New to Burning...Have Some Questions

[fcwest14]

The convection blower will cool down surfaces as air blows over them from the fan. You may not see this as dramatically on the face of the stove where you'll need to put the thermometer. It's easy to check. After the stove has come up to temperature, read the temp, then turn off the blower for 30 minutes and read the temp again.

The house layout and size is going to make it hard to heat far areas like the dining room with the insert. I would focus right now on learning to run the stove well. You should be running full loads of medium to large, well seasoned, splits. The temperature on the face of the insert should reach about 600-650ºF. Once the fire is burning well turn down the air as far as possible without completely squelching the flame. Ideally you want a lot of secondary burn and little or just lazy flames at the logs

Ok perfect and helpful/ When I reload, I usually do with 1-2 logs to maintain air temp in the living room and kitchen. Are you saying I should reload 4-5 logs (which is the max space I have) instead and reload less frequently, or less logs and more frequently?

 

[begreen]

Both will work, adding a couple logs is good for mild weather heating but loading with more logs will deliver higher temps and longer burns. If the goal is to better heat the house then try full loads. Just be sure to close the air down once the fire is burning well. You can close it down in 50% increments or just until the flame gets lazy, then wait 5 minutes and close it down 50% further. Continue until the air is mostly or all the way closed off.

 

[fcwest14]

Both will work, adding a couple logs is good for mild weather heating but loading with more logs will deliver higher temps and longer burns. If the goal is to better heat the house then try full loads. Just be sure to close the air down once the fire is burning well. You can close it down in 50% increments or just until the flame gets lazy, then wait 5 minutes and close it down 50% further. Continue until the air is mostly or all the way closed off.

I don't think I will be able to heat the house, so goal is to maintain comfortable temps in living room and kitchen, so seems like a couple logs is fine that way. I'll load it up and blast it overnight thought to try to get some of the heat elsewhere to help the normal heating in the house though.

What I usually do for reload is air fully open for 10-15 minutes (as read that helps with creosote). Then move 1/2 in for ~5 mins then to a little less than fully closed from there, and adjust along the way if flames die down too quickly, etc. I will also wait until logs fully or close to full burned down, so I can just stick new logs on the red hot embers. Thinking this works well for me, but let me know otherwise. Thanks again for taking the time with me!!

 

[begreen]

Sounds good as long as the coal bed is allowed to burn down quite a bit before reloading. Reloads on a full hot coal bed can be very exciting.

 

[fcwest14]

Sounds good as long as the coal bed is allowed to burn down quite a bit before reloading. Reloads on a full hot coal bed can be very exciting.

Yeah generally its burned down a bit. The hotter it is though, the easier to get back up and running on new logs though!

 

[Smoked]

This was a fun read. Based on the good to raging secondaries, looks like both of you guys were blessed to not have the drama of poorly seasoned firewood along with your learning curve. Sounds like you like your stoves so better be getting ahead on the woodpile for 16/17