stupid woodstove questions

[husky455rancher]

ok i recently installed a shenandoah r-76. now im used to just a draft control with my insert. with the r-76 i have a draft and we installed a damper in the pipe. is one better to leave more open tah the other or is it all relative?

what ive been doing the last couple days and it gives good heat but im not sure its the most efficient use of the wood is to leave the draft most of the way open and alnmost close the damper. the draft has a bi-metal strip on it i guess its like a thermostat or something too.

any suggestions would be great, i hate to waste wood

 

[dwinch53]

I have a fire chief wood furnace in my basement...I do not have a damper in the stove pipe...the furnace is air tight and i control the fire from two controls on the front of the furnace...this is what was suggested by fire chief...but your's could be diff? Is your stove air tight? DW

 

[dwinch53]

You want to keep your chimney hot enough to keep creosote from forming.Get a rutland chimney thermometer and play with both controls while keeping the chimney temp in the right heat range. DW :greenchainsaw:

 

[mattmc2003]

My wonderwood is not airtight, it has some kind of non adjustable rig on the front door with holes behind it so it can always get air, some epa junk or something. And if you put the thermostat all the way down, it will close itself off about the time it starts doing good, then open up in the middle of the night and burn all your wood out. Our first night it got 90 degrees in the opposite end of the house from the heater. There is a little tab on the thermostat dial that prevents you from closing it but so far, and i bent it down, that way you can close it far enough that the spring on the thermostat won't pick it back up. And it still got too much air through the front, so i had to put the damper in the pipe. It was burning a steady 85 degrees on low setting every night(before pipe damper) and is about 75 now. And doesn't waste near the wood it did. But it is still a struggle for it to keep burning for a good 8 hours without filling it up again.

 

[dwinch53]

In my own opinion...most wood stoves have a 4 to 6 hr burn where you keep the heat where you want it...sure you might have coals in it for 12 hours but you will not put out a steady temp...so 4 hrs is about average...i am sure some will disagree...DW

 

[mattmc2003]

I said wonderwood, meant heartwood.... but i can barely keep coals for 8 hours. I have to cram it full at about 1030 at night, and jump up at 5 so and put more in it. Sometimes the coals have gone out by then anyway. Im afraid to turn the pipe damper down anymore, cause im afraid it might start smoking up in the middle of the night.

 

[husky455rancher]

ive closed the damper in the pipe almost all the way and i didnt get any smoke in the house. i can pretty much keep the top of the stove 375-490 all the time as long as theres wood in it. so far if it has ever dropped in the low 3's or high 2;s its just got alot of coals in it.

 

[husky455rancher]

here she is

 

[KsWoodsMan]

In another thread your pictures showed a damper in the fluepipe. I wondered then if it was factory. Now I'm thinking with the bi-metal thermostat control the best method might be to open the damper and let the stove do its own thing.

Something that decreased my wood usage is to burn the wood differently than to light it at the bottom and watch the wood go up in smoke from all the heat below it or passing around it.

I have tried a few different methods of burning and lighting the stove and stuck with lighting a small fire in the rear of the stove, away from the air intake. Then stacking more wood in front of that and letting the fire burn towards the air. I get the longest burns with the wood standing vertically and packed in tight. But 13-14" wood no more than 6" in dia. is a PITA in my stove.

When burning conventionally, the stove used to get super hot (700*+) about 30 minutes after it was lit and burn like that for about an hour or less till it was mostly coals. It wasn't long till it was time to reload the firebox. It made for some terrible heat spikes almost running us out of the house more than once. Then the house felt cold and the whole thing started over again.

Now after the fire is lit it burns at an even temperature just about from start to finish. It burns for much longer, still giving me ample coals to restart the next fire. It is also much easier to regulate the temperature with the air control. No more heat spikes for a more even heat throughout the house. I light the fire, set the air control and forget it till I come back to reload.

Works for me, YMMV.