Take a ride with me

[WellSeasoned]

For those of you helping me with my burn times/ burn cycle, on another thread, here I will post pics of whats happening

I placed a new load of wod in and filled it to the gills. Started it wide open at 1:45 est, good flames, secondaries, stove temp@ 575',

 

[WellSeasoned]

2:00 pm, cut air back to 3/4 open, secondaries still going a bit, and flames coming out of ends of splits. Stove temp still 575'

 

[WellSeasoned]

215 pm air is halfway, stove temp 525', some secondaries going.

 

[WellSeasoned]

its 230, stove temp 550 almost only secondaries going right now.

 

[WellSeasoned]

235 pm all fire out, stove temp 500', air still at 1/4 and every once and awhile the gases will ignite, but thats it. I usually open it back up again, and get a good flame going and then bring the air back down to 1/4

 

[WellSeasoned]

If I leave the air open more than 1/4, the stove over fires and gets too hot. And I get smoke alarms going off in the middle of the night, any suggestions? Thx

 

[WellSeasoned]

Wait a minute, whats happening here. I have not touched the stove since all went out, besides for secondaries every once and awhile. Now the secondaries are going good w/o and flame coming from the splits that I can see. Stove temps keeping at 500. I may need a wood burning book for dummies, but is this the way its supposed to work? With only secon

daries?

 

[WellSeasoned]

300 pm, reigned air all the way down, cruising at 625', major secondaries....hang on!

No, PEN didn't let me borrow his avatar, this is the stove temp, and rising fully closed. Secondaries at this point, 310 pm are getting more ghost like.

 

[Highbeam]

Welcome to the world of EPA non-cats. You can't choose to burn them low, the air control doesn't close the primary and the secondaries are always full throttle. It is either shut off or running hot with only size of wood load and frequency of loads to control the output.

As long as you don't completely snuff the fire in the beginning, the fuel load will eventually heat up and catch, running the temp up just as you experienced.

Don't like it, get a cat stove. You can actually run them at a lower temp if you so choose.

 

[WellSeasoned]

Welcome to the world of EPA non-cats. You can't choose to burn them low, the air control doesn't close the primary and the secondaries are always full throttle. It is either shut off or running hot with only size of wood load and frequency of loads to control the output.

As long as you don't completely snuff the fire in the beginning, the fuel load will eventually heat up and catch, running the temp up just as you experienced.

Don't like it, get a cat stove. You can actually run them at a lower temp if you so choose.

Thx for that, my stove is 5 days young, so it might take awhile. So being a "non-cat" stove, it its typical to have it go out and start up again? I would have thought that as it cools, and the temps lower, with full logs being in it, the smoke won't burn up m and will be running dirty. I haven't touched the stove since the last air adjustment, and flames come and go, with temps only reading 475' secondaries come and go.

 

[WellSeasoned]

345 pm, stove top temp 475', flames here and there once and awhile, reloaded 2 hrs ago, and already down to coals and giant log sized coals. I'm guessing I may get another hour our so, but 3 hr burn time is pretty pathetic. This stove is very tricky.

 

[Highbeam]

Welcome to the world of EPA non-cats. You can't choose to burn them low, the air control doesn't close the primary and the secondaries are always full throttle. It is either shut off or running hot with only size of wood load and frequency of loads to control the output.

As long as you don't completely snuff the fire in the beginning, the fuel load will eventually heat up and catch, running the temp up just as you experienced.

Don't like it, get a cat stove. You can actually run them at a lower temp if you so choose.

Thx for that, my stove is 5 days young, so it might take awhile. So being a "non-cat" stove, it its typical to have it go out and start up again? I would have thought that as it cools, and the temps lower, with full logs being in it, the smoke won't burn up m and will be running dirty. I haven't touched the stove since the last air adjustment, and flames come and go, with temps only reading 475' secondaries come and go.

When you have a nice start up fire going and drop the intake air a little too quickly it will go into an air starved mode where there is sometimes enough air to burn the gas and sometimes it is fuel rich. You are setting up a condition for repeated bursts of flame, often referred to as whoofing, these bursts can be pretty large. After a flame event consumes the air in the firebox then it will go dark again until enough air builds up for another flame event. During this time I usually have a smokey flue that will eventually clean up as the fire comes down to equilibrium and a steady burn.

So to prevent the flames coming and going like that you can give it more and then reduce it in steps slowly enough that your fire is never starved for air. With a new stove you might be willing to do that but after while you will realize that it's not worth the time. I often load full, establish the fire, reduce the draft in a few steps to zero and then go to bed or leave the house. At this time the fire is coming in and out of flamage but I know, from experience waking up hot, that eventually the fuel load will make heat and not smolder all night.

Sure is a nice looking stove there.

 

[WellSeasoned]

Thx high beam. Stove its great when I'm here to adjust as nessesary. My concerns are overnight and while I'm at work. I already have 1 dog that likes to woof, so I guess a stove that likes woofin too will have to due. There was a thread about naming your stove. I guess I'll call mine "the baby" cause il have to wake up twice a night to feed it and change its diapy. I got alot of learning to do yet, and I gotta get this stove to give me at least 7 hrs again, like it did on fri night. Thx

 

[SlyFerret]

I think you are leaving the air open too long before you start shutting it down.

Then, I think you are closing the air down too far.

-SF

 

[Manitoulin Maples]

I'm new to wood burning as of last year and still figuring out my stove too. You'll get there....it's only been this year that I've gotten better burn cycles out of my stove and figured things out more. From everything I've read on Jotul, you've got a great stove and should be able to get decent burn times from it without a problem. If you can, identify some nice and dry wood that you have a good pile of and use that exclusively for the next couple of weeks cuz that way you'll know your fuel is consistent. One thing I can say about my stove is that it definitely matters when I turn down the air and how I do it. I'm sure your stove is similar and you'll learn this by trial and error. My stove likes to be lowered in 2 stages - from high to medium and then medium to low. When I go from high to medium it's a balance of the logs being charred vs the temps vs how the fire looks and also not running it on high for so long that I'm just burning up quality fuel in a raging inferno. Same thing from medium to low, if I lower it too soon the logs just seem to quit flaming and sit there - yes it will still burn the fuel load if I left it like this but not cleanly and I'd have smoke coming from the chimney. Actually if I left it like this I'd get what happened to you - the logs would sit there for a while and when they heated up to a point - poof! - the secondary show would begin for a while. Anyway, if I turn it down to low at the right time I get a slow, lazy rolling burn with lots of secondaries swirling around the top of the firebox. It burns clean and hot. Also think of your fuel loads in terms of the whole burn cycle - like you said the load only lasted 3 hours and wtf right Well throw in another few hours for the coals and you just went to a 5 hour burn. A bit more tweaking and you'll get to 7 or 8 hours. Remember its not totally about how long the logs are on fire - it's a space heater after all so it's more about how much heat it's radiating into your house.

 

[oldspark]

These EPA stoves have their own mind and do what they want when they want, yu cant control it. :lol:

 

[Wade A.]

Your 3:00 is where I like to be at first on my Castine when I'm starting from scratch. And yes, you can go through your initial fuel load pretty quickly, but once your coal bed is established, throw on a large split only and you'll keep a pretty even plateau in the 400-500 range, depending on the quality of your split. The urge you'll have to fight is to throw another full fuel load in. On top of a good coal bed, the Castine can start to seriously rage. This took me awhile to figure out about this stove. You can't just load it to the gunwales each time it goes to coals. Sometimes I don't even need to adjust the primary air, just leave the door cracked a hair for the briefest of times (and stand there....don't leave) and close it up....easy peasy.

 

[begreen]

It took about a half-season working with the Castine for me to get to know it. Part of that is because burning in fall is quite different than cold winter burning. In fall/spring I would run the stove as ploughboy described. Then as winter cold set in the stove would get more of a workout. The F400 likes a good draft and will respond to it with a vigorous burn. For winter burning, the trick is to let the coal bed burn down quite a lot before refilling. I would rake the coal bed toward the front center, put a small 3" split on top of the coals, and open up the air at least half-way. In about 30 min the coals would burn down enough for a full reload. Our average cruising temps in the dead of winter were more like 600-650F with this regime. The downside being, it goes through wood more quickly, but during a week long power outage, it kept us warm.

The only time I had the stove almost runaway was when testing the Prest-Logs and that was my fault really. Even then, the temp did not exceed 800F. It was exciting for a little bit, but I still felt the stove was under control.

 

[Butcher]

I'm finding that my Jotul has a mind of it's own too. All depends on the wind, outside temps, humidity, how i load it and with what wood type. Every load seems to be different. On reloads I usually wait at least 3 hours or I'll have such a large coal bed that I cant get much wood in the thing. And I almost never shut the air down to 0. Take it down to half when the stove gets up to temp and after 15 or 20 minutes then I'll take down to alittle under a quarter of the way and see how Black Sabbath behaves. On cold or semi cold starts it's usually a babysittin game. I been going by how Jotul says to start a far. 2 medium splits, 1 in front, 1 in back, couple wads of newspaper and small kindlin in between with acouple 2"splits on top and lite it up. Leave the door cracked just until I got flame then close it. After all that is going good then I slowly add larger and larger splits till finally the box is full. Thats just what works for me tho. Your milage may vary.

 

[Highbeam]

"Control" of an EPA non-cat is relative. You can't always slow it down and you can't kill it. More like varying levels of out-of-control.

 

[Fod01]

my $.02 - 575° is pretty hot to be reloading. Try letting it come down to 350° or so.

Gabe

 

[Butcher]

my $.02 - 575° is pretty hot to be reloading. Try letting it come down to 350° or so.

Gabe

I agree. Right now I am going on 4 hours since the first load of the day and the stove is at 350° and I still got a nice heat throwin bed of coals. Basement is still 70° after havin the egress window open for and hour chuckin in farwood. If I was to throw more wood in there now I'ld feel like I was just wastin good farwood.

 

[oldspark]

farout! :lol:

 

[WellSeasoned]

These EPA stoves have their own mind and do what they want when they want, yu cant control it. :lol:

The hell I aint gonna......just give me a few years, and I'll bet you a cord of "seasoned" wood, I'll get it! Cheers ;-P




Everybody....thx for your help. I will try each and every suggestion, I'll get eventually, or I'm out a cord of wood!

Brian