Stove temps

[kversch]

so I'm in the long process of learning just how to get my lopi liberty burning just right. We're in our forth day with the stove. And we've come pretty much kept it going since it was installed.

First off I couldn't be happier with the stove. I love it it looks sooo good. My wife and myself find ourselfs just starting at it and fighting over who gets to sitting in the chair in front of it.

So my wife is anumbers girl. She like to have set benchmarks to look for makes her feel more comfortable running the stove. I don't mind just rolling with it watching and judging by the way the stove is acting. What kind of temp ranges should she be looking for on the stove. What kind of temps should we see the stack staying around.

I've been trying to get the stove temp up to 7-800 befor reloading for long slow burns But it's been difficult. I can easily get up to around 6-650. But it seems like it didn't hold that temp very long. I load the stove up as full as I can 6-8 splits and I can get a around 3-3.5 maybe 4 hits of flames and secondary's burning ( secondary's are lazy after the first 2 hours.). Are my splits to small or to big?

 

[lopiliberty]

My liberty seems to like a stove top temp of 700 to 750 on a full load. Stack temps usually run between 300 and 400. I load my liberty mostly north/south with 16in splits. Gives me a hotter burn plus I can get a lot more wood in that way. How dry is your wood. The liberty definitely likes dry wood. Also what size splits do you use. If I load mine full with too small splits it goes nuclear.

 

[kversch]

My liberty seems to like a stove top temp of 700 to 750 on a full load. Stack temps usually run between 300 and 400. I load my liberty mostly north/south with 16in splits. Gives me a hotter burn plus I can get a lot more wood in that way. How dry is your wood. The liberty definitely likes dry wood. Also what size splits do you use. If I load mine full with too small splits it goes nuclear.

I'm loading E/W b/c my wood is mostly cut to 18 inches long. The wood is pretty dry it's been cut and split for around 3 years moisture meter says 18-20%. The sizes vary but I try to keep it to I splits I can pick up with on hand.

 

[fespo]

Im going to say it's all about the wood. How dry and what type, with dry oak the fire still burns great, but just takes a little longer to take off. Also you have to PACK that baby full. 18" splits are a little small for east west loading. try putting your splits all to one end then add another small split in the gap from the wood to the stove. The fuller it is the better your secondaries take off. Im looking at the pictures of you firewood, it looks damp, maybe just the picture. Frank

 

[kversch]

Im going to say it's all about the wood. How dry and what type, with dry oak the fire still burns great, but just takes a little longer to take off. Also you have to PACK that baby full. 18" splits are a little small for east west loading. try putting your splits all to one end then add another small split in the gap from the wood to the stove. The fuller it is the better your secondaries take off. Im looking at the pictures of you firewood, it looks damp, maybe just the picture. Frank

Its the pic. The wood was stacked on the ground befor I got it so it's really dirty. It's been stacked on a pallet for two years since I got it. Mixed hard wood. Mostly cherry. Some walnut maple and oak here and there

 

[Squisher]

Than its a really bad pic. Because it looks half wet and half rotten.

 

[DBoon]

For your fourth day, it sounds like you are doing pretty well.

The stove you have (and all newer EPA stoves) are designed to be loaded once and then left alone for 8-12 hours. They are not meant to be "fed" continuously with logs. It sounds like you are trying to load your stove with enough wood to get it to 700-800 degrees, then refill it with more wood for a sustained burn. I would not do this. If your stove has coals, wait until it gets down to 300-350 degrees or so and rake the coals to the front, and reload. If it is really cold, load with a lot of splits, and if it is warmer, load with fewer splits. Then, keep the door cracked open about 5 minutes to get a reasonable flame going, close the door, and when the stove top reaches ~400 degrees, start to slowly reduce the primary air in stages. Each stove is different - you'll get the feel for this as you operate the stove more.

Lori stoves are pretty tough, and they like to cruise at 600 to 650 when burning secondaries. This is ok. I've hit 750 on mine a few times. The dealer tells me 800 is no problem. But I wouldn't aim to be running it at 700-800 all the time - that would be a sign that you are not using the stove correctly or are trying to get too much heat out of the stove. A 3-4 hour secondary burn time is pretty good - I wouldn't expect more. I get max 2 hours with my smaller Lopi stove (less wood = shorter secondary burns).

 

[kversch]

So the last two reloads I had yesterday and this morning have got me a little stumped now. Same wood same stack just slightly larger splits. I am having trouble getting the secondary's to kick in or at last like they had been. Reloaded were on warm/hot coal with some kindling and couple small splints to get going then 6-8 splits. Only real thing I did different was I started cutting sit back at 550 instead of the higher temps. Doing this I can't seem to get/keep full secondary's. I seem to get more fire on the wood but not much secondary's.

 

[DBoon]

Everything you are saying is consistent with your wood moisture content not being as low as you think it is. Check out this thread for an alternate method to measure the moisture content using a multi-meter and a lookup table - you have to know the type of wood you are testing.
https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/using-a-multimeter-to-measure-wood-moisture-level.40033/

 

[kversch]

Everything you are saying is consistent with your wood moisture content not being as low as you think it is. Check out this thread for an alternate method to measure the moisture content using a multi-meter and a lookup table - you have to know the type of wood you are testing.
https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/using-a-multimeter-to-measure-wood-moisture-level.40033/

I have a moistur meter that came with the stove and another one I purchased off amazon befor I knew they gave me one when you buy a lopi. I'll have to check out the moisture content of the bigger splits later tonight. The wood is cherry black walnut maple (sugar and silver) and a little of black locust and some oak mixed in.

 

[kversch]

I took 5 or 6 different splits and split then again to check the moisture %. I got a range in the low 20's to 30. So I know that means the wood is less that ideal. So what can I do?

Knowing the wood is less than ideal should I be worried about my chimney?

 

[firefighterjake]

You can help things a bit by mixing in pallet wood. Not sure if you have a flue and stove thermometer, but these help a lot. You may need to leave the air control open a bit more vs. using well seasoned wood.

Worried about the chimney? No . . . but you do want to frequently inspect the chimney and clean it when needed. The first year I checked mine about every two or three weeks.

 

[kversch]

We have a prob thermometer in the stove pipe(double wall). Then I have been using a in thermometer on the stove top for now till I get another Can you recommend a good one for on the stove top?

I have a ranch house so I can easily check the top of the chimney, what would be considered a worry sum amount of build up? It's normal for the cap to be somewhat black correct?

Thanks for all the help so far everyone.

 

[firefighterjake]

I'm partial to Condar thermometers.

Last I knew the recommendation was to sweep a chimney when there was something like 1/4 inch of creosote build up . . . and yes . . . the cap is often black . . . if it's just black that's probably fine, but if it has a bunch of crusty gunk hanging off it or tar oozing off it that would be bad . . . very bad.

 

[DBoon]

The wood is cherry black walnut maple (sugar and silver) and a little of black locust and some oak mixed in.

I got a range in the low 20's to 30. So I know that means the wood is less that ideal. So what can I do?

We've all started in your situation. The Silver Maple and Black Cherry will season the fastest. Split them smaller (2 to 3" on a side) and get them outside in the sun and wind (covered on top only) to get them drying quicker. Sort the black locust and oak out and split that smaller too, and get that outside drying as well, but don't plan on burning this until two years from now. The sugar maple will dry fairly well in about a year if outside - I would split that about 4" on a side and save that for next year. Not sure about the black walnut - I am guessing this is more like black cherry - could be burned this year if split smaller.

After seeing how well my scavenged wood pallets held up with 3 years of ground contact, I am suspect about burning pallets - I think they are basically all treated now (not sure).

I would try to save the cherry and silver maple until January, after giving it a good 6 weeks outside to dry more. I think you'll find this will help quite a bit. It still won't be perfect, but you can make it work by giving it more primary air and expecting less heat from the stove.

Buy more wood now and start drying it outside so you can be more ready next year and the year after.

Once you get into your 3rd year, you won't believe how much better your wood burns, so just be patient and plan ahead.

 

[kversch]

We've all started in your situation. The Silver Maple and Black Cherry will season the fastest. Split them smaller (2 to 3" on a side) and get them outside in the sun and wind (covered on top only) to get them drying quicker. Sort the black locust and oak out and split that smaller too, and get that outside drying as well, but don't plan on burning this until two years from now. The sugar maple will dry fairly well in about a year if outside - I would split that about 4" on a side and save that for next year. Not sure about the black walnut - I am guessing this is more like black cherry - could be burned this year if split smaller.

After seeing how well my scavenged wood pallets held up with 3 years of ground contact, I am suspect about burning pallets - I think they are basically all treated now (not sure).

I would try to save the cherry and silver maple until January, after giving it a good 6 weeks outside to dry more. I think you'll find this will help quite a bit. It still won't be perfect, but you can make it work by giving it more primary air and expecting less heat from the stove.

Buy more wood now and start drying it outside so you can be more ready next year and the year after.

Once you get into your 3rd year, you won't believe how much better your wood burns, so just be patient and plan ahead.

I have close to 2 cord of maple that was standing dead that I cut and split in april/may and then stacked in june/july for next winter. and all summer I have been picking up little by little what I can. my biggest issue is I basically live in the woods. aside from the dead middle of my back yard or my small front yard I dont have open sunny places to stack. The west side of my yard is lined with pines and some other weed trees but on the other side of the property line is a farm field so we get lots of western wind coming through. the east side is a line of norway naples, sugar maples, tulip and apple then all the neighbors trees. ( if this is the wrong section to start talking about wood I can make a new thread in the woodshed section just let me know)

 

[kversch]

feeling a little less discouraged tonight. I took your guys advice and started re splitting some of my wood in to smaller splits, periodically checking the moistur %. I came across a section of the pile that had a bunch of nice dry sugar, silver maple,some black locust,some black walnut and a bunch more cherry. Partially filled up the stove tonight a couple hours ago brought it up to temp and have some nice secondary's going.

 

[begreen]

Behold the beauty of dry wood. Happy wife?

 

[kversch]

She was asleep so she didnt eve get to see it lol. But she was happy to hear I found some of the wood to be dry when I told her this am.

 

[Treacherous]

You may need to pick up some energy logs to get you though the winter if you can't locate enough dry stuff. Even mixed with the higher moisture wood they will give you good burns.

 

[brad wilton]

You might want to mix your semidry with your dry,might be able to stretch your wood a little farther into winter .the wet ones just leave be and let dry.