Between smoldering and coaling?? On several occations there have been good flames when I close the air on my insert, and after a while the flames are gone but everything is glowing red. Is this good or bad. I will throw in the part where I say "my wood isn't the greatest", just cause I'm a noob. Thanks!
What's the difference
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Slow1
Minister of Fire
Generically speaking...
"Smouldering" is wood trying to burn without enough air and/or heat to burn properly. This is an inefficient burn that makes a lot of smoke. Unless you burn the smoke (i.e. have a cat engaged hot enough to burn it) you are likely to have this smoke with all the VOCs and water condense in your chimney and create creosote deposits. Not a good thing.
"Coaling" is the stage of the burn when most (if not all) the VOCs have burned out of the wood leaving basically just carbon behind to burn - this is essentially charcoal burning and it too requires considerable air to burn clean, but the byproduct of an inefficient burn of the coal is CO (carbonmonoxide) which while potentially deadly if it is not vented out the chimney, it won't gunk up your chimney.
Add more air to either one and you will get some flames going. Both will glow red. Smoldering will happen early in the burn cycle, coaling is late part of the burn cycle.
"Smouldering" is wood trying to burn without enough air and/or heat to burn properly. This is an inefficient burn that makes a lot of smoke. Unless you burn the smoke (i.e. have a cat engaged hot enough to burn it) you are likely to have this smoke with all the VOCs and water condense in your chimney and create creosote deposits. Not a good thing.
"Coaling" is the stage of the burn when most (if not all) the VOCs have burned out of the wood leaving basically just carbon behind to burn - this is essentially charcoal burning and it too requires considerable air to burn clean, but the byproduct of an inefficient burn of the coal is CO (carbonmonoxide) which while potentially deadly if it is not vented out the chimney, it won't gunk up your chimney.
Add more air to either one and you will get some flames going. Both will glow red. Smoldering will happen early in the burn cycle, coaling is late part of the burn cycle.
James02 said:
I think smoldering is more of an oxygen deprived (in-efficient) burn and a lot of smoke is produced. Coaling is the final phase of an efficient burn, where the wood has burned into coals. No flames or smoke are visible during the coaling phase, while a lot of heat is still being produced.
stejus
Minister of Fire
James02 said:
Another way to check smoldering is to look at you stack outside. If you see smoke in an EPA stove, you are smoldering. Open the air more to get flames rolling. When coaling, there is not smoke. You may see heat vapors and that's fine.
Wood Duck
Minister of Fire
if you're coaling and you open the air full, or crack the door open you'll just get more red with no flames or mabe just a few blueish flames. If you're smouldering and you crack the door open you should see some yellow flames.
firefighterjake
Minister of Fire
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