Yes, feeding it all day. I wouldnt feel all that bad about it if everyone else had to feed theirs too LOL
New Hearthstone Heritage burns way too fast
- Thread starter Slimpickins
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Yes, feeding it all day. I wouldnt feel all that bad about it if everyone else had to feed theirs too LOL
I read about your latch 'adventures'......next stove definitely wont be a soapstone one!
Ah but you see, then you "pushed" the stove and increased the burn rate manually. The result is a burn time that can no longer be called the "maximum" burn time. You could just as easily have let the house cool down by utilizing the actual max burn time. Very confusing. Maximum burn time is fully independent of the needed burn rate to keep your house warm. That is why we have things called minimum burn time and burn time at medium output. All come from the human's ability to adjust the burn rate with that magical lever.
This is the problem. Has nothing to do with house size or exterior temperature.
Minimum burn rate = maximum burn time.
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shoot-straight
Minister of Fire
I had the Phoenix for 10 years. My setup of 24' of insulated liner drafted like a jet engine. I had a turn damper and almost always used it. I got 8-9 till all that were left were restart coals. Stove was still warm of course.
Like others have said lots of heat up the chimney. Only had to clean pipe every two years
!
To get max heat like many stoves it needs dry big pieces of wood.
Like others have said lots of heat up the chimney. Only had to clean pipe every two years
! To get max heat like many stoves it needs dry big pieces of wood.
Don't write all soapstones off; The Woodstock stone cats are well-built, and I've only been loading the 1.5 cu.ft. Keystone twice a day for the last couple of weeks. Despite marginal insulation and air-sealing, the house stays 67-72.
Burn time can be maximized by damping down the air intake and damping down the stack damper, assuming that a stack damper has been installed. But the fire has to have reached a certain temperature and the wood has to have been reduced by the fire to a certain condition before damping down. That temperature and the burnoff condition of the wood depend on the species and seasoning (moisture content).
If the object is consistent heat, then the fire cannot be allowed to run to the maximum burn time because the stove will begin to cool even though hot live coals remain. The same applies if the object is ability to restoke from hot live coals.
With my 80k max BTU Hearthstone Mansfield, I maintain a base of hot live coals at all times. That means I restoke at a stove top temperature of about 200 degrees. At that temperature, the coals are in a condition such that no kindling is necessary. The new wood ignites within two or three minutes. The stove top hits about 550 degrees and the outside of the wood is red hot within about 15 minutes. Flames are intense. At that point, I shut the air intake damper and the stack damper. The flames change to swirly. Eventually, all the wood becomes intense red and the flames disappear. If I packed the firebox, I will get 6-8 hours until the stovetop drops again to about 200 degrees. I kept a log for several months last winter.
So, there will always be some temperature yo-yo effect whether you allow the fire to wind down to the point of requiring kindling to restoke or do as I do, keeping the stove top in the 200-550 degree range. (I hate to refire from kindling because of the long time to achieve stove top temperature with the soapstone. The room temperature of the area that I heat with the stove hangs in the range of 72-74 degrees, which is more consistent than if I allowed the fire to run to maximum burn time and mostly gray ash. Average temperature is a function of the stove BTU output. I've not found a way to fire the stove at, say 50%. The Mansfield is probably too big for my application, even though I pull the heat through a return into a forced air system to the rest of the house. The need for someone to be present to restoke at most every eight hours is a disadvantage, but consistent room temperature would not be as important if the house was vacant for longer periods.
Final facts: my flue is 35 feet and I burn a mix of seasoned and unseasoned white ash and white oak (say, one big stick of unseasoned wood mixed with seasoned). I installed the stack damper in the first season of the Mansfield because the super draft was eating wood faster than I could split it. That is why I began to experiment with mixing unseasoned with seasoned in the firebox. I don't even want to get into moisture content because it ranges so widely with "seasoned" wood. The important thing is that I get near zero deposits in the flue. I've also run a Vermont Castings Resolute Acclaim for 25 years. It's a great little stove but an entirely different experience than the Hearthstone.
Karl Hungus
New Member
Soapstone is a marvelous material.
Great for thermal mass, slowly releases its heat.
Most people don't want thermal mass in a woodstove.
They want quick heat.
Can't have both.
Ideal stuff for a masonry heater tho.
Great for thermal mass, slowly releases its heat.
Most people don't want thermal mass in a woodstove.
They want quick heat.
Can't have both.
Ideal stuff for a masonry heater tho.
That's a tall stack. I would use a damper too. Do you have a flue thermometer? If so, how has closing the stove pipe damper affected the flue temps vs the stove top temps? What are your normal peak stove top temps vs flue temp at that time?
