PE Alderlea T5 insert too small?

[reagib]

Last winter, we purchased a PE Alderlea T5 insert. We have been fighting with it to keep even the main living area warm. We live in a 2500 sq ft ranch style home in SW Missouri. It warms up, then quickly cools down, leaving a huge bed of coals behind. On days where it is sunny and not too cold, it works great and the coals keep us warm for several hours. On days where it is colder and cloudy, we have to shovel out a bucket of coals once a day. If we don't, the coals just build and we can't get near enough heat out of it. The chimney is not on an external wall. The wood is well seasoned, tested on a room temp piece, freshly split.

How we load it is we add the wood, allow it to get hot (taken with an IR temp gun on the top of the stove) with air fully open for a bit, and then turn it about halfway down, until it is nice and hot. Then we turn the air most of the way down and turn the blower on low.

We've tried leaving the air up a little more, turning it down all the way...we just can't get the heat we need.

Did we mess up and get too small of a stove?? Our thinking was we didn't want one too big so our main living area wouldn't get too hot and the dealer thought this stove should be plenty for our space. I feel like we are going through way too much wood for an "efficient" stove.

One last note...our attic is insulated, but probably needs a bit more. Could that be the problem? Or are we doing something wrong?

Thank you!

 

[coreboy83]

When my T5 stove gets full of coals, I rake everything to the front and toss on some small pieces E W and let it rip for a while. Flatten out the coals after 30-ish minutes and reload N S. We also employ a small desk top fan down the hallway pointed towards the stove to create a convective loop. Ceiling fan in the stairway pushing down. These practices keep our 2000 sq. ft. split level 72 upstairs and 80 in the stove room.

 

[reagib]

When my T5 stove gets full of coals, I rake everything to the front and toss on some small pieces E W and let it rip for a while. Flatten out the coals after 30-ish minutes and reload N S. We also employ a small desk top fan down the hallway pointed towards the stove to create a convective loop. Ceiling fan in the stairway pushing down. These practices keep our 2000 sq. ft. split level 72 upstairs and 80 in the stove room.

Yep, we rake them forward burn them down the same. And yes, we have a fan in the hall to circulate, and a ceiling fan in the main living area where the insert is. We struggle to keep it 70 in the stove room.

 

[coreboy83]

Have you verified all gaskets including baffle gasket are well and intact ? I'm burning red and white oak this year

 

[reagib]

Have you verified all gaskets including baffle gasket are well and intact ? I'm burning red and white oak this year

Had not considered gaskets since this is the first full season we've used the stove and it's not a new problem. Last year we thought maybe our wood wasn't seasoned well enough...this year we know that is not the problem.
We will have to inspect the baffle gasket when we can shut the stove down and get it cooled off. Where are any other gaskets we should check?

 

[mar13]

If you've never had a previous stove in the house to compare it with, I suspect the house design/insulation may be the issue of why what the dealer thought would work for you doesn't. My T5 would cook out most people in my region, but in my house with cathedral ceilings and terrible winter passive solar, many windows, etc. I wouldn't want to have gone any smaller and could have gone larger - though I'm happy with what I got if I'm not bringing the house up from the low/mid 50s. The dealer was saying a Summit series would have cooked me and was only for huge houses. (That also brings up the question, at what temperature is the house starting at when you are trying to warm it up?)

What type of wood are you burning? I know if I were to burn redwood, I'd get a lot of coals and not much heat, as opposed to burning oak.

 

[begreen]

It depends on the heat loss rate of the home, but in our old 2000 sq ft house, the T5 would be undersized for cold weather. It might work, but I would need to be pushing it for heat and reloading it at a much more frequent rate than the 50% larger T6.