Wood stove advice please

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Dear experienced users of wood stove, I am a very new user of wood stove and still a bit struggling to make an efficientt use. My main concern is how to heat up my one-bed room house quickly. I am normally out all day back late evening. By the time I come home it is quite cold and it takes more than two hours before I feel OK. Because I am renting the house I cannot fix a fun on the ceiling. Are there any other tips? Also, how much wood do you normally set in the stove? Is it the right way to stuff it in full as I do? I notice I need lots of wood and run out of supply very quickly, but otherwise it doesn't warm up the house! Please give me advice! Many thanks.

-- Kaori Koizumi (kkoizu@essex.ac.uk), November 08, 2001

Answers

Hi! We heated totally by wood from about 1979 to 1989 and have recently installed a new Ashley wood-burning heater.

What we used to do, and what we will be doing this year, is in the morning when you have a good fire, put in one or two LARGE logs and then shut the heater down. By that afternoon when you come home you should still have some hot coals. Then put in some smaller sticks and get it going again pretty good....not too roaring....you don't want a chimney fire! When you get ready for bed, put in one or two REALLY HUGE logs and shut the heater down again.

It just kind of takes some practice and some time learning what works best for you. A wood heater should more than warm up a one-bedroom home. We have a fairly large house with three bedrooms (actually only two since we tore out a wall and made one large bedroom forus)...anyway, the heater heats the whole house.

also, are you burning seasoned wood or green wood? If you burn a lot of green you get more of a creosote build up but it's good to kind of use a combination of the two if you can.

Also, even if you are in a renter house you can do a lot to stay warmer. Put plastic on the inside of all your windows. Make one of those stuffed long things to put at the bottom of your doors to keep drafts out...(or just stuff a large towel there)...

Also, a box fan set on law near the heater or in the door of the room the heater is in and "aimed" at the rest of the house would help distribute some of the heat from the heater. good luck!

MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A WORKING BATTERY OPERATED SMOKE DETECTOR!!!!! They save LIVES!!!!

-- Suzy in Bama (slgt@yahoo.com), November 08, 2001.


I think your best place to start is to go over to www.woodheat.org and for a quick tip, I load my stove ready to burn, to start with just one match as soon as it is cold from the last fire, useing quick staring kindling (nothing big) all lined up with the interior air flow, this alone cut my start up time by almost 2/3rd's (from about 45 min, to about 15 min.) The quick hot start up gets the stove to efficient burning temps much better than trying to start a full (long burn) load right off the bat. To get the warm air moving a floor fan or a large box fan pointed at the celing will help, you can add wood legs to the top of a box fan so as to keep it stable at an angle, (this sould not be right next to the stove) we often prop one back on a stepstool but it does fall alot. Also a fan in the floor (at floor level) in the coldest room you want to heat will push the cold air toward the stove, the air replaceing it will follow the celling and bring the warmer air along.

-- Thumper (slrldr@yahoo.com), November 08, 2001.

Hi Kaori,

You will have to become accustomed to your own stove. The amount of heat you get from your wood depends on what kind of wood you are using. Different species give more or less heat. How old it is will also determine the amount of heat you get from it. It should be dry, but not more than a couple of years old. Wood that's too old just doesn't have any heat left in it. It'll make good enough kindling, or a cozy fall fire, but that's about it. Our woodpile consists this year mainly of maple and birch. The maple should give us nice long burning heat, where the birch is better for days when it's not quite so cold. The reason we have maple and birch is because that's what is on our woodlot. :) We have 2-3 cord. Our house has about 2,000 square feet of living space. This amount of wood will supplement our oil furnace, but we'd need more wood than that if we were to heat our home with wood only. We'd also need another stove. Our house could also use some more insulation in the attic. We lose a lot of heat up there. After it snows we get big icicles because the heat from the attic melts the snow off the roof. Maybe someday.....

I discovered that pine cones make good kindling. The pitch in them catches almost immediately and they'll burn for a minute or two, enabling your sticks of wood to catch fire. Crumple up some paper, put the pine cones on top, then 2-3 small dry sticks on top of them.

To get your fire going hot use smaller sticks of wood. They'll catch quicker, burn quicker and give quicker heat. Then as you get a good base of coals, keep adding larger sticks of wood. We save a few unsplit pieces to use as all-nighters. Our stove is a good quality stove that we can bank a fire in. Some stoves will hold a fire all night and some won't. If you try to close your stove up so the fire will burn all night, make sure to have a good bed of coals, make sure your wood is well seasoned and not green. I let my all-nighter log(s) burn for 1/2 hour to 1 hour before I close up the stove for the night. Otherwise it might try to "take" all of a sudden and burn too hot. I'm very careful about leaving a fire unattended. We have 5 smoke alarms in the house. One in the cellar and two on each level. Plus 4 or 5 fire extinguishers.

As to how much to load the stove....I usually put in 3 sticks to a time. The fire just seems to burn more evenly at 3 sticks. I use smaller sticks for daytime when I'm wanting more heat in the house (I'm home all day) and larger ones at night, when I want the fire to last all night, but not give as much heat. It doesn't give as much heat because we close the stove drafts. This gives the fire less oxygen and causes it to burn at a slower rate. Your stove may be different and want more or less than 3 sticks at a time. It seems every stove is different. I wouldn't load it too much. If your stove is getting noticeably reddish then your fire is way too hot!

If you have access to scrap wood from a lumber mill use them for quick heat. They are usually very dry and burn quick. But I wouldn't advise using pressure treated lumber. I don't know what the burning chemicals might do to you or your chimney.

I hope my advice helps and hasn't confused you. I prefer wood heat over any other. It feels good. It's a steady, cozy penetrating heat. Great to relax with.

Good luck!

-- Nancy in Maine (paintme61@yahoo.com), November 08, 2001.


Also make sure that the gasketing in the stove is still good. If the gaskets are missing or leaking you will use lots of wood and lose lots of your heat.

-- Gailann Schrader (gtschrader@aol.com), November 08, 2001.

I have to respectfully disagree with one of the opinions posted in the above messages, i.e, slow burning fires to retain heat in a house. I have ready access to a lot of wood behind my house so I burn a lot of wood during the winter. While I have hot water radiation for heat we save hundreds of dollars per heating season by using the woodstove. At present, I have a Jotul #8 that is attached to 8 feet of stove pipe followed by 24 feet of stainless steel chimney.

I have had two personal experiences with chimney fires. Prior ro moving into out new house we had the Jotul in too small a room. We used to fill up the stove at night, set the draft way down low and go to bed. Sure, the thing would chug along all night but little did we realize the danger. A slow burning fire creates creosote and creosote burns likes the dickens when it ignites. One evening we noticed that could barely see out the windows because of all this black smoke. I went outside and saw flames and smoke bellowing out of the chimney like a badly tuned jet engine. The stove pipe began to glow red. Luckily I shut down the stove completely, suffocated the blaze and by the time the fire truck arrived it was all back to normal. My nerves were jangled. I bought a new stove pipe and went back to my old habits without even thinking about why the fire happened. Then it happened again. Still no damage to house. Sometime after the second fire I decided to make a check of chimney. To my dismay it was covered with about an 1" or more of creosote all around the interior. Another accident waiting to happen.

How did I overcome this problem?? I bought a small thermometer that attached by magnet to the stove pipe. It has three zones that tell you when you are burning too low, just right and too high. In the "just right" zone the creosote is burning off before going up the chimney. Right away we discovered that we were burning WAY TOO LOW. The large flame required to get the stove into the "zone" seemed huge compared to what we normally had in but we got used to it.

This little device followed us into our new home where we have over 32 feet of stovepipe/chimney. After one burning season I decided to try and clean the chimney - but the brush was the wrong size and got really stuck so I stopped. A visual check revealed no buildup. After two seasons of burning (and over 5 cords of wood) I decided to do a proper cleaning of the chimney. I bought the proper brush and went to it. To my dismay and delight, from all that pipe and after all that time I got a baggie full of fine dust. No creosote flakes or chunks whatsoever. This made me a firm believer in my thermometer. Now the fire is always in the "zone" and I feel safe. At about 16.00 CDN, it is the cheapest peace of mind around.

Our stove is in our living room. This room is 16x24 and takes about 1/2 hour to heat up (when the stove is in the "zone"). Unfortunatley the dining room and kitchen are separated by doors and walls. I am now in the process of devising an in-wall fan to move the heat into these other rooms. Directly above the stove there are two vents in the ceiling that lead directly into our kid's bedrooms.

Sorry for the rambling but when I see people advocating slow burning fires I get all tingly - like the time I saw my stovepipe glowing bright red. I know that new stoves have catalytic converters which may or may not overcome this problem. If so, I would like to be corrected. As for older stoves, I would avoid the slow-burning fires.

Cheers,

Sean Paradise, Newfoundland, Canada

-- Sean (seand@mail.gov.nf.ca), November 08, 2001.



Hi,

We have a room (our main living room) thats only source of heat is our wood stove. If you keep the stove doors closed, it burns much hotter faster. (On ours, anyway.) I keep the doors partially closed when lighting it and until there are good embers in the bottom. Then I open the doors to really heat the room. The only time I really stuff it is before we go to bed. Usually there are still hot embers in the ashes the next morning and a little kindling will get it back going. Hope this helps. What about a space heater until it really warms up? BTW, excellent advice given earlier about smoke detectors! That is a MUST! Pam

-- Pam (pamandmatt@earthlink.net), November 08, 2001.


Since you are in the U.K, some of the suggestions might not be easy to apply to your situation, but we have a small wood stove, which heats our house rather nicely. We did end up putting in new stove pipe this year, along with a damper, which makes a lot of difference for us. Read through the archives (the old messages at the bottom of the main page of the forum)and see what some of the other solutions are. Are you in an older home? Some of them in Brittain aren't well insulated, I know. Good luck, and hopefully this won't be a bad winter! Jan in Colorado

-- Jan in CO (Janice12@aol.com), November 08, 2001.

Our small wood stove is in the kitchen and has 3 walls in the way to be able to heat any bed room in the house, and a thick wall in the way to be able to heat the living room. Last winter, it could be 110 in the kitchen and 55 in the living room, 45 in the bedrooms, and that was with a fan blowing on the stove and the ceiling fan on in the kitchen. Since I was tired of getting frostbite in bed, I outsmarted the stove this year (ok, i never got frostbite). I turned OFF the ceiling fan in the kitchen and simply put a box fan in the kitchen door way- drawing air from the rest of the house into the kitchen. The heated air flows back into the house over top the fan. I start the fan after the kitchen is warm (90). Then, when the living room hits 75 or so, I open the first bedroom door, let the temp hit 70 then open the next beedroom door. By bed time, its NICE in all the rooms. I leave the air vent on the stove about 1/4 open most all the time- we hav nothing but green oak this year, so it takes a bit to get it going and you have to run it fairly hot to keep the stuff burning (it will go out if I close down the flue and vent, not smolder like dry wood.) If you ever have a chimney fire, or the stove is burning too hot for you liking (dangerously hot- this has happen to us, when I tried burning some ancient 2/10s) some baking soda tossed on the fire along with closing vent and flue, will help put the fire out in a hurry. If you should ever have a chimney fire- dont spray it with alot of water if you have any plan on using the chimney again, as this cracks the flues. Use small amounts of water and beware of steam burns.

-- Kevin (vantravlrs@aol.com), November 08, 2001.

I have burned firewood for over 20 years and never had a chimney fire. Back in my chimney cleaning days I had customers tell me stories of how their chimney fires sounded like a 747 landing on the roof etc. no thanks. I have always shut my stoves down at night restricting the air so that there would be coals in the am so I didn't have to start from scratch. The secret, in my opinion, is to get the flue warmed up into the red zone on your thermometer every day or at least every other day, and let er rip. This burns out the accumulation of the last nights low draft before it becomes a problem. If you have not done this previously, GET YOUR CHIMNEY CLEANED FIRST. Another thing which affects creosote formation is the type of flue pipe you use. Single wall pipe,inside the house, radiates more heat into the home and consequently is cooled forming more creosote. Double wall pipe is better in that it keeps the pipe hotter. For the flue through the roof, an insulated chimney will allow less creosote to form than an air cooled chimney imo.

-- jz (oz49us@yahoo.com), November 08, 2001.

I totally agree with jz on burning good hot fires. I think a lot of people don't realize that a good hot fire is the best. Sometimes it may look intimidating to see a fair sized blaze behind those glass doors - but that's what you need. My father-in-law has burned wood pretty well all his life but when he drops by the house and sees the fire he always asks if its getting too high. I look at my thermometer (which is right where it should be) and I simply say "No, that's how it should be burning" No more chimney fires for me!!!

My guess is I probably could be leaving some embers in the stove at night but our house is new with 6" walls, R30 insulation in the roof, good windows etc, so it retains the heat well thereby eliminating the need for a morning fire.

Cheers and have a great weekend,

Sean Paradise, Newfoundland, Canada

-- Sean (seand@mail.gov.nf.ca), November 09, 2001.



In ref to JZ. I have a 4-5 foot pipe that runs off the back of the Woodstove (fireplace insert) thru the Chimmeny/Fireplace. Do I understand you correctly in that I should run the inside pipe all the way to the top of my fireplace? what improvement will this do for heat or performance? Berto

-- Berto (biketrax4u@aol.com), November 10, 2001.

I am very interested in getting one of these stove pipe thermometers. Do any of you know of where I can get one online, or can you give me a good brand-name to find. I want to get the right kind. Thanks a bunch, ~Phyllis

-- Panhandle Phyllis (tmblweed@wtrt.net), November 10, 2001.

Berto, if your stove is performing well the only advantages to extending the flue all the way to the top of the chimney are 1. It will be a lot easier to clean the flue. You can run a brush all the way from the top of the flue to the heater without having to worry about the smoke shelf etc. This eliminates pulling the insert every time it needs to be cleaned. 2. The other big advantage is the top of the flue is usually covered with a metal plate when a liner is extended all the way to the top. This prevents house air that you have heated from being pulled in around the stove and wasted out the chimney. The best reason to run the liner all the way to the top is if your stove doesn't draw properly. If you take a six inch flue pipe from the stove and dump it in a large masonry chimney it has just the opposite effect as a venturi. It gets lazy and doesn't have the momentum to pull the air through the stove as well as a smaller diameter pipe. Also the metal pipe heats up and stays hot much quicker assisting the draw as well as having less creosote formation. Happy heating. jz

-- jz (oz49us@yahoo.com), November 10, 2001.

We have used wood for heating and cookng for many years. Each stove is different and you will learn the best way to use yours. Make sure you use well dried wood as like has been said earlier green wood will ill your chimmney with creosote and can lead to chimney fires. We found this out the hard way when we first started using wood heat. Also never run a fire too low. Our kitchen stove is an old kitchen range and doesn't keep a fire real long as it is not airtight. We always let this go out at night. We have in the living room a Vermont Castings stove and this is airtight but, I would never close it down very much. I start the fires with newspapers (3pages) then old egg cartons, kindiling wood in a couple of small pieces of wood. Once the fire is going well I add larger pieces of wood. I always start with the drafts open and when the fire is going I close the drafts down some. I get my kindling wood for free at a furniture factory. They are glad to get the stuff hauled off. I don't know the truth to this but I have been told to throw potato peelings in the fire and this will reduce the creosote buildup. I always do this anyway. I grew up in the city and never knew anything about using wood heat so I purchased a couple of books on the subject and made sure everything was installed properly. Now, I am the one that can get the fires going very easily. I am also the one that has mastered how to use the old kitchen range. It all comes with practice and learning the way your stove works.

Renie in Maine

-- Irene Burt (renienorm@aol.com), November 13, 2001.


I've been using wood heat exclusively for nearly 10 years now and have gone through some trial and error. But there's something to be said to having to work for your heat, and it has nearly become a hobby.

For years I had an old cast iron stove that came with the house, which was a bit too small for the task of heating a 1500 square feet house even though the open design was well-suited to such heating.

To ensure a bed of hot coals in the morning I would completely load the stove and shut off the airflow for the night. This was a mistake, as others have mentioned causing a large amount of creosote buildup and a significant danger of a chimney fire, even though I would have a good professional cleaning once a year.

Yes, its nice to have some coals in the morning or evening but it is not worth the risk. Better to let house heat up to 90 overnight or through the day and let the heat dissipate (we have to sleep with our upstairs door closed)than to think one can regulate a wood stove to provide constant 70 degree temperature

Generally I've found each stove/house set up to be unique, but one thing is certain - your wood stove will tell you how it should be burned - not the other way around. If there is any black buildup on the glass or door, chances are you're not burning correctly, putting yourself in danger, polluting the environment and wasting money in wood.

Last year I invested in a new Jotul F500 - if anything a bit too large for the house during mild days of fall, winter, and spring - but worth it for those long subfreezing streches. The new efficient stoves, which are cleaner and more efficient by reburning smoke and gases, require that fires be allowed to burn hot at all times.

This can require a new approach to fireburning - instead of keeping the stove full at all times, its best to burn hot for short periods of time, working down to embers and coals and restoking with new wood as need be. This is especially so on the milder days.

Unlike the old stoves, new stoves are designed to burn efficiently only when the door is closed and the airflow is regulated as need be (unlike my old stove that required the door be left open a crack to maintain high temperatures). This appears to be necessary to keep the gases contained, allowing for hot and complete burns. Once the fire is up to temperature, close the door and let it do its job, allowing it to burn the gas as well as the wood, providing more heat on less wood.

If you have a glass door one clue that your burning correctly is not that you have big yellow and orange flames, but smaller blue flames that dance around - you'll see this when the gases are burning efficiently - so don't be fooled into giving it more air than it needs.

After a season of trial and error I think I've got the new stove figured out, and while the house is warmer, I'm using less heat. As far as coming home to a cold house, there's not much that can be done, as it simply takes time to heat a house. As heat rises, a fan is more useful for keeping enough heat down - back rooms are sometimes a problem, however I have seen small corner fans that can fit in doorway corners that might be an affordable option (I think through Plow and Hearth catalogs).

Good dry wood is essential to reducing creosote and getting a good hot fire too - stock up on green wood and let it season yourself to save money.

One other thing to watch out for - the chimney liner scam. Having improperly burned from season to season, cleaning was always difficult for my sweep. One year I switched sweeps and they immediately determined that my chimney could not be cleaned - that it would require a costly chemical treatment (with no guarantee of working) or preferably a $1500 steel chimney liner.

They further spooked my wife having her sign a paper saying they had advised not to burn for risk of a chimney fire. I made a few calls the next morning and found that even their estimate for the chemical treatment was twice as expensive as it should have been, making me very suspicious. A few more calls and I found an honest and good hearted sweep who was able to clean the creosote even though it took him a very long time. He even took the time to tutor me in proper burning technique, and had to be forced to accept a hefty tip for his time and trouble.

A few weeks later I saw a 20/20 expose' on the whole scam - and even though I did have quite the creosote build up, it was clear that liners and chem treatments are necessary only in extreme cases if you keep up with a yearly cleaning.

I also advocate a stovepipe thermometer with an internal sensor to show actual gas temperature rather than the magnetic external ones - I have both - one to tell me how much heat the stove puts out and the other for the stovepipe gas. Although the ranges of each gauge are appropriate to their use, the magnetic external thermometers are not as accurate.

One last caution - during a winter storm I had left the woodstove door open a crack (the wood was wet and needed more air to get started) - apparently the strong winds were causing a backdraft causing carbon monoxide gases to come back into the house. After my wife and I both expressed similar concerns about heat palpatations and a possible heart attack, we figured out the common element and spent some time outside until we felt better. I think this was a unique circumstance, but again, a valuable lesson was learned.

So in a nutshell - hot fires as needed with good dry wood; regulate airflow as needed but do not close down completely except for cases of a chimney fire. The woodstove will tell you how it should be burned - not the other way around.

Sorry for the length, but I spent years looking for advice and never found it until this message board - hope some might learn from my mistakes.

-John in New England

These old stoves are simple in design but very inefficient.

-- John in New England (woodburner2000@hotmail.com), February 07, 2002.



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