building a fire and heating the house
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cookin2night
Member
That's sucks. .. Very unforgiving.We usually start with some kindling, newspaper and a couple of small splits....once the fire gets going, we move up the size of the splits and never fully load the stove...maybe 3 decent splits, nothing too big. I don't sleep well, and usually up every 2 hours to reload, or I just shut the bedroom door and pop on the heat....it has it's own zone. I threw in about 9 shorties in our stove once and 10 minutes later, heard loud BANG BANG BANG....stove temps over 900....I believe I over fired it even though there was no red glow.....now when I open and close the door on the stove, it scrapes the lip, but still seals...barely.
I have heated with wood for about 45 years. As a kid we had a barrel stove we used up in Alaska. Used it in two different houses. It was not a primary heat source, but it was going a lot of the time as supplemental. I have lived in this house since 1986 and have used my stove to generate as much of the heat in the house as possible. I am good at fires, most of this thread has been my surprise to how many people burn their stove. I have always tried to build a fire and keep the heat at a constant size. I see so many people saying that they fill the stove with small wood, let the fire burn hot, burn down, then do it again. I had a thermomiter on my Blaze King, the soapstone hearthstone stove is harder to get a thermostatic reading on. I use an eco fan to tell temp of the surface most of the time.
I have heated with wood for about 45 years. As a kid we had a barrel stove we used up in Alaska. Used it in two different houses. It was not a primary heat source, but it was going a lot of the time as supplemental. I have lived in this house since 1986 and have used my stove to generate as much of the heat in the house as possible. I am good at fires, most of this thread has been my surprise to how many people burn their stove. I have always tried to build a fire and keep the heat at a constant size. I see so many people saying that they fill the stove with small wood, let the fire burn hot, burn down, then do it again. I had a thermomiter on my Blaze King, the soapstone hearthstone stove is harder to get a thermostatic reading on. I use an eco fan to tell temp of the surface most of the time.
Yes, for about the last 15 years we have had an Electrathon (electric go carts) team at the local high school.
cookin2night
Member
I put my thermometer on my stove pipe and try to keep it in the optimal zone. Personally I start a majority of my fires with eco bricks. I then put in small kindling on top. When I have a nice bed of coals I put medium size splits and then bigger splits while I'm awake. I watch the temp of the pipe and regulate it to keep it in the optimal zone. At the end of the night I load it with larger splits and turn the intake down where it's cracked open. It will burn all night and in the morning have a nice bed of coals. I'll spread the coals and load up with splits again and open up the intake to warm up the logs until I leave for work. When I get back home I'll have a nice bed of coals again and I'll repeat the process. It works really well. But I can only speak for myself. I have a large vermont castings dutch west stove on one side of the house. When it dips below freezing I'll light the insert on the other side of the house. And the house and everyone in it stays nice and toasty and happy. [emoji2]
About your worry about starting a chimney fire. A chimney fire has little to do with HOW you start a fire, and everything about what you're burning. The objective is to never allow a build up of combustible fuel in your chimney in the first place. Now, if your flu is coated with creosote, then yes different fires could touch it off easier than others but again, the object is to not have it there in the first place. Myself, it depends on outside temps...often times I load a bunch of hemlock kindling on top of large hardwood, light the kindling, and nurse the fire along until everything is caught and then I let her go and just keep turning the air down. If there's a fire roaring in there, and I'm going to bed in an hour I open the bypass, and top it off full and go to bed an hour later. This time of year, I just let the first fire go down to coals...its still warm enough to do so.
My concern over chimney fire issues was not over starting the fire, but in how you keep it going. As far as I remember, every one I have seen (mine or others) was started by the loading of very hot burning stuff in a hot stove/chimney. I agree, if a chimney is spotless, there is nothing there to burn. The reality is that they usually are not spotless. If they were, no one would have ever heard of a chimney fire.
I am seeing responces from people that burn similar to me. Just over the last few months I seem to see the constant recommendation to split the wood smaller and loading the stove full of the small pieces when reloading.
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Ill do an IR reading of the stove pipe where it goes into the masonry ,but i doubt if its much over 250 with a 600 stove top.
cookin2night
Member
cookin2night
Member
![[Hearth.com] building a fire and heating the house](https://www.hearth.com/talk/data/attachments/166/166806-1064fb3a7c3af86cd0a3bb4922034ee3.jpg?hash=FxvfEXsFNz "[Hearth.com] building a fire and heating the house")
English BoB
Minister of Fire
My 30 is in a house im rehabbing. I wont be back there until Monday. ID say i have about 5 Plus feet of black metal stovepipe on it before it goes into a masonry chimney.
Smoked
Feeling the Heat
I think you have to be flexible with the wood and the stove. Your stove should burn clean, it is actually one of the bad comments the Hearthstone stoves get ...that they run too much temperature up the stack. But that should equal clean if your wood is dry. My goal starting a fire is to get to a good secondary combustion and then back the air down to a level that will maintain it. If you are losing the secondary flame before the splits coal out, then you need more primary air or drier wood. You really should not end up with black coals at the end of a cycle very often either.
Overnight and work burns are loaded on a good hot coal bed but I really don't like to start the big loads with STT over 350. I normally have one large split in the back with a mix of small and medium splits in front and on top. Again, get it going, get the secondaries going and then back it off as far as I can while maintaining a good blanket of flames on top of the load.
When I am splitting my wood, I look for the gnarly stuff to make the larger overnight splits out of. The stuff I can't split is the best. I dice it up into 6x6x20 ish blocks with my saw and those are perfect in the back of the stove. That stuff does take longer to dry though. My goal is to never see smoke once the stove is cruising.
With softer wood, you likely need larger splits for the longer burns but still need a mix of smaller stuff in there to make sure the firebox gets to and maintains enough temp to get the larger ones going well enough to burn clean.
When I am home, I feed it regularly and just maintain the fire. More fun that way
Sorry if I missed it above, do you have an insulated SS liner all the way up?
Overnight and work burns are loaded on a good hot coal bed but I really don't like to start the big loads with STT over 350. I normally have one large split in the back with a mix of small and medium splits in front and on top. Again, get it going, get the secondaries going and then back it off as far as I can while maintaining a good blanket of flames on top of the load.
When I am splitting my wood, I look for the gnarly stuff to make the larger overnight splits out of. The stuff I can't split is the best. I dice it up into 6x6x20 ish blocks with my saw and those are perfect in the back of the stove. That stuff does take longer to dry though. My goal is to never see smoke once the stove is cruising.
With softer wood, you likely need larger splits for the longer burns but still need a mix of smaller stuff in there to make sure the firebox gets to and maintains enough temp to get the larger ones going well enough to burn clean.
When I am home, I feed it regularly and just maintain the fire. More fun that way
Sorry if I missed it above, do you have an insulated SS liner all the way up?
aansorge
Minister of Fire
I think most folks on this forum fill the stove up, burn the entire load without opening the door, and then reload on a bed of coals. Repeat again and again until late spring.
cookin2night
Member
As you can see I have a little more than that picture in stove pipe and then it goes into masonry. I would recommend getting your temp up over the 250 mark. I don't know how long you have past the masonry til the outside. Do you get a lot of creosote by your outlet?
BradleyW
Burning Hunk
I am coming to this late, but I am a little surprised how many people are talking about continually loading the stove. They just don't work well like that. My advice: buy two cheap magnetic thermometers, put one on the stovepipe, one on the stovetop. They are the most essential things for me for running the stove properly, even more important than my moisture meter. I aim for the stovepipe around 250 and the stovetop around 550. I can take a glance at those two temps (even though I know they aren't exactly accurate) and know exactly what is going on in my stove and what I should do about it. Only takes a month or two of daily heating and you should have your set-up pretty much figured out. Without those two temps your are really just shooting blind.
If the primary air is mostly closed you wont be sending too much heat up the flue pipe. The idea is to get a good hot burn with the least additional air possible, if everything is working right your stove temp will actually go up as you cut down the air.
cookin2night
Member
How are you getting that big a difference from the stove top to the pipe? How long is your pipe? And what's the temp of the pipe at the highest point? Do you sweep it often? My pipe runs considerably higher but it also runs about the same temp as the top of the stove. Where I measure the pipe is only about a foot and a half from the stove. My pipe at the bend, before it goes into the wall, is around 300 to 350 still. And I only swept it once from last season. I would imagine you would get considerable cool off by the time it reaches the outlet and you get build up.
BradleyW
Burning Hunk
I only have a 16' chimney, which is on the short side, so I have some challenges with draft at times. I have it swept once per year, no major creosote issues. At startup, the stovepipe temp gets high, maybe 450, while the stove heats up. Once the stovetop gets up to 450 or 500, I start shutting down. The stovepipe temp comes down as the stovetop continues to climb.
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