Vogelzang Ponderosa help needed

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cassie69emt

New Member
Dec 20, 2016
2
WNY
We just purchased our stove so this is the first winter with it we are heating from the basement and our house is about 1500sq ft. We never had a problem with our non EPA stove heating our house. What are the best settings for the primary control and secondary high burn control? Any help is greatly appreciated
 
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We just purchased our stove so this is the first winter with it we are heating from the basement and our house is about 1500sq ft. We never had a problem with our non EPA stove heating our house. What are the best settings for the primary control and secondary high burn control? Any help is greatly appreciated

EPA stoves are more sensitive to wood quality. Please let us know how long your wood is seasoned and what kind of wood it is.


Is the basement insulated, this stove might not heat the same way as your old one.

Does it say in the manual what the two levers do? Usually you leave levers open till the fire is big and strong, then slowly close them over a period of 15 mknutes to an hour. If wood is kinda wet they will need to stay open the whole time.
 
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we are burning a mix of hardwood but for the most part cherry and has been seasoned for at least a year from when we split it but has been down for 4 years when it was logged. The left lever is the primary air control and the right lever is high burn control. We do get a good fire going ,at least burn for 15 minutes before we pull out the primary air lever about halfway. The basement is insulated .The wood is not wet so we know that is not the issue. This is a link to the manual for our stove http://www.homedepot.com/catalog/pdfImages/40/4040f21f-cb75-46ee-9958-e9f0df0188e7.pdf
 
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Your going to need a stove top thermometer and a chimney pipe thermometer (yes two separate things) more importantly to start would be a stove top thermometer (or IR gun)
Left control like you said is pulled out for maximum air, right control pushed in (closed) for sec re-burn air, get a good fire going, like your doing 15-20 min using medium splits. (this is were temps come into factor) open right control halfway, close main air down in 1/4 increments (your shooting for a stove top between 550 and 650 deg) Smoke pipe temps less than 650 deg. Like the manual suggests after you make changes to the air go outside and look to see if you have smoke (should have nothing, just heat vapors if using seasoned wood)
Main take away is get thermometers, that will tell you your ball park zone, look at the smoke, while buying the thermometers spend the extra $30.00 and get a moisture meter to test your wood supply, I'm not doubting that your stuff is seasoned, but it still maybe to wet, the new stoves like anything under 20% moisture content.
 
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