Learning the new Englander Madison

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Bring a wire brush with you just in case it needs a cleaning.
 
Bring a wire brush with you just in case it needs a cleaning.
Since i had to climb up and check the cap any way. It was ok some buildup but not much. I stuck a piece of 4' single wall pipe on top.
Lite the stove. From cold to 450 in 37 mins. Thats the fastest its ever got to 450. Just a fine amount of smoke out the pipe. Its overcast so i gotta look hard to see it. Outside temp is 48
 
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Sounds like success! Good secondaries once you shut'er down I hope?
 
There ya go. Could be your valley is just a low pressure zone. Add some real chimney and brace it at the 5 ft level and you should be smiling.
 
When it gets colder it will even perform better. Try to mix dry wood with the questionable wood for better burning.
 
There ya go. Could be your valley is just a low pressure zone. Add some real chimney and brace it at the 5 ft level and you should be smiling.
yeah i guess. Thanks for yall sticking with me on this. i know i let my temper get away sometime.
 
Been an hour and stove is 560 and cruzin nice.

Hey, that sounds great.

Your on your way to heating with wood now instead of fighting with it!:)
 
when i first started using the stove it took awhile to get going. i just assumed that it was me. learning curve and all. but everybody was saying how fast theres would heat up and get going, got me to thinking.
 
First time experiences with a stove are often mysterious when you are on your own trying to figure them out. That's why we're here. We've seen most all of them.
 
You should be able to rake the coals forward and reload once the load has burned and stove cools to 350*F

Reloading at 350*F is not set in stone. You will have to experiment to see what works best for you but be careful about reloading while it's much warmer than that. With a good draft now, fresh wood could take off on you.
 
Good to see another happy customer. I think that any wood stove manufacturer should include this site in its manual. It would help a lot, I know it did for me.
 
yeah i guess. Thanks for yall sticking with me on this. i know i let my temper get away sometime.

Fantastic - I love it when a plan comes together. Now that you know the solution, make it right with the appropriate pipe and bracing. The first year is always the toughest.
 
Well i added a brace and 3 foot of pipe. Still having a little trouble with initial start up. But over all worlds better.
Reloads are buring great. Still havent worked up to a full load. Been loading about half a load. Setting the trigger and not messing with it at all. Letting the AAS trigger trip and start the long burn. Its been tripping between 450 and 500. Then climbing to 650 plus or minus. Not sure if my mm is reading right or not. But if it reads 15% or less then it burns good.
Thanks for the all the help.
Thanks to Mike at ESW for his help.
 
Well i added a brace and 3 foot of pipe. Still having a little trouble with initial start up. But over all worlds better.
Reloads are buring great. Still havent worked up to a full load. Been loading about half a load. Setting the trigger and not messing with it at all. Letting the AAS trigger trip and start the long burn. Its been tripping between 450 and 500. Then climbing to 650 plus or minus. Not sure if my mm is reading right or not. But if it reads 15% or less then it burns good.
Thanks for the all the help.
Thanks to Mike at ESW for his help.
Good news, thanks for the update. In colder weather the draft should be stronger.

Maybe the thread title should be changed now to "Learning the new Madison"?
 
Maybe the thread title should be changed now to "Learning the new Madison"?
How about 'Making the Madison happy' or 'With extra 3 feet of stack, the Madison sucks more.' ;)
 
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Hopefully anyone that reads it will read the whole thing and see the fault was mine not the stoves.
 
Hopefully anyone that reads it will read the whole thing and see the fault was mine not the stoves.
How'd the rest of the winter go? I just got my new Madison this week, no stovepipe yet so it's not hooked up, but I did take the back-end apart to get some pics & survey the AAS system...

Overall the design just appears to me like it is overly restrictive on the primary air intake, so I could imagine that with slightly less-than-amazing draft you'd have to crack the door open to get a fire a'blaze. Having restrictive primary air means that the secondaries have to do all the work, and with ever so slightly sub-par wood that could be a problem. I got my eyes on at least 1 potential modification I'll try if I end up having similar issues to what you had. Also got a good pic of the AAS spring so if it ever seems to be working badly, I know what it "should" look like out of the box...
 
Congrats on the Madison. I like mine. I am still a little uncertain about the AAS system. Sometimes it works perfect. Other times it doesn't. I've found that if i pull it all the way out and set it, sometimes it will get stuck and not trip. So i pull it all the way out then bump it in, just a hair. The rest of the winter went good. The stove ran good really throws out the heat. I do have problems with marginal wood. But I'm going to for the next couple of winters, until my oak wood gets dry. I also figured out that my stove top thermo isn't reading right. It appears to read around 100* high. I have ordered a IR thermo for this winter. I swept the chimney pipe last week and got a little more than a quart of brown ash and very little creosote. I'm going to say my problems were ( not enough draft, marginal wood, inexperiance with EPA stoves, being overly cautious so as to avoid the dreaded run away, and stove top thermo being inaccurate.) So plz let me know how yours goes. I think this year will be much better.
 
[Hearth.com] Learning the new Englander Madison
this is what came out of the pipe
 
Thanks for the update. Every season will get better, especially with drier wood.