Pine still raging with air all the way down

[SculptureOfSound]

Hi guys,

New burner here. All I have right now is pine which I'm burning in a fireplace insert (Montpelier).

The splits we're from 10-15% moisture when checked after a fresh split. Most were 11 or 12.

Anyhow, even with my air turned all the way down this stuff burns fast. Crazy secondaries and the flame never gets real slow and lazy. There's definitely a noticeable difference in burn between open air and closed, it rages like hellfire with the air fully open, but even with the air closed there is no way to choke it down fully (not that I want to, but I would like to get it down to a lazy fire stage) I. Heck, it still looks like most hardwood fires that have the air about half open.

Is this just the nature of pine? I'm just a bit worried because it's 42 degrees here and I can only imagine it will burn even faster when it's colder and there's even more draft. Speaking of draft, I didnt think I would even have enough - chimney is only 13 feet from firebox floor to the top but I did add about 4 extra feet by using rigid duraliner, so have about 17 feet total. That's not much in the grand scheme - seems like I should be able to control this pine a bit more.

 

[Ludlow]

No matter who says otherwise, you shouldnt burn coniferous species in a wood stove. No different than cutting studs to length and burning them.

 

[SculptureOfSound]

Why do you say that Ludlow?

I should add that it does slow down a bit after an hour or so. It seems like it just off gasses SO much at first that there is no way to truly tame it in that first hour. I'd like to get more burn time out of it if possible. I kstj put a big split in about an hour ago and it seems to be doing better now. was still quite the light show though for that first hour!

 

[begreen]

No matter who says otherwise, you shouldnt burn coniferous species in a wood stove. No different than cutting studs to length and burning them.

Nonsense. Most folks out west burn pine, spruce, fir, etc.. Doug fir is what we have burned for the past several years. It's also what is used for EPA stove testing.

SoS, the wood is pretty dry and it will want to outgas quickly. Try larger splits and try closing down the air much sooner. This is more obvious with a flue thermometer, but with an insert you will have to do it by eye. Start closing down the air as soon as the fire starts burning vigorously. If you have some 20% wood add that to the drier fuel load.

Also, how are you loading the stove? Are there a lot of air gaps between the splits or are they tightly packed? Tighter packing will also help slow down the fire.

 

[jebatty]

Can't have a raging fire without a good air supply. Your insert is pulling in air from somewhere, or is designed so that you can't shut the air down sufficiently. As to burning pine, white, jack and red, that is the primary wood I burn in my Tarm wood boiler, and never have I had an uncontrollable fire. Beyond that, begreen's advice is good to follow.

 

[Ctwoodtick]

Doing the dollar bill test on your door gasket will help rule out a gasket issue. Probably not what you’re dealing with but good to check anyway.

 

[bholler]

No matter who says otherwise, you shouldnt burn coniferous species in a wood stove. No different than cutting studs to length and burning them.

That is completly wrong it is perfectly safe to burn pine or any other soft wood in a stove. It is even safe to burn untrreated 2x4s but i wouldnt recomend packing the stove full because they are typically very dry.

 

[toddnic]

Absolute nonsense to say that you can't burn pine. Just make sure that it is seasoned. I burn pine, hemlock, and poplar during the shoulder seasons. They are all great woods. Regarding your stove, have you checked and made sure that all of the gaskets are good? My guess is that you probably need to replace some of the gaskets.

 

[Bad LP]

I was also going to write look for bad gaskets.

 

[webby3650]

Can't have a raging fire without a good air supply. Your insert is pulling in air from somewhere, or is designed so that you can't shut the air down sufficiently. As to burning pine, white, jack and red, that is the primary wood I burn in my Tarm wood boiler, and never have I had an uncontrollable fire. Beyond that, begreen's advice is good to follow.

New stoves, particularly non-cats always allow airflow. What’s being described sounds normal to me. Shutting the air down sooner and using some bigger splits will help offset the problem here. Checking the gasket is always a good idea too, but I’ll bet it’s just the nature of the beast.
Stoves have been getting less controllable for a while now I think. Non-cats have less of an “off” and cat stove have less of a high burn. We will see even more of this in the near future for many stoves to pass the 2020 EPA regulations.

 

[CentralVAWoodHeat]

I burn plenty of pine as well and support the mixing woods technique. When I get some dry pine splits, I will typically load them along with some more dense hardwoods to avoid a firebox full of resin (very different than creosote).

Not everyone has the luxury us south east cost folks do with expansive hardwood forests. Conifers are king in many places.

 

[maple1]

No matter who says otherwise, you shouldnt burn coniferous species in a wood stove. No different than cutting studs to length and burning them.

Disagree also.

 

[peakbagger]

Get out the old fire triangle. A stove takes Heat, Oxygen and Fuel to burn. The stove is hot and the fire gives off heat so not a lot of way to control the heat, so now we are down to two factors to control the fire, fuel and oxygen. The fuel is dry and not very dense so its going to convert to gases (wood doesnt burn, it turns to gases from the heat and then the gases burn). So you do have control over how much wood you supply and the form you are supplying it. Others have said go with larger splits which have less surface to volume ratio so they off gas less. The final traditional way to control a fire is by controlling its oxygen. Ever since stoves got built, the standard approach has been put a damper on it to control heat output. The problem is when you limit oxygen to a stove, the gases do not disappear magically, what happens is some dont burn completely and form CO (carbon monoxide) and other gases just burn off the easy stuff and recondeses in the stack to form tar that turns into creosote. This makes for a dirty stove that cranks out lots of emissions. One patch to this approach is put in a catalyst or secondary burn chamber that "burns" the smoke. With the catalyst it makes the smoke "burn" at a lower temp, with secondary it just makes sure that one part of the gases get hot enough to burn completely. Note anytime gases "burn" they give off heat and that heats up the room and the fuel meaning the stove is cranking out more gases which then needs more oxygen. At some point something has to give, either the fuel burns out, the owner strips down to shorts or the stove exhaust gets dirty.

The EPA then steps in and declares that if someone is going to sell a stove it will burn clean. The stove manufacturer cannot control the owner of the stove throwing wood in the firebox but they can control the air going into the stove. In the vast majority of stoves, the manufacturer puts in secondary air ports that cant be closed and some are hidden. The result is the stove burns clean but drive the owner out of the house until he /she figures out that the way to control a stove is by controlling the fuel. Every stove handles fuel differently and it will take awhile to determine how much and how often to feed the stove. The trade off this means you end up having to feed the stove more often. In the "good old days" the approach was cram in the wood before bed then crank down the air damper. It meant a long burn but for several hours the stove was burning dirty unless the wood was real dense.

The other issue is that most folks buy a stove in summer and then start using it in the fall when they dont need a lot of heat. Stoves are designed to put out a range of heat, folks figure out the maximum when the stove isnt large enough on a cold night but many dont figure out the minimum heat output. Therefore folks are trying to learn in the most difficult time of year to learn it. Its easy to crank a stove up to low output but getting it to turn down is a lot harder to master. Ideally someone should have a fall and spring stove and winter stove. The fall and spring stove would be much smaller. Few do that so just realize shoulder season heating with one stove is going to be about compromises

Note some folks will occasionally boast how they gamed the system by plugging the hidden secondary air ports. What they have done is effectively converted a clean stove into a dirty stove.

Realistically start off with small fires slowly introducing large splits, realizing that things get easier as the heating demand increases.

 

[blades]

Is it possible to put a damper in the short section of your flue before the block off plate that you could extend the control out for adjustment?( I was typing this a peatbagger was posting. ) Idea here is to reduce the draft rate. I had a similar experience many many years ago - epa style stove early 90's and me a newb at the time, stove went ballistic even though I had everything closed down ( no flue damper though) to the point where in poor light the 4 ft of the double wall pipe above stove was glowing a faint red ( in a Mobile home no less). ( 4x4 chunks from pallets- as they quite heavy must have been really load with pitch).
The usual culprit regarding supplied combustion air- is the air wash system for the glass - no controls on that in most units- not even mentioned in most manuals that it is independent of the secondary air feed. Some of the efforts regarding blocking these were related to extending burn times same as putting a control on the secondary air independent of the main control.
The stove above has a independent secondary air control from that of the main air inlet- that particular company opted to drop the stove line rather than play footsie with EPA as it was a secondary business. Back then a lot of the stoves had independent control of the secondary air. Shame that that has gone away that little stove ( rated at 1000 sq. ft.) would give a 8 hour burn on hardwoods. and I never had more than a couple cups of crud when cleaning flue at end of season.

 

[bholler]

Is it possible to put a damper in the short section of your flue before the block off plate that you could extend the control out for adjustment?

We have done it on steel inserts with simple sheetmetal surrounds we could drill for the handle. The cast surround on the montpilier would be a problem. You also have to get creative with a linkage.

 

[black smoke signals]

Hi guys,

New burner here. All I have right now is pine which I'm burning in a fireplace insert (Montpelier).

The splits we're from 10-15% moisture when checked after a fresh split. Most were 11 or 12.

Anyhow, even with my air turned all the way down this stuff burns fast. Crazy secondaries and the flame never gets real slow and lazy. There's definitely a noticeable difference in burn between open air and closed, it rages like hellfire with the air fully open, but even with the air closed there is no way to choke it down fully (not that I want to, but I would like to get it down to a lazy fire stage) I. Heck, it still looks like most hardwood fires that have the air about half open.

Is this just the nature of pine? I'm just a bit worried because it's 42 degrees here and I can only imagine it will burn even faster when it's colder and there's even more draft. Speaking of draft, I didnt think I would even have enough - chimney is only 13 feet from firebox floor to the top but I did add about 4 extra feet by using rigid duraliner, so have about 17 feet total. That's not much in the grand scheme - seems like I should be able to control this pine a bit more.

Last year I posted this same story as yours about burning Pine in my case I was burning Beatle kill Ponderous. Most of you have posted that it’s safe to burn you need to understand not all pine trees are created equal at least where I live! All of my pine is full of pitch (no meter available to check) made a big mistake loading up my BK tight packed 11 percent moisture checked door for leaks and the load took off like it had gasoline poured on it. I’m now burning elm

 

[bholler]

Last year I posted this same story as yours about burning Pine in my case I was burning Beatle kill Ponderous. Most of you have posted that it’s safe to burn you need to understand not all pine trees are created equal at least where I live! All of my pine is full of pitch (no meter available to check) made a big mistake loading up my BK tight packed 11 percent moisture checked door for leaks and the load took off like it had gasoline poured on it. I’m now burning elm

11% is also extremely dry. I would be very carefull with any wood that dry. Anything that dry is going to offgass really quickly.

 

[Pertzbro]

Would opening the door to cool the stove/chimney help at all? I thought i read that was a good idea in event of overfire or border line Chimney fire.

Its counter-intuitive to add more oxygen but read that opening the door cools the firebox down considerably.

 

[webby3650]

Would opening the door to cool the stove/chimney help at all? I thought i read that was a good idea in event of overfire or border line Chimney fire.

Its counter-intuitive to add more oxygen but read that opening the door cools the firebox down considerably.

It will cool down the flue gas temperature. It will also about guarantee a flue fire if the chimney has much build up in it.

I don’t believe the OP is describing an overfire situation, rather just a HOT stove. A lot of people panic when their stove reaches temperatures that are still within the safe operating temperatures.

 

[Ludlow]

Does your stove manual state to only burn seasoned hardwood? Take a look. Do what you like.

 

[Seasoned Oak]

No matter who says otherwise, you shouldnt burn coniferous species in a wood stove. No different than cutting studs to length and burning them.

I have 4 woodstoves in different locations,2 different types and i burn almost exclusively pine. I can control the fire with no problem .Never had a chimney fire. Some of the chimneys are 30 plus feet high. The pine is very dry ,sometimes i burn 2x4 scraps too,not a problem. Only difference between the pine and the oak is the oak burns longer.

 

[begreen]

Does your stove manual state to only burn seasoned hardwood? Take a look. Do what you like.

The Montpelier Medium Insert is designed to burn natural wood only; do not burn fuels other than that for which it was designed.

You’ll enjoy the best results when burning wood that has been adequately air-dried. Avoid burning “green” wood that has not been properly seasoned or cordwood that is more than two years old. The best hardwood fuels include oak, maple, beech, ash, and hickory that has been split, stacked, and airdried outside under cover for at least one to two years.

For areas that do not have a supply of hardwood, commonly burned softwoods include tamarack, yellow pine, white pine, Eastern red cedar, fir, and redwood. These too should be properly dried.

 

[bholler]

It will cool down the flue gas temperature. It will also about guarantee a flue fire if the chimney has much build up in it.

I don’t believe the OP is describing an overfire situation, rather just a HOT stove. A lot of people panic when their stove reaches temperatures that are still within the safe operating temperatures.

If it is a true over fire it would most likely have already lit off the chimney if there was stuff to burn there. I dont see much risk in doing it if it is just an overfire. But it is absolutly the wrong thing to do if it is a chimney fire.

 

[bholler]

Does your stove manual state to only burn seasoned hardwood? Take a look. Do what you like.

Nope as begreen posted his manual doesnt say that and i looked neither does your. It just says use dry firewood.

 

[Ludlow]

I recall from as far back as I can remember that you never burned evergreens in the fireplace. Nobody I know would even think about doing it. Was always told it would clog the chimney. All evergreens were saved for the outdoor firepit. Maybe I lived a sheltered life....

Im still not going to do it.