Trying to get more heat from my insert

[jharris70]

Welcome to the forum. I’m right there with you...wish I could get longer burn times too, but I think the firebox is just too small.

I’d go bigger if I could do it all over again but then again, more stove = more money, so maybe not.

I have found the epi3 will cook me out of the room if it’s 30 degrees plus outside, but struggles to keep up during brutal cold snaps like we’re enduring now.

Yes, same here. Admittedly, I purchased this somewhat blindly and found this forum afterward! But I still enjoy it. And it definitely supplements my heat pump which is what I was looking for at the time. Now I kind of wish I had a bigger stove as I have learned much more. Maybe someday.



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[saewoody]

Cool, glad to hear someone else with my stove. So how much do you close down the slider/air control? Half? All the way? How long does that take? Also, do you load it all the way in cycles?

Based on all the feedback above sounds like my technique is wrong, tonight I’ll try the loading in cycles approach.

So how is the stove burning now?


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[kevreh]

I tried the loading it most of the way, then letting it burn down, in cycles approach. It seemed to help warm up the room a little better. Guess I was being too reserved with the wood before. I had a little bit of secondary burn happening, just not too much. Need to figure that out. Do you have an approach for getting the secondaries to kick in?

 

[Jan Pijpelink]

I tried the loading it most of the way, then letting it burn down, in cycles approach. It seemed to help warm up the room a little better. Guess I was being too reserved with the wood before. I had a little bit of secondary burn happening, just not too much. Need to figure that out. Do you have an approach for getting the secondaries to kick in?

When you have loaded the firebox full with dry wood (DRY) and the full load burns well, shut down the air intake 75-80% or so. Within seconds you should have secondaries.

 

[saewoody]

I tried the loading it most of the way, then letting it burn down, in cycles approach. It seemed to help warm up the room a little better. Guess I was being too reserved with the wood before. I had a little bit of secondary burn happening, just not too much. Need to figure that out. Do you have an approach for getting the secondaries to kick in?

Dry wood, as Jan mentioned above, is very important. I get my stove up to temp (anywhere in the 400-650 degree range, depending on how much heat output I’m looking for) and then I will usually slide my damper central all the way shut. The secondaries engage nearly instantly.


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[Jan Pijpelink]

Keep in mind that if you burn wood with a high moisture content (yes, we have all done it), the stove is burning off the moisture and eventually the wood itself. But because of the high moisture content, there will be (almost) not enough volatile gases coming from the wood to get secondaries. What you can do as a test, is getting some "kiln dried" wood from the grocery store (mostly soft woods and expensive) which will be dry and burn that to see if your stove behaves better.

 

[Woody Stover]

What you can do as a test, is getting some "kiln dried" wood from the grocery store (mostly soft woods and expensive) which will be dry and burn that to see if your stove behaves better.

The gas stations and other places here have mostly Red Oak. I remember a couple years ago we went to a guy's house for a party and he had gotten a bundle for an outside fire, but it was so wet we could hardly get it to burn..water bubbling out the ends of the splits. So bought wood isn't necessarily dry. Now, construction 2x4 Pine cutoffs will be dry for sure. After you handle splits of different species for a while, you'll be able to feel if they are very wet, just by the weight of them. It's harder to tell if they are less than 20% or are a bit over, though.

 

[Jan Pijpelink]

The gas stations and other places here have mostly Red Oak. I remember a couple years ago we went to a guy's house for a party and he had gotten a bundle for an outside fire, but it was so wet we could hardly get it to burn..water bubbling out the ends of the splits. So bought wood isn't necessarily dry. Now, construction 2x4 Pine cutoffs will be dry for sure. After you handle splits of different species for a while, you'll be able to feel if they are very wet, just by the weight of them. It's harder to tell if they are less than 20% or are a bit over, though.

I agree. Took me a while to get used to the weight. And yes, some lumber would be better for the test. The wood sold in stores here is mostly pine.

 

[venator260]

Rather than buy kiln "dried", I would try a pack or two of the compressed sawdust bricks. In my area, tractor supply is the only place I've seen them. They're to be sub 15%, and will give you an idea about how dry would should act in your stove.

 

[Shaun643]

Not sure how deep your stove is iam sure you load East to west if you could load north to south you will get more heat from each load.