BeGreen said:
Good point, it takes a while to get 500# of stove hot, even more for the Alderlea series. The beauty of that is that when the fire has died down, that mass continues to convect a steady, gentle heat.
And it's not only the mass of the brick, BG. The specific heat capacity of firebrick is more than twice that of steel or cast iron. Firebrick has a specific heat capacity of .25 BTU/lb ºF (steel is around 11) so a 4 pound brick takes 1 BTU to raise it 1º F, or 600 BTU to raise it 600ºF. Multiply that by the number of firebricks in your stove and you will see that there is an awful lot of heat needed to get that stove up to operating temp. Plus, the internal temp of the brick needs to be quite a bit higher than that to get the outside to 600º. Add in all the steel and, yeah... it's got to take some time.
Of course, this isn't lost heat, but you won't feel it in the room until the stove is on the downward side of the burn and is cooling off. Thankfully, you only pay the penalty when the stove is first coming to temp. After that, you will get every BTU that doesn't go up the flue delivered into the room in one way of another (convection and/or radiation), and ignition should be very rapid upon reload due to all the stored heat inside the firebox
Oldspark, your flue temps should be higher than your stove temps for quite a while as all that steel and brick is coming up to temp, but that's not such a bad thing. Helps keep the "plumbing" dry and clean, so to speak. After those secondaries kick in and you shut the air down, your flue temps should drop into a normal range. I don't know your stove and installation, but I'd think a 350ºF external temp on single wall pipe 30" up from the stove like you said should equate to at least 600-650º stove temp once things finally level off. If not, Summit is right and something is definitely off.