Who’d have thunk it: Wood stoves are not made for over night burns.

[Hoytman]

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Did you know your wood stove was NOT made for over night burns?

Agree? Disagree?

 

[kborndale]

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Did you know your wood stove was NOT made for over night burns?

Agree? Disagree?

Depends on the stove.

 

[PAbeech]

If it can heat during the day what's the difference at night ?

 

[begreen]

Crap!! I must have been doing things wrong according to the video for the past 16 yrs. ! Oddly, creosote accumulation has not happened. Must be magic.

Depends on the stove.

Totally. And the wood and operator.
I agree that one should not smolder wood, but with dry wood and the right stove, it's not a big deal.
This was yesterday evening after 13.5 hrs. Am I to tell the stove it's wrong?

 

[BillBurns]

I dont burn overnight, but Im up late and I get up early, so its like 5 hours that it burns out, then I start a new fire in the morning.

 

[rudysmallfry]

He's not wrong about choking a fire, but there's a big difference in a cool smoldering mess versus turning down the air to produce good secondaries once a good primary burn is established. I load up for night around midnight, the boiler usually kicks on around 5:00am to cover the gap, and I relight around 9:00. Good enough for me.

 

[stoveliker]

My stove has been tested to burn at 11000 BTU per hour for 30 hrs. I'm not sure how to do that while skipping the nights...

 

[Todd]

I helped my neighbor install a Super 27 this year and he still won’t load it up full or burn it overnight. Just throws a couple sticks in at a time and lets it burn out before bed. In the morning he wakes up with his house in the mid 50’s! Brrr!

 

[begreen]

I helped my neighbor install a Super 27 this year and he still won’t load it up full or burn it overnight. Just throws a couple sticks in at a time and lets it burn out before bed. In the morning he wakes up with his house in the mid 50’s! Brrr!

Too bad, the Super can go up to 16 hrs between burns.

 

[bholler]

John is a pompous ass that honestly most of the time has no clue what he is talking about. The fact that he is now vice president of the csia says allot about what happened to that organization in the past few years.

 

[St. Coemgen]

Well.... it is YouTube. Where anyone can post a video about anything. And then the trolls descend in the comment section....

Cough....

Okay, got the YouTube commentary out of the way. Now to the reality. Three (3) points:

1) He may be right. For many stove and many chimneys. That many people still use as a professional sweep is maybe a bit tired of seeing poor wood stove use. As already said, @kborndale, the stove matters. Modern stoves will never allow someone to "smolder" dry combustibles as there often in built corrections to prevent this. One of my stoves has two adjustable air inlets and one fixed inlets to prevent me from causing creosote issues. But he has to deal with many, many, many not modern stove and many, many, many people who have no clue about wood burning. I can not blame him for going for the lowest common denominator.

2) But also there is a chimney. After many years of wood burning, we torn down or masonry chimneys and installed insulated chimneys. And, yes, chimneys also matter. Before we tore down the chimney we were racking out a lot at the bottom. After the new chimneys, hardly much at all. Insulated chimney do help move the smoke out of the flue. So they do not precipitate on cold flue walls.

3) Unseasoned wood. You can have the best, most modern stove. The best. most modern chimney. But if you burn unseasoned wood, you are in trouble. Sadly, too many blame the stove, when the real problem is inferior wood. I watched recently one "YouTube" video were the person said his full round wood was dry because it has been around for years, and yet he complained about how his stove was not giving off much heat and smoking a lot (the "suggestions" from his "followers" how to fix it ranged from good to nightmarish). As we all know, full round logs can hold a lot of moisture. But this guy did not get that message (or bothered to get a moisture meter). I suggested he go here to get good advice, but my message was never posted ... I guess that YouTube fear for external link advice (and yesterday my YouTube account was blocked and did not allow me to log in...... )

 

[begreen]

He probably is working on another video to warn against burning that evil PINE!!

 

[stoveliker]

Well.... it is YouTube. Where anyone can post a video about anything. And then the trolls descend in the comment section....

Cough....

Okay, got the YouTube commentary out of the way. Now to the reality. Three (3) points:

1) He may be right. For many stove and many chimneys. That many people still use as a professional sweep is maybe a bit tired of seeing poor wood stove use. As already said, @kborndale, the stove matters. Modern stoves will never allow someone to "smolder" dry combustibles as there often in built corrections to prevent this. One of my stoves has two adjustable air inlets and one fixed inlets to prevent me from causing creosote issues. But he has to deal with many, many, many not modern stove and many, many, many people who have no clue about wood burning. I can not blame him for going for the lowest common denominator.

2) But also there is a chimney. After many years of wood burning, we torn down or masonry chimneys and installed insulated chimneys. And, yes, chimneys also matter. Before we tore down the chimney we were racking out a lot at the bottom. After the new chimneys, hardly much at all. Insulated chimney do help move the smoke out of the flue. So they do not precipitate on cold flue walls.

3) Unseasoned wood. You can have the best, most modern stove. The best. most modern chimney. But if you burn unseasoned wood, you are in trouble. Sadly, too many blame the stove, when the real problem is inferior wood. I watched recently one "YouTube" video were the person said his full round wood was dry because it has been around for years, and yet he complained about how his stove was not giving off much heat and smoking a lot (the "suggestions" from his "followers" how to fix it ranged from good to nightmarish). As we all know, full round logs can hold a lot of moisture. But this guy did not get that message (or bothered to get a moisture meter). I suggested he go here to get good advice, but my message was never posted ... I guess that YouTube fear or external link advice (and yesterday my YouTube account was blocked and did not allow me to log in...... )

The point is the generalization - taking examples he sees and applying them to all stoves.

The same happened in your post:
"Modern stoves will never allow someone to "smolder" dry combustibles as there often in built corrections to prevent this."

That is incorrect. My stove explicitly allows to smolder. It was designed to do so. (And yes there is a measure to avoid creosote issues, but it is NOT the avoidance of smoldering.)

 

[St. Coemgen]

The point is the generalization

Cough....

It is good netiquette to actually limit the quote of my comment in your reply. As I have done above for yours. So everyond know exactly what are you are "saying" I "said" was "wrong"?

After all, I made three (3) points. Which one are you talking about?

Till you do that, I have no clue what you are talking about. Just saying.

Edit: Notice I placed "smolder" in quotes. Since it has too many definitions. Such as "to burn sluggishly, without flame, and often with much smoke", which may be very different from the low, burn with little smoke and no flame your stove has... which is another experience. Do not get caught up with singular words, especially if they are put in quotes.... Rather look at the overall message.

 

[stoveliker]

I quoted you verbatim:
"Modern stoves will never allow someone to "smolder" dry combustibles as there often in built corrections to prevent this."
(edit: I added the quotation marks above)

And the quoting function on this website does not work for me on my laptop or my phone - so you can complain to the webmaster.

And: Bless you.

 

[stoveliker]

I don't want to go into an argument of definitions of smoldering. Suffice to say that my stove is designed to smolder and smoke. ( I can see a lot of smoke in the firebox, depending on parameters. ) With zero or minimal flame. I do not see how that is not smoldering, regardless of definition.

All I wanted to point out is that the "Modern stoves" (of which mine is one) is too inclusive for the statement that followed those two words.

And that that was similar to "All stoves are not designed for overnight fires", where "All stoves" is too inclusive for the statement that followed those two words.

 

[bholler]

The fact is the guy making the video is in charge of training a pretty large crew of guys in his business and is vice president of the largest training organization in our industry. And the info he gave is simply incomplete for old stoves and dead wrong for modern ones. Each of those people he trains is then going to relay that information on to thousands of customers. And if they follow it at best they will be wasting a large percentage of their heat out the chimney. And at worst overfire and destroy their modern stoves.

 

[St. Coemgen]

I quoted you verbatim:
"Modern stoves will never allow someone to "smolder" dry combustibles as there often in built corrections to prevent this."
(edit: I added the quotation marks above)

And the quoting function on this website does not work for me on my laptop or my phone - so you can complain to the webmaster.

And: Bless you.

Sadly, phones and tablets are not friendly to forums. Very sad.

And again, from your kind adding of qoutes, "smolder" is indeed in quotes. As I said. Because that word is far from defined fully for wood burning. See the links I provided. In some definitions, it creates a lot of smoke and in others it does not. Complicated. Darn the English language. Where a nurse can wound a wound on a knight with a bound, and be bound by silence she did so. Or would she be be so binding about her binding?

Grammar.... 🙃

 

[begreen]

Suffice it to say that some cat stoves burn the smoldering wood smoke in the catalyst. They definitely allow the wood to smolder.

 

[begreen]

The fact is the guy making the video is in charge of training a pretty large crew of guys in his business and is vice president of the largest training organization in our industry. And the info he gave is simply incomplete for old stoves and dead wrong for modern ones. Each of those people he trains is then going to relay that information on to thousands of customers. And if they follow it at best they will be wasting a large percentage of their heat out the chimney. And at worst overfire and destroy their modern stoves.

Disturbing indeed and dysfunctional info for new wood burners.

 

[begreen]

And the quoting function on this website does not work for me on my laptop or my phone - so you can complain to the webmaster.

And that that was similar to "All stoves are not designed for overnight fires", where "All stoves" is too inclusive for the statement that followed those two words.

The quote function is available on laptops or phone. There are two ways to use quote.
1) Select the text, then click on the Reply icon on the bottom right. That will include the name being quoted.
2) Select the text, then paste it into the new posting, then with the text selected, click on the quote " marks in the toolbar of the post editor. If you don't see the quote icon in the toolbar, you are probably in the BB code edit mode. The toggle to get out of that mode is further to the right and symbolized by the two brackets [ ].

 

[stoveliker]

This is on a laptop.
The Reply button only gives me the full message, even if partial text is selected.
(The "+quote" button (after selecting partial text) does not do anything.)

I did not know the quote marks - that works:

the new posting, then with the text selected, click on the quote " marks in the toolbar of the post editor. If you don't see the quote ic

Though it does not give the poster (you in this case), as a Reply does.

 

[BillBurns]

I consider smoldering to be a lot of smoke, very low flames. I actually hate it to be honest. I try to pick the flames up with fresh kindling. Works for me.

 

[bholler]

I consider smoldering to be a lot of smoke, very low flames. I actually hate it to be honest. I try to pick the flames up with fresh kindling. Works for me.

But for those of us running cat stoves smouldering is perfectly fine. The cat then burns that smoke. The general premise of his statements is right. But the info overall is just incorrect

 

[appointed EPA deviant]

I helped my neighbor install a Super 27 this year and he still won’t load it up full or burn it overnight. Just throws a couple sticks in at a time and lets it burn out before bed. In the morning he wakes up with his house in the mid 50’s! Brrr!

Time to insulate.