# Is 800 degrees surface temp of a wood stove TOO HOT??



## lime4x4

I have the efel wood/coal stove.Many of you might remember my other post about trying to burn coal in it and trying to heat my whole house with it in the basement. well today i thought i'd try something new. I had some pine, maple and oak laying around. So i started a fire with pine within 30 to 45 minutes the stove was putting out around 600 degrees surface temp. Then once the pine burnt down i thru in a couple of peices of maple and oak.Well the surface temp of the stove shot up to around 800 degrees and it's pretty much has maintained that for the last couple of hours. I have the flue dampner set so that i maintain a flue temp of around 400 to 500 degrees at the base of my 40 foot ss liner which by the way is rated at 2100 degrees. I figured the higher flue temp would help with creosote forming esp when burning pine. Is 800 degrees too hot for a woodstove?? The stove shows no sign of over firing from what i can tell..It's not glowing red.The temp here is around 20 degrees outside.I must say it's doing a great job at heating the whole house.Coal would never get that hot or thru off enough heat to even heat the first floor.The wife said i had to shut off the pellet stove on the first floor cause it was getting to hot in here. Coal never did that.So does 800 degrees seem about right? I remember my father in law had a wood stove when he had that thing cranked up you couldn't get within 20 feet of it before u started sweating..


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## Todd

Not familiar with Efel stove, but 800 deg sounds pretty hot to me. Doesn't steel start to glow red between 900-1000? Do have a manual? What does it say?


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## webbie

lime4x4 said:
			
		

> I have the efel wood/coal stove.Many of you might remember my other post about trying to burn coal in it and trying to heat my whole house with it in the basement. well today i thought i'd try something new. I had some pine, maple and oak laying around.at.So does 800 degrees seem about right?



Well, that is a heavy duty stove, so it's surely not going to melt. BUT, you are definitely close to the red line! If you are running often at 800 degrees, it is almost a certainty that you will be running at 900+ SOME of the time and possibly even hotter.

It will also take a LOT of wood and effort to maintain this temp.

So, in answer to the question, 800 degrees may not be overfiring for the surface temp of a single wall stove - but running something that hard is like hauling a steamroller on a trailer attached to a Subaru - it might do it, but will surely wear down the car after a whle.
(not that you care that much about this used stove!)

Basically, you are trying to make something do a job for which it was not intended. This usually spells either trouble or failure in the long run. The good part is that you have established that, if the power goes out, you can actually use the thing to help keep you from freezing. But as far as every day, I'd say you'd have to really feed that thing often to keep the heat range up that high.


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## lime4x4

Well it's solid cast iron contruction 1/4" to 5/16" thick..Been playing some more i found if i get a good layer of coal going then add a peice of oak every 1 to 1.5 hours i can maintane a stove temp of around 700 degrees.
And yes it is a used stove looking to buy a new harmon handfired coal stove early next year. I also opened the front loading door when it' at 800 degrees for awhile and the grates aren't glowing and neither is the baffle plate for the flue gassesso i take that as a good sign.And your right it probably would take ALOT of wood to maintain that high of a temp for long periods of time.lucky for me i have access to maple and oak that has been dried for over 3 years...lol


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## babalu87

You are killing your efficiency more than anything
800 is just wasted heat going up the stack


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## lime4x4

i was always told if buring wood u should have a stack temp of 300 to 600.Right now i'm maintaining a stack temp of just over 300 with burning coal and the occ peice of oak and the stove is around 700 degrees.Also this stove uses a air intake dampner that is using a thermastic metal.When the stove really gets going the ndampner actually starts to close then it opens back up again


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## stovemanken

IMHO, the stove is being overfired. That is not an airtight stove, so you can really stoke it up to achieve those temperatures. A modern, airtight EPA Phase II wood stove won't do that, unless you leave the ash pan or front door open. If you do that, you will void your warranty. Even a "coal only heater" like the Harman Mark series, SF250 or a coal/wood stove like the TLC2000 is not built for those temperatures, then too, you would have to leave the doors open and that will overfire the stove. My $0.02 worth.


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## Corie

absurd heat cycling like that will eventually result in fatigue failure


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## fbelec

i'm no expert but to me there is a big differential in the stack and stove temp. 
can you swap thermometers to see if the differential is the same. if your stove temp is 800 and your grates arn't glowing red something doesn't sound right.


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## BrotherBart

fbelec said:
			
		

> i'm no expert but to me there is a big differential in the stack and stove temp.
> can you swap thermometers to see if the differential is the same. if your stove temp is 800 and your grates arn't glowing red something doesn't sound right.



I'm with you fbelec. Those stove top thermometers are crap. I have gone through at least a ton of the damn things. Seems the only thing that hurts them is heat. As the kids used to say, well Duh?

When they die they always crap out two hundred degees high. So you are at two hundred before you even light off the stove. He is probably running around six hundred surface temp.


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## lime4x4

The guage is accurate.The stove surface temp varies between 680 to 790 degrees. I also used a oven temp gauge and a laser temp gun.Nothing on the stove is glowing red.Since it's located in the basement i check by shutting of the lights at night. Also from what i can tell the grates aren't glowing either.And to the best of my knowledge the stove is air tight.There is furnace cement at all the seams and there are gaskets installed for all the doors. The air intake dampner does open and close as the stove is running.I also have about 4 feet of stove pipe from the stove to liner.


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## Penny

fbelec said:
			
		

> i'm no expert but to me there is a big differential in the stack and stove temp.
> can you swap thermometers to see if the differential is the same. if your stove temp is 800 and your grates arn't glowing red something doesn't sound right.




What if you have the opposite problem. What if the top of my wood stove is glowing red! I know this is an old thread, but when I searched for something more to do than throw water in/on it, this is what I found. I'm going to look around a bit, and if I don't find any other solution, and post it in the right thread, then could someone else address this? Scared the h*&L;about me! 

I don't think the gasket my spouse put on the opening worked too well. It fell off earlier today. UGH! TOO MUCH OXYGEN!


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## EatenByLimestone

Glowing red is generally not a good thing.    

Can you explain your setup and the process you go through to get the stove to glow?

Matt


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## EatenByLimestone

Everything before post number 12 was posted in 2005.


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## polaris

This is a coal stove not a wood stove and definitely not an epa wood stove as some seem to be comparing it to. I live in coal country and I can tell you lots of folks with old coal stove have them glowing to some degree for years on end. How safe is it? I really don't know but 800 degrees for an old coal burner(burning a combination or just wood) is more the norm than the exception.
Joe


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## Jimbob

stovemanken said:
			
		

> IMHO, the stove is being overfired. That is not an airtight stove, so you can really stoke it up to achieve those temperatures. A modern, airtight EPA Phase II wood stove won't do that, unless you leave the ash pan or front door open.



Not true. I can VERY EASILY do that to our Summit if I load it up with wood on a small bed of coals then forget to close tha air down once it gets going. I have buried the needle on both thermos a couple of times. If I leave the draft open long enough with a full load of wood, the pipe surface thermo falls off!....

I normally run @ about 600-700 stove top temp, with the occasional trip to 850.


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## snowtime

Same here. When its cold -40etc I regularly run 850. The difference is this is a moving temp as the stove gets going and it settles down to 750+ after an hour. So the answer is 800 works but for how long. I remember in the old days we would have our smoke dragons running red all day when it was -40 or colder. It does wear the stove out quicker but if a person has an extremely thick stove, lots of clearance and watches it religiously they can possibly get away with high temps like that. The caveat is they had better have a properly [new rules] installed chimney system not an old chimney installed  15 years ago. I am more cautious now and would be a little worried if I ran a stove above 800 continuously.


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