I use the same stove, the Drolet Myriad.
I am coming to this post late. You have a stove that will heat well. You just have a little of a learning curve to go thru and get your chimney height so that you get a good draft.
I have never had my damper move on its own. I leave the handle on all the time.
Your results looks to be wood with too much moisture or your shutting the stove down before your have the heat built up in the stove. You ought to get you a couple of the Condar stove thermometers One for about 12 inches above the stove on the pipe if its single wall pipe or a probe type thermometer for double wall pipe. Then have one thermometer for the stove top.
You need to use your first load of wood to build up a coal bed in the stove. You need kindling and a good fire starter to get your first load started. But if your wood is sub par in all these EPA stoves its going to be a major pain to start a load.
I leave my bypass open and the door cracked open to start a fire and let the stove pipe of a single wall pipe to get to about 500 and the stove top to like 350 then I close the door and close the bypass but the input air is pulled all the way out to fully open. As with this stove with alot of air flow the stove top with the door cracked and bypass open will heat the pipe up a little more than other stoves and the stove top temp will be a little lower. Once you get the door closed and bypass closed temp will rise fast on the stove top and the stove pipe temps will slow down then as you start closing your input air in increments of 1/4 ways , what you will see is your pipe temps will start decreasing your your stove top will increase.
All of this will be simpler on the next load of wood on a hot bed of coals. But basically the same procedure.
I maybe shut down things a little sooner with the hot bed of coals as it allows me too.
If your wood has too much moisture split it all one more time and that will help and mix it with some drier stuff.
Bring in a load of wood to sit by the stove while the current load of wood is burning and that will help dry the next load out that you just split one more time.
Remember this its all about the heat , building up the heat in the fire box to make these stoves work. If you leave the door open too long and the bypass open too long it makes it harder to build heat in the fire box so you got to get the door shut and bypass shut as your flushing your heat up the flue and that will show up as high flue pipe temp and low stove top temps.
Fire starters and good kindling works wonders for building the heat up in the stove on cold starts until you get that all important bed of coals.
You can overcome a little too much moisture with the good kindling and good firestarters to get the heat boost from them as its all about the heat in the firebox that lets you get your input air shut back down that allows heat to build in the firebox.
But wood with way too much moisture any EPA stove will not be able to heat up properly as the moisture cools the firebox.
Huntingdog1 ... what a help I have just read now of your advise ... especially THAT you've got the very same stove as mine!!
I just came back from a local store that sells Duravent. I bought a 3' triple-wall chimney addition pipe for $98.00 AND called Duravent's 800 number (on the box) before I took it up to the register to pay for it. Their technical support department was soooo helpful. Turns out they do not even make the triple-wall STOVE PIPE. He said I am super safe using what I already have: their double-wall stove pipe, the 24' ceiling box, then their brand of triple-wall CHIMNEY pipe and now my friend is going to add on this 3' section tomorrow, weather willing.
As a side-note, during the start of Fall, I elected to put on some" Reflectix" brand covering on the inside of my garage door. It is "25" outside today, yet my car's temp showed "40" degrees when I got in. I'm heading on out to the store to get that pipe. Five minutes later from home I am looking at the car's temp gauge and it is 25. I know it is because I put up that simple but effective covering onto my garage door. Had I known earlier about it, I would have put it on during Spring, before Summer started. It can benefit a garage in the cold of winter or the heat of summer. No, I am no spokesperson for product. Just happy that I got it and put it in place. I see the results now.
Anyway, getting back to the wood stove ... yes, I am clearer now about mixing double-wall and triple-wall pipe, as Hogwildz mentioned. You can NOT ever do this on the outside, but you can do double-wall inside and up into triple-wall with the same brand and the same type.
I asked the tech guy at Duravent if my new pipe will still go perfectly with the Duravent stainless-steel HT pipe that is up there now. I thought it was irrelevant to tell him that I did not buy that section brand new but got it barely used from a person who only used it part of one heating season.
The tech said if it is triple-wall chimney wall, it does not matter if the box does not SAY HT, because all of their triple-wall is high temperature and is non-burnable up to 2100 degrees. He said that they do make pipe that will say HTC, but the 'C' stands for Canada; otherwise, this pipe will 'twist and lock,' into place once secured.
He said I will get a better draft definitely. I told him that my friend thinks I can save some bucks and put up two 12" sections but that I prefer the 3' and it's all in one section; nothing to put together and then lock into place. I may have mentioned already in this posting that the roof extension bracket is going to be added, as well. Many times where I live weatherspark.com will show 13 or 14 miles an hour wind, but just by the sound of it, I could swear its double that and with the extra pipe going up into the old, I can not see NOT putting up the bracket to further support all of the combined piping.
Anyway, I'm going to refer to this post 'whenever' I need to. This has been so helpful. It surely doesn't matter that your posting is 'late,' it is a tremendous amount of good, solid and first-hand information for owners of the Drolet Myraid and even wood burners to learn, in general, if they do not perhaps know all of what you and others are sharing. I'm indebted; thank you!
