Jotul f400 questions

[Revturbo977]

It’s been a while since I’ve posted on here . My wife and I installed a new f400 in our home in 2013. We had a small chimney fire that year , which was due to just in experience and not seasoned wood. I learned The last few years how the stove likes to run and pretty much have it figured out. Now my father in law , has this 30 year old massive box of a stove . He burns tons of wood , literally 8 cord + a year. He runs it crazy hot , and boasts how clean it runs . ( it doesn’t run clean, the company that cleans their chimney comments how dirty it is)

He always says I don’t run my stove hot enough and should be able to run 6 month wood (eyes rolling as I’m typing )

Anyways , I guess I wanted to confirm if I’m running my stove hot enough or too hot . I have a double wall interior pipe , so we could run closer to the wall, with the back shield , so I don’t have a temp gauge on the pipe. I run my stove top gauge off to the left to one corner and it runs at around 600-625 when it gets to full burn . Small loads at around 550 to 600. I’m burning a mix of 3 year white oak and 2 year cherry . I always try to have a minimum of 2 full summers on any wood, 3 on oak. I just cleaned my pipes, after a month of hard running and had a light coating of soot on the inside pipes


Am I running correctly ? Is it hot enough or should I be pushing it hotter ?

Thanks for any info

 

[weatherguy]

Your father in law sounds like my brother in law, they're never going to understand the new stoves and they dont want to. With the old stoves they like to run it hot once a day to burn creosote, not necessary with the newer stoves because they burn cleaner. As long as your getting secondaries and not smoldering you're fine and dont waste your time talking with the father in law about stoves, been there done that, talk about football.

 

[begreen]

Am I running correctly ? Is it hot enough or should I be pushing it hotter ?

You're doing fine. Old stoves have poorer and simpler combustion technology, if they have any at all. You don't run a new stove like an old smoke dragon. Your temps are just how ours ran, though in very cold weather I would take the stove top temp up into the 650-700F range. Of course that meant a shorter burn time.

A probe flue thermometer really helps. One thing it taught us was to watch that temp more than the stove top. With good dry wood and kindling we found that we could turn down the air sooner with the Castine and that helped extend the burn time a bit.

 

[Revturbo977]

You're doing fine. Old stoves have poorer and simpler combustion technology, if they have any at all. You don't run a new stove like an old smoke dragon. Your temps are just how ours ran, though in very cold weather I would take the stove top temp up into the 650-700F range. Of course that meant a shorter burn time.

A probe flue thermometer really helps. One thing it taught us was to watch that temp more than the stove top. With good dry wood and kindling we found that we could turn down the air sooner with the Castine and that helped extend the burn time a bit.

Thank you for the Info . What would you consider max temperature for this stove for an extended burn ?

 

[begreen]

750º is a comfortable safety margin. I never took it over 750º and that was only during the coldest weather. The stove was undersized for our house so I had to push it when temps dropped below 20º. Fortunately those temps are rare here.

 

[Revturbo977]

Below 20 is common here in January , especially at night . It was 4 on thanksgiving . I run at 650 max but won’t worry as much if it passes that number

 

[CentralVAWoodHeat]

+1 on begreen’s posts. That is about how I remember operating our Castine.