this as well as the gaskets on the doors as suggested previously suggested.

 

[webbie]

Newer stoves ARE easier to control for a number of reasons. Safety testing as well as emissions testings assures that the air control will not open as wide as that of earlier stoves. The clean burning designs also mean that heat is being pulled from the wood at most all stages of the fire (at any firing rate), so it is not as much Feast or Famine like that older model you mention.

 

[Todd]

Got any links for good articles or reading about Cat stoves? Being as my dealer only sells QUAD I know nothing about catalytic stoves, how they work, etc...

Try this fellow cheese head.

(broken link removed to http://www.woodstove.com/pages/combustortips.html)

 

[MrGriz]

Since this was my first season burning, there was a bit of a learning curve but it was surprisingly easy. Now, I am able to more easily control the burn and temperature of my Osburn insert. There is some adjustment when starting and re-loading the fire, but once it's going and I cut the air back I can let her cruise.

The only times I've worried about overfiring were when I left it burn too long with the air wide open after a re-load.

 

[Fire Bug]

I recently switched out a Vestal double door step top with the air spin controls on the doors. Mine had the gasket material installed on the doors. However, even when the doors were shut there was still a small air gap in two places. I seldom tried to control the fire with the spin controls other than at start up. I used an in line stove pipe damper for controlling rate of burn. You might want to try this as well as the gaskets on the doors as suggested previously suggested.

Hi Ron,
My stove also had the stove pipe manual butterfly type damper on it which used to always use with the air knobs.
I fully understand about the adjustments when starting the fire from scratch and when adding new wood to the firebox.
I definitely think, as posted in this thread before that a door gasket would help greatly instead of the metal to metal design.
As I read elsewhere in previous threads about overfiring in the secondary combustion chamber or air tube, it sound like it could get a bit tickelish if the secondary overfires since, from what I understand, the secondary air supply cannot be shut of like the primary air supply.
I believe this was under the thread, "Runnaway Stoves"
John

 

[Highbeam]

As I read elsewhere in previous threads about overfiring in the secondary combustion chamber or air tube, it sound like it could get a bit tickelish if the secondary overfires since, from what I understand, the secondary air supply cannot be shut of like the primary air supply.
I believe this was under the thread, "Runnaway Stoves"
John

That's exactly where you have more control with your old EPA stove. You can shut it off or open it way up. The EPA stoves allow neither. I believe there is a difference between control and consistency. Meaning I can set my EPA stove and it will pretty much cruise at a chosen temperature but my ability to change that temperature is limited, unlike the fisher where you can give it huge air or zero air to stop it from running away or in the case of a chimney fire. This is a very important feature for just-in-case.

To regain some of the control lost by going to EPA some folks have gone so far as to add a shut off valve to the outside air intake snorkel to override the stove controls.

 

[Fire Bug]

HighBeam,
I had one chimney fire in 21 years of burning my Fishe Papa Bear.
The chimney fire could not have blamed on anyone or anything except me. I skipped a chimney cleaning the year before because of little use of the stove. I fired the stove up in the early spring to get the dampness out of the rec room using very small kindling in a large amount. I returned back upstairs where my wife who was preparing dinner asked me if I dampened off the stove three times over a period of 15 minutes. I told her to let it get good and let it burn hot for a while to burn up any creosote build up. Finally I took the garbage downstairs and low and behold I thought I had a 747 Jet in my flue. I imediatiely closed the stove pipe butterfly damper and the air intake door knobs completely and I could hear the noise begin to suside.
I went outside to look at the crown of chimney and there were no flames visible but it was smoking like and old steam ship.
The fire company was called and they checked out the attack and exstinquised the fire from up top with a dry chemical exstinquisher.
I had no structure damage to the house or chimney flue but I had some smoke back up in the house when the dry chemical exstinquisher was used.
The insurance co. sent a chimney sweep to check out the chimney flue for damage but it showed no damage.
Needless to say this was the beginning of the end of my"Woody" in my wifes eyes.

John

 

[Highbeam]

With an EPA secondary combustion stove (maybe also with a cat stove) the secondary air supply is fully open all the time so that that chimney fire would have had as much air as it could suck through the inlets. Maybe if you had used an EPA stove from the start there wouldn't have been enough creosote to start that chimney fire.

"beginning of the end of my woody"...... hmmm, no comment.

Even though your preEPA allows a better response to a chimney fire, I think it is worth the trade off to have a cleaner burning EPA stove. That is, I wouldn't trade my EPA stove for a preEPA version.

I reread your original post and I want to be sure that I vote for the new stoves being reasonably easy to prevent overfires. You actually asked, "but are they still easy to overfire?" and I can intentionally overfire my stove with ease but I am confident that I won't do it accidentally now that I have become accustomed to the allowable fuel loads, draft settings, and split sizes.

 

[Todd]

On cat stoves there is only 1 air supply, and you can shut them all the way off. So they kind of operate like the old air tights, slow burns without all the smoke. I like how it gives you more control in case of overfire.

Most non cats can't shut off all the air unless you modify it to do so. A couple months ago somebody posted pictures of how they modified their secondary air inlet on a non cat.

 

[Fire Bug]

[quote author=""beginning of the end of my woody"...... hmmm, no comment.

This is bad, this is really bad! I ask a simple question, and everything seems to be going fine and than this!
But if you think about it, look what happened to Pinochio everythime he told a lie!
I am bad, I am really bad!

Signed,
"Big Liar"

 

[alfio]

I can speak from experience, that the new high tech stove do tent to over heath. I have two of them, a quad and an efel wood stove and they both over heath , if your not careful on how much wood you fill it with. You can see how much trouble i went throw , on my post [ efel wood stove out of control ]. I had to modify the secondary manifolds intake to get sum crontrol of it.

 

[Fire Bug]

I can speak from experience, that the new high tech stove do tent to over heath. I have two of them, a quad and an efel wood stove and they both over heath , if your not careful on how much wood you fill it with. You can see how much trouble i went throw , on my post [ efel wood stove out of control ]. I had to modify the secondary manifolds intake to get sum crontrol of it.

alfio,
I saw your post that is mentioned in the above quote and that is what got me thinking, so I created this thread.
John

 

[elkimmeg]

remember his setup had two sr toves installed side by side into the same flue. from his pictures I saw on thimbles asnd knowing a bit about masonry chiimney construction it is almost inpossible to make two 6" flue connections into a 8/12 clay liner without destroying it. then I believe he has the common ash dump area plus he added a barometric damper and this is the same flue that also services a n insert sitting in a fireplace above No mention of full liner no regard to cross sectional code no mention of how the insert is installed.,

He posted a thread with draft issues Daaaaah? I bet that installation never was permitted or inspected? I could go on and on as to why that setup over drafted but he never addressed my first questions. I also suspect the clay flue if it even extends that far is non existant I think he has two flue pipes venting in to the hollow below the actual flue going into an common ash dump area and that it is not even comfined to a flue

Measure that, that into Consideration Fire Bug Not your best example for over fireing

 

[alfio]

I can speak from experience, that the new high tech stove do tent to over heath. I have two of them, a quad and an efel wood stove and they both over heath , if your not careful on how much wood you fill it with. You can see how much trouble i went throw , on my post [ efel wood stove out of control ]. I had to modify the secondary manifolds intake to get sum crontrol of it.

alfio,
I saw your post that is mentioned in the above quote and that is what got me thinking, so I created this thread.
John

yes, I think they are meant to burn hot but not that hot that they reach 900 degrees , and that feeling that you have no control over it . I finally got sum control , but not has much has i would like. I'm afraid to leave it unattended. Personally i thing they are garbage , they are suppose to saving wood, but i thing they burn more then the pre epa stove did.

 

[alfio]

remember his setup had two sr toves installed side by side into the same flue. from his pictures I saw on thimbles asnd knowing a bit about masonry chiimney construction it is almost inpossible to make two 6" flue connections into a 8/12 clay liner without destroying it. then I believe he has the common ash dump area plus he added a barometric damper and this is the same flue that also services a n insert sitting in a fireplace above No mention of full liner no regard to cross sectional code no mention of how the insert is installed.,

He posted a thread with draft issues Daaaaah? I bet that installation never was permitted or inspected? I could go on and on as to why that setup over drafted but he never addressed my first questions. I also suspect the clay flue if it even extends that far is non existant I think he has two flue pipes venting in to the hollow below the actual flue going into an common ash dump area and that it is not even comfined to a flue

Measure that, that into Consideration Fire Bug Not your best example for over fireing

Elk i told you before that the other stove is not hook up at this time , get you facts straight , there is only one stove on that chimney. And has for the insert , thats on a separate flu up on the first floor , I'm not stooped !

 

[jtp10181]

Out of all the EPA wood stoves we have sold, only one customer has had a problem with the fire burning out of control. After many trial and error attempts to fix it over the phone (he is 6 hours north of our store). We agreed to swap the stove out no charge for the same model, or he could upgrade and pay the diff. We have it sitting in the warehouse right now and are going to investigate it this summer when we have some free time. After he put his new stove in he said there has been no problems and he gets a lot more heat out of it. His old one was tipping the scale on the stove top stat (900F+) and the new one he can easily keep within acceptable ranges.

 

[alfio]

Out of all the EPA wood stoves we have sold, only one customer has had a problem with the fire burning out of control. After many trial and error attempts to fix it over the phone (he is 6 hours north of our store). We agreed to swap the stove out no charge for the same model, or he could upgrade and pay the diff. We have it sitting in the warehouse right now and are going to investigate it this summer when we have some free time. After he put his new stove in he said there has been no problems and he gets a lot more heat out of it. His old one was tipping the scale on the stove top stat (900F+) and the new one he can easily keep within acceptable ranges.

keep us posted on your findings , I'm assuming that that stove is a quad. I have 3100i and it over fired on me the top was glowing red. I called the dealer and he suggested a chimney cap , i think it did nutting i just do not load it all the way any more .

 

[jtp10181]

If both of your stoves over fire then there is probably something else going on, and I doubt its the stoves. As elk suggested.

 

[alfio]

If both of your stoves over fire then there is probably something else going on, and I doubt its the stoves. As elk suggested.

well , what are you suggesting , that i did sum thing wrong. First of all the insert , was installed by the dealer and inspected by the dealer .the dealers name is, [ All basic stove shop ] in merrimack N.H they are a quad. dealerto that's what they specialize in. And even glass is frosted from the intens heat , but I'm to descanted to call them and have it replaced .