Question for BrotherBart

[hardwood715]

Hi BrotherBart, I'm not sure if you monitor the stovetop temp or not on Old Brownie, but if you do, whats your sweet operating temp? Nice Stove and Nice Picture! I know what you are going thru in reference to maybe updating ,as I am burning with a 1980 classic fireplace insert, And I find mine hovers around 600 to 650 in its best stage if you know what I'm trying to say, not dampered too much

 

[BrotherBart]

Hi BrotherBart, I'm not sure if you monitor the stovetop temp or not on Old Brownie, but if you do, whats your sweet operating temp? Nice Stove and Nice Picture! I know what you are going thru in reference to maybe updating ,as I am burning with a 1980 classic fireplace insert, And I find mine hovers around 600 to 650 in its best stage if you know what I'm trying to say, not dampered too much

I use a stove top thermo and now the non-contact handheld and prefer five-fifty to six-fifty myself. Above five-fifty the rolling burn up top is just about right. Right now that is hard to maintain. Since the liner installation the thing drafts so hard that with more than two splits the temp heads for the sky. Even with the exhaust damper closed (it is restricted by design to only close two thirds of the way). I am scratching my head today trying to figure out how to get it back under control. Since the secondary air enters over the glass panels I am going to gasket them halfway and try it out. With your stove you can just tighten the screws to back it off, not so with this one. Also, in the past I have let the ashpan just stay full and forgot it was there. I have always suspected air incursion from the thing even though the gasket has no leaks around it. During the refurb I emptied it out. This morning, since I don't have enough ash built up, I completely packed it with rockwool to take it out of suspicion.

I made all of these improvements to increase efficiency in the thing and created Frankenstove. I turned my nice old consistent burning heater into a blast furnace.

 

[hardwood715]

Thanks for the reply, Since my newly found in the cellar manual warns me not to let the stove glow red, I was not sure what a safe temp was. I once had her near 800, and it wasnt glowing, just cooking, loaded her with cedar splits, and left the knobs open, went upstairs for a while, and wifey says I think the furnace is set too high! Furnace wasn't even on! It sure is an art trying to figure a sweet spot and routine with the knobs, Dave_1 has a fisher with 2 knobs and I followed his procedure in an earlier post, I got 2 per door. Yes mine can definatly get me in trouble with the dampering down to a smolder, I'm so anal, I check my chimney once a week, Second year using her, she sat since maybe 83 unused, Pop bought her new in 80, came down to see that warned about glowing red stove one night, and never used her again, scared the living crap outta him, god rest his soul, I bought the house from my sister in law with her sitting in the fireplace waiting to be woken up! Hope you figure Ole Brownie out, cause it sure is a fine looking stove! I get a kick out of your ingenuity, and the new furnace you created!

 

[BrotherBart]

I can tell you that the glow starts between 1000 and 1100. Your breathing becomes very fast about that point also. 911 was punched into the cell phone awaiting hitting the "call" button.

At eight hundred the stove needs to come back down but the main thing that is getting hurt is whatever you are venting into. The stress on either flue tiles or a liner at that point is huge because on a pre-EPA stove your exhaust is equal to or more than the stove surface.

My liner is no longer shiny silver. At eight hundred degress heat starts to affect stainless. It was a classic case of fixing too many things at once instead of making one improvement at a time and testing.