Is there something wrong with your setup which makes you feel unsafe?
Yes, bringing a cold house up to temp with a too small stove is no easy task.
moving heat to other rooms
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Is there something wrong with your setup which makes you feel unsafe?
Yes, bringing a cold house up to temp with a too small stove is no easy task.
During the dozen or so runs during spring, the damper showed a propensity to flop open. But, interestingly, it is working better now. Over summer I cleaned the area (top of fireback?) on which it pivots. Or perhaps there had been a small piece of wood/ember stuck in there. Seems to lock in fine now. But can I trust it to not flop open?
More unfortunately, the stove pipe vents into the top of chimney smoke chamber. Fireplace is on other side of chimney, and I'm thinking wood stove was added after chimney was built. No separate flue. I hear this can lead to extra creosote. I intend on having everything cleaned once a year, and I only burn about a cord or so a season. Long story short, I'm just a bit too concerned about a) runaway fire in the box and/or b) chimney fire to leave the house for extended time. Frankly I don't know how folks do that. For god's sake, there's a fire burning in your house...
Yes, I could have a bigger stove, but then I'm sure a big hot stove would run me out of the stove room. Guess I could just avoid that room LOL.
Yes I run the ceiling fan at top of stairs. Will check ceiling in garage. Yes, warming up all of my cold stuff is a challenge. I do enjoy retreating to my large master bedroom, with vaulted ceiling, on weeknights, with my space heater. Gets toasty up there in no time!
Pretty sure too much inlet air is what you are worried about, rather than a chimney damper
Think you need a liner. Not sure your setup is even legal anymore.
As to the fire in the house, when I used to use my oilburner there was a fire in the house too.
Did you see the nice residential craters up in Springfeild where a bunch of houses used to be? Gas.
Once you get the house warm don't run it hot. Now you are starting with a bunch of cold thermal mass and trying to heat it. That takes a long time and to be effective at all, the stove room gets uncomfortably hot. With the stove running constantly, you just have to make up for the heat loss.
Sounds like you might be a candidate for an outdoor boiler.
Yes. Correct. I'm doing the gaskets very soon. But I was speaking not of chimney damper, but the one in the Vigilant.
I've just confirmed one source of trouble with damper. It seems to be related to how I open and shut the griddle top. The little hooks on griddle top can impede the smooth operation of stove damper, at times. Likely related to warped fireback, I've surmised. If I lift upward/forward when opening griddle, it opens easier, and, just a moment ago, the damper closed very easily.
Liner can't be installed without blocking off flow from fireplace, from what I understand. Not that I use the fireplace these days....
Never thought of it this way. Interesting take. I'm sure I'd be comfortable running 24/7 with newer stove and the flue liner.
Becoming quite apparent lately. Thermal inertia is not my friend here.
Possibly. But I understand regulations are getting tougher here in MA.
Augie
Feeling the Heat
Temperature swings will defeat you. get comfortable running it 24/7 and you will have less issues with keeping the whole house warm. Even in my place if I let it cool too much it takes 4-6hrs to get everything toasty. by that I mean where things like the furniture in the rooms farthest away from the stove are warm. It is a question of mass. The house is a huge mass getting it warm takes a lot of heat energy keeping it warm takes much less
I will not be defeated!
One other challenge. As you assumed yesterday, doorways are an issue.
Fan is in room through doorway on right, pointed toward stove room. I've got quite the convective breeze blowing through doorway to left, into hallway toward cool side of house. But note the ~16-18 inch barrier at top of doorway. The hot air is being impeded. It's nearly 8F cooler just past doorway. Small fan needed up there perhaps?
![[Hearth.com] moving heat to other rooms](https://www.hearth.com/talk/data/attachments/82/82801-c5a170851ab69717f94b98678d95741f.jpg?hash=JqXqY9fiPQ "[Hearth.com] moving heat to other rooms")
I will not be defeated!
One other challenge. As you assumed yesterday, doorways are an issue.
Fan is in room through doorway on right, pointed toward stove room. I've got quite the convective breeze blowing through doorway to left, into hallway toward cool side of house. But note the ~16-18 inch barrier at top of doorway. The hot air is being impeded. It's nearly 8F cooler just past doorway. Small fan needed up there perhaps?
View attachment 82801
Fan needs to be IN the doorway, not blowing towards it.
You may as well forget about trying to move the hot air with a fan. Cold air is denser, fan is actually effective. Hardly so with hot air.
I would actually put the fan just inside the doorway in the stove room, then around the corner, put another fan pulling the cold air into the first room.
If your furnace has forced air, everyone's first idea is to try get the hot air from the stove into the return ducts, but most find that it doesn't work. I tried to take most of my return air from the stove room, and although the air entering the return grille was over 80F, by the time that air mixed with air from other returns, and cooled due to duct losses, I could never get more than 70F out the supply vents. This year I tried the counter-intuitive opposite, I closed supply vents in nearby rooms, and reduced the return air from the stove room. This forces more air out of the supply vent in the stove room, driving hot air out of the stove room, into the other rooms. In this way, heat was more uniform in the house, and the air temperature entering the return ducts was higher overall, so even with duct losses,
I can't stand the idea of fans on the floor, but the same basic idea applies, it's easier to blow cold air into the stove room than blow warm air out. The air you blow in will force warm air out into other rooms.
TE
Augie
Feeling the Heat
I'm still standing by my previous statement, once you get comfortable with 24hr burning this will get easier or nonexistent.
Appreciate all the info. Very helpful.
TradEddie: I've heard that shutting vents (either return or supply, I'm not sure) can put potential harmful pressure (for lack of a better term) on the furnace. Hope I'm articulating this properly. Thoughts?
All: So if, during the week, I'm only up and around in the house for 3 hours at night and 30 minutes in the morning, does it really make sense to burn all that wood? Given how little warm air gets through that doorway (blocked at top perhaps), along with tile floors and cold garage, I'm just not sure it's worth all the effort. With the small firebox, reloads are frequent too. Guess I can get about 6 hours of good heat on full box. I'm thinking of switching to 24 hour stove runs from Friday at 6pm until, say, Monday at 6am. Yea, it's not ideal to have all this space and not use it (heated) several days of the week, but I'm sure it's not terribly uncommon to frequent only parts of one's house during winter.
TradEddie: I've heard that shutting vents (either return or supply, I'm not sure) can put potential harmful pressure (for lack of a better term) on the furnace. Hope I'm articulating this properly. Thoughts?
All: So if, during the week, I'm only up and around in the house for 3 hours at night and 30 minutes in the morning, does it really make sense to burn all that wood? Given how little warm air gets through that doorway (blocked at top perhaps), along with tile floors and cold garage, I'm just not sure it's worth all the effort. With the small firebox, reloads are frequent too. Guess I can get about 6 hours of good heat on full box. I'm thinking of switching to 24 hour stove runs from Friday at 6pm until, say, Monday at 6am. Yea, it's not ideal to have all this space and not use it (heated) several days of the week, but I'm sure it's not terribly uncommon to frequent only parts of one's house during winter.
Pressure (or vacuum ) in ducts should not be a concern, unless you shut everything or something else was built wrong, but in theory at least you could increase wear on the furnace fan if you restricted too much air. This is one reason why supply vents can be closed, but return grilles cannot, also most ducts can handle pressure better than vacuum. All I did was close some supply vents, and restricted one of four return grilles. I even made a crude manometer (pressure gauge) to watch what effect this had on my ductwork, and borrowed a real one from work to check it.
TE
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