Hearthstone 8362 Manchester

[Swedeman]

Starting our second year with our 8362. The chimney is Interior, brick, insulated (vermiculite surrounding 8”x8”clay flue liners) and draft is 0.1(varies a bit). Page 24 in owners manual states “HIGH BURN…….
Fully load the firebox with wood on a bed of hot coals or an actively flaming fire.” Our wood (red oak, white ash, black locust) is stored in a barn in racks, and is seasoned for 2 years before burning.
Starting with stove hot a good bed of coals, or actively burning wood, Two 5”-6” logs will get stack temp to 800’+ (digital probes) & catalytic chamber to 1,300+. Half way through the burn, air is at lowest setting and we get the noted temperatures. Cannot imagine “fully loading” the firebox, it would certainly get well beyond the too hot point.
We would like to run all night with a full load, but don’t dare.
We welcome any thoughts about this situation.
Thank you.

 

[Todd]

It’s not good to load any stove full on a large bed of coals or active flames. The load will just all off gas at once and could easily run away from you.

I would try this. Reload on a smaller coal bed, just enough to get the load going again but first rake the coals all forward. Pack the larger splits on the bottom tightly then fill in from there. Burn on high to get her started and once you have good flames turn it down to medium. Watch your flue temps and cat temp and engage when your in your zone. Adjust the air down as you watch the flue temp. Try to keep them in the 400-600 range. Cat temps should cruise in the 900-1200 range but may spike up as high as 1600 for a short time.

 

[Swedeman]

Thank you for the reply.
I totally agree with your first paragraph, and in that light, we heated with an original 1978 VC Defiant for 42 years, (never a chimney fire) and used to load quite full successfully. The Defiant (thanks to its bi-metalic controlled air supply) would regulate itself and burn well through the night.
Last year, after literally months of research , we decided that since the Defiant needed to be disassembled and rebuilt we were going to make the switch to a catalytic unit.
Since we have a Greenwood CX100 wood boiler (I sold and installed many boilers before Greenwood closed down) we wanted a cat stove that had a 24” firebox to match the wood sizing for the boiler.
The Hearthstone work well and heats our 2,200 S.F. farm house in moderate winter weather, and we switch to the boiler in harsher conditions. That said, we found the Manchester demands noticeably more tending than old faithful Defiant, and anything over a small charge tends to run quite hot. Fortunately, the paragraph in the owners manual about loading full concerned us, and we haven’t dared tried to run all night.
Our interior masonry chimney serves us very well, and in spite of the optimal reading (0.1”WC) I’m wondering if a damper in the stove pipe might retard the firing rate. We have 3’ & 1 EL of double wall uninsulated 6” black pipe, and an 8”x6” adapter into the chimney.
Once again, thank you for your input.
Swedeman