Take a dollar bill and shut the door on it the bill should pull out but take quite a bit of force. If it slides out easily the door isn't sealed properly and you will burn through wood in a hurry
New to wood stoves - lots of smoke in the house on first burn - Pleasant Hearth 2200
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Your measurement isn't accurate in that case. You need to split it open and test the freshly split face
Will run this test tonight after we get back from kids soccer games - thank you!
Really appreciate all the help. This stove is an uncommon thing down here and the wife and I are super excited about it.
Ok. Your wood is wetter than that. Likely not too wet, but if you measure properly (as I described), I guess you may be around 14 pct or so. That's of course very good. But please confirm.
Just to be clear on the wood, it was split into that size pieces before we bought it and sat out in the Texas sun like that all summer. I can split it again, but it's not like I was measuring against the bark of an un-split piece or anything like that. Not sure how the message I posted earlier read, but the wood has been split for a long time.
We just moved to a new place on 33 acres with lots of trees so if I need to add some green wood to the burn to make it go slower, that shouldn't be a problem.
We just moved to a new place on 33 acres with lots of trees so if I need to add some green wood to the burn to make it go slower, that shouldn't be a problem.
It's split while drying, which is good. But it dries from the outside in, meaning the inside is the wettest, and the outside the driest. Hence you want to measure the inside by resplitting one or two pieces.
Ok some updates.
I split the wood and it was at 8%-9% on the freshly split side. I'm not kidding - this stuff is very dry.
Moved a dollar bill all around the door and couldn't pull it out on any side.
I used my heat gun and I was running pretty low on temps actually. After an hour STT was 320 and it started to drop down to 275-ish. I loaded the stove with as much wood as would physically fit and I guess the fresh air got to it and STT jumped to 450 and now up to 550. Flames are raging. Will report back more later.
I split the wood and it was at 8%-9% on the freshly split side. I'm not kidding - this stuff is very dry.
Moved a dollar bill all around the door and couldn't pull it out on any side.
I used my heat gun and I was running pretty low on temps actually. After an hour STT was 320 and it started to drop down to 275-ish. I loaded the stove with as much wood as would physically fit and I guess the fresh air got to it and STT jumped to 450 and now up to 550. Flames are raging. Will report back more later.
It got up to about 750 STT and then settled back down to 550-600 after a half hour or so.
It still had some fuel left when I went to sleep after midnight (about 3 hours in) and stove was still warm (around 100 STT) this morning when I woke up at 6am. House stayed warm all night - only lost 1 degree of temp at the thermostat.
Much more pleased with this burn. I think having the ashes down and really filling up the stove to max capacity both helped.
Is there anything else I can do to extend burn time out to 7-8 hours? I'm assuming I lost most good heat around 2-3am. Is it possible the wood is too dry for a long burn? This stuff is super, super dry.
If you could slow down that burn somehow which means limiting intake air you might have a chance.
With experience I have no doubt that you will get there. It just takes some time to learn a new stove. A pipe thermometer will help allot with properly timing the air shut back. And you will figure out how to load the stove optimally for your setup
He has a chance now this is what his 3rd burn and look how far he has come already. Again no reason to try to fix a problem that probably isn't there.
I am shutting the damper and door fully for the entire burn. It does feel like either the wood is too dry or I'm getting too much air or both.
The chimney damper has a control on left side of stove. Are you closing that once the fire starts up? It redirects the exhaust toward the front of stove before it exits the chimney. I believe you pull lever out and rotate forward to close.
Yes I am. Quick rundown of process now:
Add wood and kindling
Open upper damper to direct smoke/gas up, close front damper to shut off fresh air
Light kindling
Close front door
Wait 10 minutes until at least a little fire is going, and then close back/upper damper to direct smoke/gas around front of stove and then up/out
Wait 30-60 minutes until a good bed of coals has formed and then load up the stove to full capacity
Honestly I wouldn't bother with the kindling fire just load it up and light it. Your wood is dry it will work fine. Can you show us a full load of wood yet?
And I probably missed it did you tell us what species you are burning?
No I haven't sent the pic yet. I got distracted with settings during load last night. Going to run again tomorrow night and I'll post a pic. Honestly it wasn't 100% full at the beginning (first 2 burns) and I tried to fill it up better this time so I'm sure that's a lot of the difference in burn time.
I don't know what species I'm burning. Feels like a hardwood of some kind - oak probably. It doesn't smell like hickory or pecan and the bark looks like oak to me, but I'm not an expert.
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