Pacific Energy Summit

[clay1]

I am a newie to this forum wanting to share my woes with readers. I live in Canada where temperatures can dip beyond -20 F and average -10 F for couple of weeks. I had many experiences with different stoves in the past 20 years and found with this new technology is for safety, heat efficient homes and not for home that were built before insulation was available. I found with my home heating area of 1200 sqft with many windows and doors 96,000 BTU is required for heating at temperatures beyond 0 F or -18 C . I found these stoves perform best with soft wood as good seasoned hardwood like hard maple, oak, and beach creates excessive charcoal occupying space in fire chamber to add more fuel as flaming burn is what produces the most heat. To get this bed of charcoal to reduce in size results in reduced heat from the stove.
This stove was installed by an experienced dealer who also built a new chimney to specs for $10K. I reported my problem to him and Pacific energy over a week ago and have yet to receive a reply.
Here I am chilly in Canada with high tech stove with no support from dealer or manufacture hoping someone can offer some info.

Clay1

 

[begreen]

Welcome. Usually this is a sign of the hardwood not being fully seasoned. It takes at least 2 yrs for oak to fully dry when correctly stacked. Poorly seasoned wood will coal badly and will not put out the heat.

 

[Hardrockmaple]

Sounds like your experiencing the same frustrations many of us had when we first switched out our faithful old smoke dragons for one of the new EPA stoves.

First, if you don't have one, get yourself a moisture meter and test your wood, not just on the ends or exposed sides, re-split your wood and test the newly exposed grain, anything over 20% moisture is marginal, over 25% will just not burn up to your expectations. I learned this the hard way.

If your wood moisture content is greater than 25% you will have to find some that is not or work through this winter with some manufactured ecobricks (compressed sawdust/chips only) and/or scrounged pallets.

Also, if you don't have them, get yourself a stove top and stove pipe thermometer. Using them as guidelines will vastly improve your burning experience. Next, you may want to pick up an Infrared temperature gun so you really know what is going on with your stove.

And last but not least, read through the many many threads here on wood burning, lots of help to be found. When I first switched stoves I had no idea I had started my own little science project but now I really do enjoy the benefits of these new stoves.

Oh, and from all reports I've read here, you've got a heckuva stove there.

 

[DougA]

From my memory, the Summit is capable of 99,000 BTU maximum. That would mean prefect wood, perfect conditions, fire at max., etc. My guess is that most stoves get half of the max. ratings in normal operation.

Still, I would expect a Summit to heat 1,200 sq ft with ease.

 

[thechimneysweep]

I have no doubts that the Summit is capable of producing up to 99,000 btu while burning Osage Orange with the draft control wide open. That's what the phrase "Maximum Output" means. The number is to enable comparison from one model to another, and doesn't reflect the output during real world usage (more about this at (broken link removed to http://www.chimneysweeponline.com/wscompmo.htm)).

When operated in the "cruise zone" (sustained burn setting, where most of us run our stoves), the Summit produces an impressive 48,392 btu/hr, making it the second most powerful free standing wood-burner we've ever seen (more about this at (broken link removed to http://www.chimneysweeponline.com/wscomp8.htm)).

I hate to break it to you, Clay, but there isn't a wood stove on the planet that will produce a steady 96,000 btu/hr during normal sustained burn operation, especially when burning softwood.

 

[DougA]

Thanks chimneysweep, that's about what I guessed but I'm wondering if Clay got the same info from the stove store as I get when I shop. They always quote the max BTU as what it is expected to be. Just not so.

I found with my home heating area of 1200 sqft with many windows and doors 96,000 BTU is required for heating at temperatures beyond 0 F or -18 C

Just wondering where that BTU number came from? That seems too high for your sq. ft. I'm wondering if that's what your furnace is? Furnaces are a similar BTU problem. They list the max. BTU's the furnace is capable of. So, that would be 96K BTU if it had to be on 100% of the time. Lots of people finding that their furnaces are undersized to cope with the recent cold spells, esp when windy.

 

[begreen]

Furnaces list the input btus and the output btus. The input btus are calculated by the amount of fuel the burner consumes per hour. The output btus are the input x the % efficiency. The output btus are what's going into the house prior to duct losses. On average furnaces rarely run 100% of the time unless they are undersized or the house has serious heat loss and leakage.

 

[weatherguy]

Put some seasoned wood in the summit and you'll have to open the windows

 

[clay1]

Thank you readers for your input which was helpful. While waiting for temperature to reach comfort since 6 AM outside temperature -11 F no wind, stack temperature has reached 200 C draft at max. If outside temperature about -10 C with the same fuel it would be 400 C on stack in 10 minutes and would probably have to refuel and notice a five inch layer of bright coals restricting space for any further added fuel. As the flame reduces so does the stack temperature making the stove dangerously hot in front of window, It would now be ideal to heat horse shoes. If this devise was used to heat the early school class rooms, churches and community halls it would take forever to get any comfort effect.
When remembering the old cast iron box stoves would heat those halls that got too warm that door was opened and you saw cloud of vapour escaping out the door. If hydro was available and fans used to circulate the heat not as much fuel would be required. While writing this my wife found some dry logs from last years supply the temperature jumped from 200 C to 400 C in a few minutes, my problem solved, thank you all for your info.

Clay

 

[DougA]

Glad you found the problem. I had to use some 'less than dry' wood yesterday because I could not get at my wood supply with the snow. What a disaster that was.
I was thinking about your thread as I was cursing the fire. I'll be back to dry wood today, even if I have to shovel out a path.
Green wood does indeed cause too many coals. When using dry wood, all you should have is grey dust.