Would you add more wood now? or later..

[Highbeam]

If you can wait longer to burn down more coals then you can fit more fuel in. More fuel will make more heat and give you a better chance of a warm stove in the morning. Next time plan your burn cycles to have less coals at bedtime.

 

[billb3]

View attachment 233545
Been burning 5 hours, red hot coals. can barely keep hand next to open door for more than a second. is it time to add a full load for nighttime? or get some more heat from the coals first?

shouldnt i not allow the coals to burn down too much as it will cause the chimney to cool?

Don't worry about the chimney temp with coals.
If it is time to go to bed, load the best you can and go to bed.

If you have some time, you could try to burn them down by making them glow with more air, or if you had a few splits of pine or poplar/aspen you could have a short hot fire on top of the coals. This should keep the heat pumping wjhile the coals have a chance to burn down further. This should be less wasteful by not opening up the air and sending more air and heat up the chimney.
Then you could load up and with a smaller coal bed maybe get a few extra splits in.

Because my stove is a little undersized for the real cold weather I tend to push it and get lots of coals burning oak. Sometimes I'll have to have three consecutive loads of pine to reduce the coal bed. Pine burns pretty hot which is nice in cold weather but not for very long which can be taken advantage of. Both to burn on top of coals but also to have just a fire for an hour or two when it is chilly in the morning and don't need a fire all day because it is too warm out by noon.


You could also have a pine or poplar fire earlier in the evening so that you don't have this dilemma of a large coal bed late in the evening.

 

[TriggerMan]

I'd be tossing in my logs and going to bed, i dont know what you're waiting for there. Thats the perfect reload stage in my opinion.

I’m with you! Looks about perfect to me too. In my stove I would load two sticks, adjust the air and tell the dog “good night”.