Ok here is my update....after letting it roar last night I noticed the secondaries kicked right in (after shutting the damper) and ran until the wood was pretty much turned to coal and falling apart then they stopped burning, which was only about 60-90 minutes. Like I said the wood I have is very dry red oak.....then it idled with red hot coals for about another 4-5 hours. I had no moisture dripping out of the pipe at all. As far as my stove pipe it's just a 6" black stove pipe running to the chimney. Also I didn't mention I had the thermometer on the face of the stove also and had it about 350-375 when I dampered it down. I'm not disagreeing with anyone on a draft issue I'm just trying everything else before I go spend money on a liner......so whats your thoughts on what I explained?
Drolet HeatMax Review/Install
- Thread starter Goatguy
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brenndatomu
Minister of Fire
Sounds good. I'm surprised that dry Oak only gassed out 60-90 minutes, but once wood coals up, it's done outgassing for the most part (secondaries over)
Seems like you just needed to let things get up to temp more before going to "cruise" mode...
You may be fine with your chimney as is, but I would bet there will be issues once you live with it for a while, hopefully I'm wrong though.
Seems like you just needed to let things get up to temp more before going to "cruise" mode...
You may be fine with your chimney as is, but I would bet there will be issues once you live with it for a while, hopefully I'm wrong though.
maple1
Minister of Fire
TallBoy
New Member
Hey Folks,
Im burning the HeatMax for the second year. Last year i operated it exclusively on manual mode but im getting sick of babysitting the damper and doing 15 laps on the stairs everyday. Curious if anyone has tied it into a thermostat. The manual gives "HR' and "W" as the were you should run your wire into...however i have no "HR" in my connections line up. I have a honeywell thermostat (7 day programmable) and the connections read as follows- - B- -O- -G- -Y- -W/AUX- -NOT USED- -R- -RC- . This thermostat is currently connected to my oil furnace, and the wiring for that leads into the -B- , -W/AUX-, and the -R- . My big question is, if i am going to hook up the Drolet to a thermostat can I connect it to the same thermostat as my oil furnace (preferable for aesthetics, as to not have 2 thermostats on the same wall) or do i have to install a new and completely independent thermostat to control the Drolet damper. If I am able to use the same thermostat how do i make sure that the thermostats signals dont get crossed (so it doesnt tell the oil furnace to fire up when really i just want the damper to open)? The thermostat has a switch on it that reads HEAT - OFF - COOL. Do i wire it so i can toggle between the two furnaces with that switch, the HEAT side controlling the oil and the COOL side controlling the drolet? OR NOT? Say i go away for the week on a friday and the Drolet is loaded and running, how do i get it so that after its load is burned then the heat switches over to the oil furnace so i dont come home to a frozen house and a flooded basement (frozen pipes)? I havent had much luck finding straight forward answers to this thermostat question of mine and am wondering if anyone can help. thanks all, merry christmas wood burners!!
TB
Im burning the HeatMax for the second year. Last year i operated it exclusively on manual mode but im getting sick of babysitting the damper and doing 15 laps on the stairs everyday. Curious if anyone has tied it into a thermostat. The manual gives "HR' and "W" as the were you should run your wire into...however i have no "HR" in my connections line up. I have a honeywell thermostat (7 day programmable) and the connections read as follows- - B- -O- -G- -Y- -W/AUX- -NOT USED- -R- -RC- . This thermostat is currently connected to my oil furnace, and the wiring for that leads into the -B- , -W/AUX-, and the -R- . My big question is, if i am going to hook up the Drolet to a thermostat can I connect it to the same thermostat as my oil furnace (preferable for aesthetics, as to not have 2 thermostats on the same wall) or do i have to install a new and completely independent thermostat to control the Drolet damper. If I am able to use the same thermostat how do i make sure that the thermostats signals dont get crossed (so it doesnt tell the oil furnace to fire up when really i just want the damper to open)? The thermostat has a switch on it that reads HEAT - OFF - COOL. Do i wire it so i can toggle between the two furnaces with that switch, the HEAT side controlling the oil and the COOL side controlling the drolet? OR NOT? Say i go away for the week on a friday and the Drolet is loaded and running, how do i get it so that after its load is burned then the heat switches over to the oil furnace so i dont come home to a frozen house and a flooded basement (frozen pipes)? I havent had much luck finding straight forward answers to this thermostat question of mine and am wondering if anyone can help. thanks all, merry christmas wood burners!!
TB
brenndatomu
Minister of Fire
Howdy @TallBoy! Welcome to hearth!
Probably easiest to just wire in a second thermostat. The Honeywell FocusPro 5000 works good for the Drolet as long as you don't need it to be programmable too. You could do the toggle switch as you said, as long as you switch to oil before you leave, it wouldn't affect the Tundras blower if you already had a fire going...just wouldn't open the damper when the house temp dropped. It would still prolong when the oil kicked on. (you have separate ducts?) Many people run these with no tstat, just load 'em up, bring 'er up to temp, and let 'er go. Using the "cool" side of the tstat may be possible, (I dunno, hafta think about that one a bit, kinda doubtful though) but way more trouble than it is worth. To answer your question, I have my Tundra hooked up to a Honeywell FocusPro 6000 tstat currently, I'm using the W and the R terminals (R and RC are jumped) One thing to look at is to see if you have two spare wires in your current tstat wire. That would save you from having to pull new wire in the wall anyways.
You may be interested in this thread, there is some pretty cool "automation" ideas that can and have been used on the Tundra, there is currently 30 pages of info here...the latest post right here...https://www.hearth.com/talk/posts/2025017/
Probably easiest to just wire in a second thermostat. The Honeywell FocusPro 5000 works good for the Drolet as long as you don't need it to be programmable too. You could do the toggle switch as you said, as long as you switch to oil before you leave, it wouldn't affect the Tundras blower if you already had a fire going...just wouldn't open the damper when the house temp dropped. It would still prolong when the oil kicked on. (you have separate ducts?) Many people run these with no tstat, just load 'em up, bring 'er up to temp, and let 'er go. Using the "cool" side of the tstat may be possible, (I dunno, hafta think about that one a bit, kinda doubtful though) but way more trouble than it is worth. To answer your question, I have my Tundra hooked up to a Honeywell FocusPro 6000 tstat currently, I'm using the W and the R terminals (R and RC are jumped) One thing to look at is to see if you have two spare wires in your current tstat wire. That would save you from having to pull new wire in the wall anyways.
You may be interested in this thread, there is some pretty cool "automation" ideas that can and have been used on the Tundra, there is currently 30 pages of info here...the latest post right here...https://www.hearth.com/talk/posts/2025017/
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