Monitoring my outdoor stove from inside...

[dave_dj1]

As some of you know I have an outdoor hot air wood burner. Well lately I am getting longer burn times with my well seasoned wood. I think I can improve upon these burn times with some sort of automatic or semi-automatic monitoring device. I'm hoping some of you that have more knowledge of such things can help me.
What I have now for air supply, I have a 1/4" hole in the door, that's it. I'm sure there is some air leaking in around the draft door when it's closed but not much.
Technically there is a thermostat hooked up to the draft door, it never get's cool enough for the draft to open, I have a 0-60 min. timer on the stove that I set when I load wood , I set the timer for outside temps, usually around 15 min. after I load it. If some how I could know what the stove is doing from my living room I could have something open the draft up for a period of time. I would ultimately like a camera but I don't see how that can work to see the fire. I have some t-stat wire and I bought a digital thermostat that I want to wire up stairs in the living room. Just some background info, I have a walk out basement on the back where the stove is.
Any suggestions for temp senders and digital readouts? I tried an indoor outdoor setup but can't put that in the stove, just in the room where the duct blows in.
thanks, and sorry for the rambling, just some of my thoughts.

 

[ChoppyChoppy]

There is a stove dealio that dials in the drafts based on temp. I can't recall the name of it now, I had talked to the owner of the dealio too

 

[brenndatomu]

I have a Maverick ET732 dual probe wireless BBQ thermometer on the Yukon in the basement. I have one probe taped on the outside of the stovepipe and one in the supply plenum. Love it, saves trips downstairs to see whats up once you learn what is "normal", cheap enough too...$50-60ish

 

[NSMaple1]

I have a Maverick ET732 dual probe wireless BBQ thermometer on the Yukon in the basement. I have one probe taped on the outside of the stovepipe and one in the supply plenum. Love it, saves trips downstairs to see whats up once you learn what is "normal", cheap enough too...$50-60ish

Ha, I got one of those to monitor my storage temps with before Xmas, and haven't taken it out of the box yet. What's the range & battery life like?

 

[dave_dj1]

That looks like a nice set up, may work for monitoring. Any idea if one probe would pick up ambient air temps as in just hanging in the room?
thanks,
dave

 

[brenndatomu]

What's the range & battery life like?

I'm over a year on the current batts, 24/7 running in the winter

Any idea if one probe would pick up ambient air temps as in just hanging in the room?

Yes

 

[Iska3]

I use the single probe 731 in the house because the range is not as good and like brenndatomu, I use the 732(2) outside between the smoker and the house. The range for the 732 is 300 feet and the battery in both types will go a good year with 24/7 use. The one of the probes in the 732 reads the air inside of the smoker and the other reads the IT of the Meat. The other 732 reads the air temp inside the shop and the other probe reads the temp of the exchanger in there. They seem to go forever on two AAA Bats.

I'm over a year on the current batts, 24/7 running in the winter


Yes

 

[NSMaple1]

Good to hear. I really should get mine out & hooked up.

 

[Iska3]

These are a handy thing to have. I have the one probe alarm high temp set at 190 degrees and the low temp alarm set at 145 degrees; One late night I loaded the OWB and didn't latch the door, about the time we went to bed the high temp alarm went off, saved me from a boil over. During the day if I see the low temp is 10 to 15 degrees below my OWB set point, I know that I need to get out and rake up my coals and think about feeding the OWB.

Good to hear. I really should get mine out & hooked up.

 

[Oldman47]

If you are running a hot air system, is there anything wrong with measuring the hot air where it enters your home instead? Just trying to think a bit outside the box. I bet you could start measuring and in a short time get a decent correlation between that air temperature and furnace firebox temperatures.

 

[brenndatomu]

Yeah I have the alarms set on both probes, helps me sleep better knowing this thing will wake me up if the furnace goes nuclear for some reason. The only time the alarm has went off so far is when it loses signal for too long, happens every once in a while, dunno why, I'm well within range and it is fine 99.9% of the time.

If you are running a hot air system, is there anything wrong with measuring the hot air where it enters your home instead?

No reason you couldn't do that.

 

[blkcloud]

What kind of heater do you have? I used to have one that blew hot air into my basement but cannot remember the name..

 

[hamish]

Usually you can look out the window and know whats going on!

 

[dave_dj1]

If you are running a hot air system, is there anything wrong with measuring the hot air where it enters your home instead? Just trying to think a bit outside the box. I bet you could start measuring and in a short time get a decent correlation between that air temperature and furnace firebox temperatures.

This is exactly what I want to do. I was hoping to have one probe in near the top of the stove and the other out in the room a couple of inches. I like the idea of the alarm too.
Thanks for the responses and ideas, I may order one today.

 

[lefturnfreek]

This is what I use to monitor my temperature of the boiler. It's a wire less receiver/transmitter unit, Tempminder MRC 800, and the temperature sensor is on the water inlet pipe. This unit monitors 3 channels wirelessly and indoor temp, has a clear able memory and a user settable high and low, temp and mosture alarm on 1 channel.

It is used to monitor a water pump shed, a heated storage room in my barn and the boiler, the farthest is more than 500 ft away and works just fine. All 4 units have been converted to use anAC /DC transformer instead of batteries for the simple lower cost.

 

[NSMaple1]

What is the max temp the Tempminder will handle?

 

[lefturnfreek]

From the little bit of digging I did it's range is -50 to 70 C.