Glass door on woodstoves

[Del_]

I prefer a sensible cast iron one.

View attachment 1039449

I'm pretty sure that your stove is made from welded steel plate and the only cast iron part might be the door.

Not that there is anything wrong with that.

 

[psc1947]

Glass is really a liquid frozen in place. The clear window on a wood stove is ceramic. As it has a crystal structure. At least that is what I was led to believe.

Wikipedia searches for Glass, Ceramic, Clay, Sand, Borosilicates etc can use up a lot of time "Ceramics and glasses are radically different materials than metals but are close cousins to each other. Both typically exhibit high strength, high hardness, high elastic modulus, unusually high chemical inertness, and are electrical and thermal insulators. Ceramics are crystalline, while glasses are amorphous.

 

[Lightning Performance]

I like the glass on ours, just need to clean it every so often.

I use wood ash on mine to clean the glass. My door lifts right off to make it easy as pie. The rounded top on the glass last so much longer then square glass types. The wood saving from burning a modern type dual burn area has cut the soot to near nothing and my door gets cleaned once a week or less around the gaskets and the glass. No chimney buildup and using less wood with a more consistent heat control vs the old smoke box is a huge step up most people just don't see burning an old smoke box. Having the air curtain running down across the glass is the ticket.

 

[chipper1]

I use wood ash on mine to clean the glass. My door lifts right off to make it easy as pie. The rounded top on the glass last so much longer then square glass types. The wood saving from burning a modern type dual burn area has cut the soot to near nothing and my door gets cleaned once a week or less around the gaskets and the glass. No chimney buildup and using less wood with a more consistent heat control vs the old smoke box is a huge step up most people just don't see burning an old smoke box. Having the air curtain running down across the glass is the ticket.

I burn a lot of black locust, I wouldn't want to risk scratching it, but I've heard that others use ash too.

 

[Del_]

I also use ash and water wet newspaper and a spray bottle. I spray wet the newspaper, dip it in some ash and rub lightly, repeating if necessary on the tough sections.

Here's my best photo of secondary combustion in our Jotul F600CB.

The stainless steel tubes are under an insulated shelf in the top of the stove and the gasses must pass by the top of the door glass to exit and then travel under the whole top of the stove to get to the chimney connection in the back. The air in the tubes enters through a single port in the bottom rear of the stove and flows through a convoluted pathway cast into the cast iron. This preheats the air allowing for better secondary combustion. The main air enters the front of the stove via an 'air head' that is just inside the stove at the center bottom of the two doors and enters via the same preheated pathway.

The flame in the top of the firebox are where fresh pre heated air is exiting the stainless tubes and meeting hot un-burnt pyrolytic wood gas. In non secondary combustion stoves these gasses exit the stove and enter the chimney un-burnt and form creosote in a cool chimney or in a hot chimney escape to the atmosphere as smoke.

It does take dry wood to get good secondary combustion. We season all firewood for at least two years in a woodshed, usually 3 years. We burn pine and other woods considered non desirable by some wood burners due to creosote formation tendencies. Of course we burn oak and hickory too if I don't have a sale for them. Some of the bad rap that lighter woods have comes from the fact that wood is sold by the cord, so the most dense wood has a higher heating value per cord as all wood contains about the same number of BTU's per pound. Also the lighter woods do not form as good of a coal bed.

I started heating with a wood stove back in 1981 and today our Jotul is our sole heating source.

Watching secondary combustion is a joy!

 

[SS396driver]

Glass

 

[Lightning Performance]

I also use ash and water wet newspaper and a spray bottle. I spray wet the newspaper, dip it in some ash and rub lightly, repeating if necessary on the tough sections.

Here's my best photo of secondary combustion in our Jotul F600CB.

The stainless steel tubes are under an insulated shelf in the top of the stove and the gasses must pass by the top of the door glass to exit and then travel under the whole top of the stove to get to the chimney connection in the back. The air in the tubes enters through a single port in the bottom rear of the stove and flows through a convoluted pathway cast into the cast iron. This preheats the air allowing for better secondary combustion. The main air enters the front of the stove via an 'air head' that is just inside the stove at the center bottom of the two doors and enters via the same preheated pathway.

The flame in the top of the firebox are where fresh pre heated air is exiting the stainless tubes and meeting hot un-burnt pyrolytic wood gas. In non secondary combustion stoves these gasses exit the stove and enter the chimney un-burnt and form creosote in a cool chimney or in a hot chimney escape to the atmosphere as smoke.

It does take dry wood to get good secondary combustion. We season all firewood for at least two years in a woodshed, usually 3 years. We burn pine and other woods considered non desirable by some wood burners due to creosote formation tendencies. Of course we burn oak and hickory too if I don't have a sale for them. Some of the bad rap that lighter woods have comes from the fact that wood is sold by the cord, so the most dense wood has a higher heating value per cord as all wood contains about the same number of BTU's per pound. Also the lighter woods do not form as good of a coal bed.

I started heating with a wood stove back in 1981 and today our Jotul is our sole heating source.

Watching secondary combustion is a joy!

View attachment 1041312

Nice summation.
Mine would be three pages long and still never get the point across.

 

[Kjellzen]

I use wood ash on mine to clean the glass. My door lifts right off to make it easy as pie. The rounded top on the glass last so much longer then square glass types. The wood saving from burning a modern type dual burn area has cut the soot to near nothing and my door gets cleaned once a week or less around the gaskets and the glass. No chimney buildup and using less wood with a more consistent heat control vs the old smoke box is a huge step up most people just don't see burning an old smoke box. Having the air curtain running down across the glass is the ticket.

Agree, wood ash is what I have found to be the easiest and convenient way to clean the glass on my 5000+lbs Finnish limestone stove. It only takes a couple minutes, and wood ash is something that I will never run out of.

I also prefer glass window especially in the living room so I can see the wood and the fire.

Upstairs I am installing a smaller Swedish antique cast iron/limestone stove, and in the basement i am installing a vintage Norwegian cast iron stove, plus a swedish vintage cast iron kitchen oven.

The Swedish one that I'm installing upstairs was made around 1910-1930.

The high Norwegian one in the basement was made around 1870-1900, and the kitchen wood fired one was made around 1880-1920 I think.

Will have a look and see if I can take some pictures of them.
The electricity cost has gone wayyy crazy since that Russian imbecile invaded Ukraine.... So wood and fire is the only option for heating the house now.
/Kjell
A Norwegian living on the south east coast of Sweden.

 

[Lightning Performance]

Agree, wood ash is what I have found to be the easiest and convenient way to clean the glass on my 5000+lbs Finnish limestone stove. It only takes a couple minutes, and wood ash is something that I will never run out of.

I also prefer glass window especially in the living room so I can see the wood and the fire.

Upstairs I am installing a smaller Swedish antique cast iron/limestone stove, and in the basement i am installing a vintage Norwegian cast iron stove, plus a swedish vintage cast iron kitchen oven.

The Swedish one that I'm installing upstairs was made around 1910-1930.

The high Norwegian one in the basement was made around 1870-1900, and the kitchen wood fired one was made around 1880-1920 I think.

Will have a look and see if I can take some pictures of them.
The electricity cost has gone wayyy crazy since that Russian imbecile invaded Ukraine.... So wood and fire is the only option for heating the house now.
/Kjell
A Norwegian living on the south east coast of Sweden.

Consider finding some masonry block or brick maybe stone and build a 2023 gasification homemade unit in the basement on concrete built from cement and wood ash or potash. If you can make a water cistern or get some tanks your all set to store the heat. They use a lot less wood and your fires become hot. You'll get short and fast hot burn time. Oxygen and down draft velocity is all you need. An exhaust blower might not be needed if you design the airflow like a Russian masonry heater. Put a heat exchanger in it for air to liquid or not. Just the masonry mass puts out heat for half a day or more.
Irony maybe... maybe not.

 

[ken morgan]

what if that efficiency would save you 10k in 10 years, which is the cost of your stove every year...would you do it.

I actually studied it a bit and prior to building I designed a reburn secondary burn system I built a shelf in the top of the stove where the partially burned gasses go. I then have two 1.5" water valves that I use to control air that is preheated as it rises in the pipes and is then injected into the top chamber where it burns off the excess unburned gasses. no smoke from the chimney after it gets hot and turned down to what i term as econo-mode. trust me it burns very little wood, and all it took was two or three weeks of perusing various woodburning forums to get all the data needed to set up and build.