Charmaster
Hi farmer mike,
I think part of my problem has been that I have been lighting small fires this year because it has been warm up here.
I think my chimney is OK as I have had no problem getting a strong draft. It's about 35 feet high and built of masonry. I clean it about once a year but check it often.
I am trying to get longer burn times without loading it down with too much wood and my fires have been cooling down quickly after the wood is burned.
I have a couple of questions:
1). How wide is the gap for your draft door? I had mine at 5/8 inch last night. At that setting, I had a good fire that heated the chimney to about 215 degrees. I tested a smaller opening @ about 7/16 inch and the chimney temp dropped to 200.
2). What are your chimney temperatures? I find that the chimney is hot initially and then drops down to between 100-150 after a few hours. I am concerned that this might create a creosote problem.
3). It sounds like you use the back damper in either the "on" (9:00) or "off" (6:00) position. I have tried to experiment with that but it doesn't seem to make much of a difference regarding chimney temperature. I understand what you are saying about wanting to get more heat out of the smoke by having it in the off position and therefore circulating through the bottom pipe.
4). Do you use the idle adjustment screw on the draft door? I used to not use this (i.e. when the house was at temperature, it would be totally shut). Now, at Charmaster's recommendation, I have this set at about 1/8".
5). I also have the barometric draft control (like you -- the swinging door thing). I'm not quite sure what to do with this and what difference it might make other than cooling down the chimney. Given that I have had trouble keeping the chimney hot enough, I have set this so that it doesn't swing open much. Any guidance here would be appreciated.
6). After a fire cycle which you say is about 6 hours, do you immediately burn another load? Or, do you just load the furnace a couple of times a day. I would be interested in your routine for burning and keeping your home heated. I work some pretty long days so I fire it about 6 or 6:30 AM and sometimes don't get home until 8:00 so I really only get two burns a day. I have a programmable thermostat for the wood that goes down to 62 degrees during the day so I do get a temperature swing over the course of the day.
Most of my wood is good, northern hardwood (maple, beech, oak, ash). What I am using now is well-seasoned but I will get into some that has been cut late summer and is therefore wetter. I would be interested in your experience with wet and dry wood as well as how long the cycle times are. Also, how many times a year do you have to clean your chimney if some of the wood you are burning is wet?
Thanks in advance for any help you can give. I really appreciate it.