I am a newbie wood burner with a new LOPI Endeavor wood stove which was professionally installed by a licensed installer employed by the dealer. This stove puts out more heat with less wood than I ever thought possible. I have been burning wood from standing deadwood, almost all hardwood, that I cut and split. It has all tested out with my moisture meter at 4% to 12%.
Preparatory to leaving for several hours today, I started it up and when it got going nicely with 6 or so 1" to 2" sticks, added two half 4 inch rounds, then added 4 larger splits with the intention of getting them going good and then closing the bypass damper and closing down the air control damper to slow down and prolong the burn.
My problem started when the fire really got going hard and my stove top temperature rapidly climbed to 650. I closed the air control damper all the way at that point but it didn't to shut down the fire. The temperature continued to climb to 700, the fire was still burning much harder than I thought it should, and then I REALLY got concerned. I emptied a 1 pound box of baking soda by throwing teaspoons full all over the fire box. Amazingly, it didn't seem to be able to slow it down much, so I threw another half box on it, which still didn't seem to slow it down enough. I then removed two of the hard burning bigger splits from the fire box and put them in my ash bucket and ran them outside and threw them in a pond 20 feet from my house. They smoked through the hinges all the way out. However this did do the trick and the firebox cooled down nicely, so I decided I could leave with both dampers in the closed position and let the fire go out, which it did. This episode did scare the bejeebers out of me.
My two resulting questions are how do I keep this from happening again, and how do I get the smoke smell out of the house?
Preparatory to leaving for several hours today, I started it up and when it got going nicely with 6 or so 1" to 2" sticks, added two half 4 inch rounds, then added 4 larger splits with the intention of getting them going good and then closing the bypass damper and closing down the air control damper to slow down and prolong the burn.
My problem started when the fire really got going hard and my stove top temperature rapidly climbed to 650. I closed the air control damper all the way at that point but it didn't to shut down the fire. The temperature continued to climb to 700, the fire was still burning much harder than I thought it should, and then I REALLY got concerned. I emptied a 1 pound box of baking soda by throwing teaspoons full all over the fire box. Amazingly, it didn't seem to be able to slow it down much, so I threw another half box on it, which still didn't seem to slow it down enough. I then removed two of the hard burning bigger splits from the fire box and put them in my ash bucket and ran them outside and threw them in a pond 20 feet from my house. They smoked through the hinges all the way out. However this did do the trick and the firebox cooled down nicely, so I decided I could leave with both dampers in the closed position and let the fire go out, which it did. This episode did scare the bejeebers out of me.
My two resulting questions are how do I keep this from happening again, and how do I get the smoke smell out of the house?