Someone please calm my nerves attn Soapstone burners

[Todd]

Have you checked your ash pan for leaks?

 

[wellbuilt home]

Yes , My ash pan seems very tight , its hard to close . I do have a small piece of gasket missing on the side door. It looks like the guys at the factory just added a 1" piece because the gasket was cut short . its under the sliding door pan where its hard to see . I cut a small gasket and glued it in temporarily . My burn times are still 11 or 12 hours but I'm not seeing more then 400+ for most of the time . Ive used 5 different stoves to heat the house and i was never cold before. My stove is not putting out 125,000 BTU . If i leave the air open full and the flue damper closed the stove wont get hot and the secondaries wont light . If the fire box is full of coals and a full box of splits with Half open air and damper closed off tight the stove temp will climb to 550 to 600 o in 20 min . I don't know how hot the stove will get but with the air closed off tight it still burns out of control . Ive only seen a full secondary burn once . (All the pipes are burning like a grill ) This was before i was monitoring the temp and was the reason i added the damper . John

 

[Todd]

Yes , My ash pan seems very tight , its hard to close . I do have a small piece of gasket missing on the side door. It looks like the guys at the factory just added a 1" piece because the gasket was cut short . its under the sliding door pan where its hard to see . I cut a small gasket and glued it in temporarily . My burn times are still 11 or 12 hours but I'm not seeing more then 400+ for most of the time . Ive used 5 different stoves to heat the house and i was never cold before. My stove is not putting out 125,000 BTU . If i leave the air open full and the flue damper closed the stove wont get hot and the secondaries wont light . If the fire box is full of coals and a full box of splits with Half open air and damper closed off tight the stove temp will climb to 550 to 600 o in 20 min . I don't know how hot the stove will get but with the air closed off tight it still burns out of control . Ive only seen a full secondary burn once . (All the pipes are burning like a grill ) This was before i was monitoring the temp and was the reason i added the damper . John

What do you mean by "burn out of control"? It sounds like you can get it up to temp, 550-600 and then it continues to climb when you shut it down? When those secondaries kick in the whole fire box could be in flames for a short time as the gases burn up, then it should subside. When it gets up to temp (say 500) and you shut the air down, keep it there even if it looks like the gates of hell and keep an eye on the temps, it may just hold there for quite some time. All the pipes don't have to have flames to have a secondary burn, sometimes it's just bursts above the wood or a couple tubes with flame.

 

[wellbuilt home]

That's the thing , The stove jumps up from 425 to 600 in about 20 minutes. It feels like the temp will start rising out of control . I burnt the hair off my legs standing next to the glass from 30" away . Once i kill the air and flue damper The temp will hover around 600 for a wail then drop to 550 575 . It just seems very unreliable. At 425 I'm cold siting 4' from the stove. I have two thermometers and there is no difference between them until they hit 550 . After 550 one jumps to 850 + I'm assuming that the hot reading is not accurate . But it very close to call . With out the flue damper i had to drag the logs out of the fire box and out the back door . If I have a 12 hr burn time and only 2 hours of the time is at 550 and then it tappers down to 300 when I'm down to coals, that leaves me with out enough heat for half the burn cycle . If i don't run thru the complete burn i wind up with 12" of hot coal in the bottom of the stove and less and less heat until i clean it out .

The other thing is when the stove tubes start fully burning the heat starts to really climb . I have no way of knowing when the temp will Spike some times it takes 3 hours to get hot . ? John

 

[Todd]

Don't know what to say. That monster should be throwing a ton of heat out. Although my stove is smaller it still pushes out plenty heat even at 400. When I need more heat as the stove starts to cycle down I will tweak the air up as the temp falls and that seems to help keep the stove over 400 longer. This cuts down on burn times, but when it's January you need to burn hotter.

 

[johnnywarm]

my F400 Castine is very nice at 400 to 500. at 600 i open up a door.