Stupid Question

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Rgerek

Member
Nov 25, 2014
25
Rubicon WI
i have had this stove for a few years now, but one question has always bothered me, is the stove hotter with more air damper opened more or is the damper is closed more, stove is the us 8500.
 
When you have the air and fuel mix burning optimally it where the stove is the hotest. The damper just alows you to adjust the air that goes into the fire chamber. So once you set the damper and have a nice bright busy flame it should be good.
 
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Pellet type and even altitude will play a role in how much air to use. Too little air and the fire will look like a wood fireplace flame. Nice for cuddling, but not so much for getting heat out of the fuel. Too much air and the fire will look like it has a Bart Simpson hair cut. It'll be very short and pellets may even be jumping out of the pot before being burned up fully.
I dont know what the text book rule of thumb is. But if you have smoke or your door glass soots over in an hour, you are too rich and need more air. If your flame is almost noisy and looks like it is in a wind storm with pellets jumping around, you likely have a very hot exhaust pipe meaning you are loosing heat out the exhaust that you should be transferring into heat for your house. There should be a middle ground where your door glass stays mostly clean for a couple days, but will get dirty over time, yet the fire is active and bright, but the exhaust piping just a bit over "warm" at the stove outlet.

BTW, the title say "stupid question". Did you forget to ask it? An air volume question is not a stupid question, it is a valuable question that ads to the forum discussions. Thanks.
 
Well I cleaned and setup the stove at 1.5 inch setting and changed the c8 setting to 200 like the YouTube video recommends, I have a door temp reading of 350 at a feed rate of .97 lb. We will see what happens tonight.

BTW. It was stupid because I had too much pride to ask, Thanks Everyone and to the YouTube videos on the 8500
 
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Update the house is 78 degrees just the doctor ordered, the feed rate was bumped to 1.05 but everything is running great.
 
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Nice! Glad your up and running:cool: