Hey everyone. I bought my first home about a year ago that has a prefab ZC fireplace, model is Superior SP38A, and although its an older model (I think it may of been installed when the house was built which was 1987) I was surprisingly happy and excited to see how well it actually performed. I grew up in an old farmhouse which we rarely used the old baseboard heaters, instead we used all wood heat from a Vermont Castings wood stove to heat the house so I'm familiar with wood burning and how much better it is and I prefer it by far. I used my ZC fireplace on really cold days (high temp 25 or below and lows in the teens and single digits, I live in a suburb of Baltimore MD.) The ZC fireplace has cast iron doors which are meant to be closed with the blower running for I guess you could say max efficiency, it takes about 5 hours to burn 5 good, well seasoned pieces of wood, starting off with 2-3 and then adding another 90 min later, and another 90 min or so after that and it keeps the room toasty and upstairs is comfortable and I let it burn out before bed. What I want to know is if there are any tips from you all (who I consider experts) on how to get the most out of this ZC fireplace. Any tips, hints, and suggestions are appreciated from all your experiences on anything I might want to do differently or add to maximize the use out of it. I put the link to the fireplace manual below if anyone wants to review to get a better idea. Thanks.
https://www.hearth.com/talk/attachments/sp38a-1-pdf.155509/
https://www.hearth.com/talk/attachments/sp38a-1-pdf.155509/
