Paul Meyer said:
I believe the stove is sized well, it has no trouble keeping up with the house with just 2 splits on top of the bed. I am thinking that maybe I need to check the draft? - once the wood pile is charred, I cannot keep the burn below 400 to 450 (center stone) even with the air control closed all the way. This is so frustrating because I cannot seem to get enough air to burn the pile of coals either. The dealer said dampers are not required with these. I have never been able to open the front door without a lot of discharge going into the house. The stove is set up for top exhaust, so I normally use the side door. I open very slowly, with some discharge anyway. My biggest problem with this stove is too much coal in the morning - I can't get it burned down even at wide open all day, so I have to empty the pan twice to keep from overfilling when raking coals & ashes onto the grate. I have read and employed all the tricks I can find for excessive coaling to no great effect. Previous to this house, I ran an EPA Quadrafire fireplace insert that would go for 3 days before I had to shovel out half a pail of ash/coals. I thought that was bad as I watched the backyard coal/ash pile grow. How does your Heritage run on a daily basis? What characteristics - can you describe a daily or weekly routine? I never ran an older stove, but I am amazed at the non EPA stove my friend has. It burns everything down to ash that is easy to dispose of and it runs a long time without emptying. Thanks
Okay Paul, you can check the draft if you are worried or you can just spend the few bucks and install the simple damper. Since you have top exhaust like me you can simply slip in a damper on top of the stove. They're cheap and will allow you to smolder the heritage into a polluting and creosote making dragon. A piece of mind device. If your chimney is exceptionally tall then the damper will allow you to run the heritage properly.
I don' think that is your problem. I also cannot keep the burn below 400-450 at minimum draft setting with a fresh but charred load of wood. That is how non-cat EPA stoves run. Not sure what was wrong with your old quad or maybe you just weren't able to measure the temps. You're lucky, the steel plate stove guys get much hotter with a full load and closed draft.
The coaling issue is quite common and is the wood's fault. I don't have the coal buildup and I blame it on my softwood. How tall is your chimney? It sounds like you have an oversized masonry chimney or a cold outside chimney by the way that it works well when hot and spills smoke when cold.
We are just now beginning to run the heritage 24/7 since the weather has cooled but over the last few months it was a morning fire and an evening fire. Still, as you know, the stove never really cools down. I dump 1-2 gallons of ash about once per three weeks. I've dumped it three times this year and burned about one cord. I do not use the ash pan but scoop into a bucket. My stove burns completely and only white ash is left. The glass stays clean, I don't even open the front door anymore. The side door gets all the action.
So I start the stove at full throttle, leave it at full throttle for about 30 minutes, and then restoke as needed to fill the 300 degree box, then close the draft in a few stages over the next 20 minutes to zero throttle. The stove temp will climb to about 450 and then slowly cool to about 300. If the house is plenty warm then I wait until only a few coals remain, stove temp down to 200, and then move those coals forward with a stick, refill to the top, and burn another full load the same way as the first. Repeat until June. Now if it is pretty warm outside, the house will get too hot so the fire might die between stokings and if it is really cold outside I may not let it get down to 300 before reloading. If I come home after a trip somehwere and I need heat then I will leave that first load raging at about 30% throttle until I see 500-550 on the stovetop and that'll warm the house up fast.
Coals have never been a problem and ash buildup has been exceptionally slow. These soapstone stoves like smaller wood and a full box. My chimney is all vertical, 8 feet of class A and 5 feet of double wall.
You can't shut the stove down. It wants to run at 450 at the minimum draft setting and yes this means you will not get a 12 hour burn time but I have certainly had many overnight burns of 10 hours where all I had to do was stir the remaining coals to the front and add wood.
