Stove not hot enough?

[dave_376]

Please excuse my newbieness on this but the tube that sits in the fire box above the door going left to right with a bunch of holes in it, is that an air wash for the glass, source of air intake, or reburn tube? There is one installed but the seller did leave me a brand new one.

I have never looked inside a 996 but I assume it is similar to my 1196. square/rectangular air reburn tubes running around the top sides and back of the firebox and your stove has 1 round reburn tube going across the firebox between the 2 square/rectangular air reburn tubes. The air wash on my stove is just behind the glass, a rectangle perforated with small holes all over it.

I would make sure that your stove is put together correctly look on page 62 of the owners manual and go from there. make sure the air reburn tube is installed and the firebrick baffle above it along with the ceramic blanket above that.

Cut some wood shorter and split smaller, load the stove and try to get it hot. Keep loading wood on top of the hot coals to keep the stove hot.

Note: The Combustion Air Control is operated by rotating it up or down. In the down position it is fully closed. In the up position it is fully open. Keep it open and the blower fan off until the stove is hot.

Like it was mentioned several times already your wood is most likely wet. If thats all you have and you need to burn it this is your best bet to do it. If you can buy better wood you may want to try that also. In my opinion buying wood is the only time a moisture is really important. It will help you from getting cheated on wood that is fresh split and not actually dry.

You can also try some eco blocks from tractor supply. They are compressed saw dust not wax logs.

 

[Iron Head]

You need to add at least two more chunks of wood in there.

 

[JNap]

Ok so I think I have it figured out now. Had a sweep come out today and after tearing everything inside apart so i could figure out how these things operate and asking a bunch of questions here is what i have come up with. The stove is together as per manufacturer with one exception, the previous owner had the top/ceiling bricks removed directly underneath the flue causing me to lose about 3/4 of my heat. There are no reburn tubes, squares, etc. when you take all the bricks out all you see is a flue pipe hole, smoke shield/front edge brick shelf, and the air wash tube. The air was tube also serves as the damper operated air intake. The floor, sides, and back are solid. The tube the owner left me was the air wash/intake. That is installed. There were numerous bricks that were broken and none of them placed properly so I picked up a bunch of new ones (if anybody in bucks county, pa needs bricks Fizzano brothers brick supply has them for $1.35 all day every day other hearth shops around me wanted almost $4 a piece!)
And I also grabbed new door and glass fiberglass rope. I also had a new crown wash done and a new spark arrestor/cap installed. The old cap was the one that usually comes free with the liner and due to its construction and design was restrictive and a potential hazard. It looked as if the mesh had been dipped in tar multiple times and was almost a 1/4" thick. The sweeping knocked down about a gallons worth of soot. So with all this combined and some decent wood I should be on track to get into the 300 degree+ range. No thanks to the previous owners lack of PROPER maintenance.

Thank you everyone for your responses, those combined with tearing the thing apart and doing a little research has left me with what should be a much better operating stove and a better understanding of woodstoves in general. I'll keep you posted on my next burn temps, still gonna take it easy though, for now....

 

[JNap]

Update, stove working great thanks to proper maintenance and good advice from the thread contributors. I finally grew a set and started loading it up using the north south orientation using smaller fatter splits and playing around with the air intake and now have no problems burning at 400 degrees. Eventually I'll figure out what it takes to get it to 600 degrees if possible, not sure ill be able to get it there though with the smaller firebox size. Thanks again to the contributors for your help. :msp_thumbsup::msp_thumbsup::msp_thumbsup::msp_thumbsup::msp_thumbsup::msp_thumbsup: