Burnin' Wood ( and other fuels...)

[kmcconaughey]

Whew! I knew I was getting close to the archive and didn't want to get bit by the archive bug but I didn't know I was one post away!

Jeremiah, that's over one years worth of ash and soot. According to my records, the last time I cleaned the chimney was December 18, 2011. I was thinking it was in January 2012. Off by a month...

I try to burn only well seasoned hardwood. If I were burning softwood or not so seasoned wood I'd clean it more frequently. Here's a better photo of the temp gauge.

 

[wshytle]

Kraig-

We have basically the same components with a 6" pipe going into the stainless, insulated pipe. Yours is more involved and larger though. I only have 12' of the insulated and about 5' of the 6" pipe going straight up out of the stove. I don't have any horizontal runs. I also have one of those thermostats. Did the magnet let go or something? I also try and get mine that hot (~400*) for a while every day to keep the creosote to a minimum. It stays around 200* most of the time but we're talking NC winters here.

So you get about a gallon or so of soot/ash a year? How much of that, if any comes out of the horizontal portion? I get a little more but my temp change in the piping has been an issue and a little hard to get to know well. I only burn well seasoned oak too.

I recently overcooked the flu flapper and the rod bent. I may have it too close to the top of the stove. It had some years on it so it may have just been its time.

 

[kmcconaughey]

Wayne, the magnet still works, the wire is there just in case, to insure that the gauge stays put. I try to keep the temp in the 300°F to 400°F range. Lately I've been burning a lot of birch that's been seasoned for almost 2 years and it's tough to keep that under 400°F. About all that comes out of the horizontal section is ash and most of that drops back into the stove when I push the brush in. I suppose there was about a quart of ash in the horizontal section. Yep, only a gallon or so of soot and ash in a years worth of heating. Now, with my old wood furnace and old chimney I'd clean it a couple times a winter and there would be much more and there would be big chunks of creosote in with the soot and ash. The old furnace, a 1970's vintage Monarch, did not have the secondary burn chamber that this Clayton has. With the Clayton I use less wood, get more heat and the chimney stays cleaner. WIN WIN, WIN!

 

[jchamberlin]

Kraig: The more I compare the performance of your stove to mine the more impressed I become. Try as I might, I find it very difficult to regulate my temperature as tightly as you report being able to. I load my stove up with wood and try to get it burning at 400 deg F or better (about 200 C), but after I shut the door the temperature begins its slow slide into the "too cool" range on your thermometer --200 deg F or lower. I reload the fire box every 4 to 6 hours; if I stoke the fire any faster, the house gets too warm.

I'll post some pictures tomorrow and try to chart the temp swings. Maybe you or some other readers can give me some pointers.

 

[lhinds]

Jeremiah how high above your roof does your pipe go? When i burned wood i had the problem. My brother told me to extend the flu so it would be higher than the roof ridge and that worked perfect for me. I have since torn the flu down and went to heat pump with gas so i don't have a picture.

 

[kmcconaughey]

Jeremiah, I believe Luther has a good point. My chimney draws well well, I believe mainly because it's well above the roof. It's also very tall overall. According to the manual for my stove the chimney outlet needs to be 2' above the highest point of the roof. The other factor is the stove itself. There are 3 ways to control the burn. First is the damper in the chimney, second is the draft control in the ash drawer door third is the draft control in the powered draft, it's just a rotating shutter that covers the inlet to the draft blower. I sometimes have to completely close it. Note: I never use the draft blower itself, no need for it as the natural flow of air into it is plenty.

 

[bjamison]

Hope I'm not breaking any rules, but there is a GREAT web site hearth.com and they have a forum on wood burning too - if you need more info.

I heat my house with two woodstoves, each on the opposite end of the house. Upstairs living room at one end and downstairs basement at the other end.

I've got rigid, insulated/wrapped pipe in the old chimney for the living room stove and an external class A pipe in a wooden chase outside - like what Kraig has.

BTW, I put the cleanout just a little higher on my outside pipe so I could clean it from the ground too - works great!

Both chimney ID's are 6 inch.

Cold outside - warm inside...

 

[jbaker]

Just think, this was how to heat a shop at one time.

 

[jchamberlin]

Luther: I think my chimney is OK, but I notice it does draft a lot better with a stiff wind blowing.

Kraig: Thanks for the closeups of the thermometer and very pretty furnace.

Jeff: I'm afraid to ask how that think works.

Bill: I'll have to check out Hearth.com, I still have a lot of questions about the process.

All: I live in a split level house which I have tried to diagram. We "live" mostly in the two rooms (living room and kitchen) diagonally across and up from where the stove is located. The house faces East, and the chimney is on the North side.

I carefully charted the temps from this morning at 8:10 when I shut the door with the thermometer at about 450 deg F.

The outside temp was 36 deg F at 8:00 AM, dropped to 31 deg F by noon before rising again to 40 deg F by 3:30 when I re-loaded the firebox because the upstairs temperature had dropped to 73 deg F. The temp at the stove had dropped to 120 deg F.

My stove isn't a big one, and until I upgraded the heat pump a few years ago, I used it exclusively to heat the house. My stove looks like this:

When I loaded the box at 7:30 AM the temp upstairs was 73 deg F (my trigger temp), and it was up to 77 deg F by 9:45 AM and stayed there until 2:00 PM before dropping back to 73 deg F before I re-loaded it at 3:30 PM. I typically load it with one 24" quarter-round as a "bank log" in the back, two "flank logs" at either end, and three "leaner logs" in the center tipped from the lower front to the top of the bank log at the rear. The firebox features a smoke shelf, so the air passes through the grate below the window at the front, travels in a "C" towards the back, before curling around the smoke shelf and exiting through the rear.

The holes are the only means I have of regulating the air flow, that and opening up the door. The pipe has two 90 deg bends in it before it exits to the chimney. The reason for the two bends is that the original stove, installed when the house was built, loaded from the side, so the chimney was placed slightly off-center and so was the hole in the wall, but the pad is centered. (The picture explains it better than I can.)

I've included shots of my chimney and clean-out.

I guess getting better than 1 hour of heat for each 1/4 round of wood isn't anything to complain about, but I would be open to any suggestions or comparison information.

When I lived in New Hampshire, Maine, and New York State, we would never let more than 4 hours pass before reloading the box, and I'm sure that by so doing we could keep the firebox at a more constant temperature. The trouble is that when I try to heat the house in the South like I heated it in the North, it's over 90 deg F down stairs and my wife has all the windows open up stairs.

Edit: Time to load up again, 12:30 AM

 

[lhinds]

Jeremiah you are also loosing a lot of heat with the short length pipe from the stove to the flu. You get a lot of heat from the pipe and i think someone built a fan to install on the stove pipe to help with effeciency. Be sure the door on the cleanout seals good.

 

[kmcconaughey]

Jeremiah, please remember that I said "I try to keep my chimney at about 400°F..." As the fire burns down that temp drops. If the temps are anywhere within the light orange range on my gauge, (230 - 460°) I'm happy. Though I do get nervous if it's toward the upper end of that. Every setup is going to perform differently. My old wood furnace was not as controllable as my current setup.

 

[jchamberlin]

Luther: Thanks for the feedback.

Kraig: I understand about the "try" part.

I guess my complaint is that I don't seem to have as much CONTROL as I would like. I wish I could set it up High Heat (400 deg) Medium Heat (300 deg) or Low Heat (200 deg).

I guess I'll check out my options on Hearth.com (--powered draft, what will they think of next!)

 

[jchamberlin]

All: I took Bill's advice and checked out the FAQs at Hearth.com. I learned that although I was probably using my stove as it was designed to be used, I was about 40 years behind the times. It seems that "air tight" stoves have fallen out of favor with the various certifying agencies in the US and Canada (and I suppose Europe too).

The "genius" of the air-tight design is that it allows one to sleep through the night before loading the firebox in the morning. The problem is that by basically "strangling" the fire by controlling the airflow, the QUALITY of the burn is adversely affected. When the wood fails to burn efficiently a lot of gases are released and creosote quickly forms throughout the system. The lower temperatures in the duct work and chimney flue also promote the formation of creosote in the system (in several forms, including the kind in Kraig's photographs). Indoor air quality is also negatively impacted --something to which my wife is very sensitive. I noticed myself, that after burning wood non-stop for 4-5 days, I wanted some fresh air!

New stove designs (since the 1990's) control the temperature by controlling the amount of fuel being burned, instead of throttling the supply and exhaust air flows. This method of control improves the airflow in the whole house, from what I understand, some systems even pipe air in from outside to keep the fire burning! By keeping the temperature up in the ducts and chimney flue creosote buildup is kept down --as Kraig can give testify! The indoor air quality is also enhanced.

The problem I've having is that my "air-tight" is a little too tight. I can't get enough air to the fire in my stove to keep the temperature up without leaving the door cracked open. I would need to force some air into the system, I suppose, to keep up with the amount of wood I like to burn. All I can do right now is try to get the fire going really well and shut the door and watch as the fire slowly dies. As long as I stay away from the pine, I seem to be OK.

The other tack is to cut the amount of wood back to the amount of air the stove can supply. But if there isn't a critical mass of wood in the stove, it doesn't really get hot enough to provide much heat.

It would appear that heating with wood is not as simple as it seems at first blush. The "system" needs to be designed in consideration of all the factors named above.

Luther: Losing heat up the chimney may not be such a bad thing, given what I'm learning so far. After your comment, I thought of moving the stove to the other side of the room, which would locate the heat source in the middle of the house, and extending the duct run by 10-12 feet might help re-capture some of the heat escaping up the chimney; but it might also promote the formation of creosote in the ducts and in the chimney. Cleaning creosote filled ducts in the house is not a task I relish.

 

[aschumacher]

I pretty much know the answer to this but...Hurricane Sandy knocked out 7 or 8 sections of stockade fence between my and a neighbors yard. I stacked some of it for cleanup and said we should cut it up and find a dump/dumpster for it. Neighbor said he was going to put it in his his wood stove. This stuff is pine, but dried out. Also it is painted on one side with (probabily) latex paint. How strongly do I want to tell him it's a poor idea. Thnx

 

[lpalma]

Allen
I think all the nails he would have in the ashes would keep him from spreading it around the yard.As for the paint, old latex paint has traces of mercury in it I do believe.

Did you notice pallets are hard to find this time year?

JC,

I was told that that corragated flue pipe is no longer allowed for wood stoves, plus it should fit over the previous pipe.
But it is your house.

 

[jchamberlin]

Allen: I would use the painted pine for kindling, but not for main fuel (got some in the box now).

Lewis: I thought I was following the instructions on the pipe (got it from Lowe's), although it did seem counter-intuitive at the time. At any rate, the creosote seals everything up.

 

[jchamberlin]

Lewis: On second thought, my installation may have been limited by the parts available for the stove pipe. It was fourteen years ago.

I do appreciate the feedback and I thank you for taking the time to respond. I may re-work the stove pipe connections in an effort to improve indoor air quality.

 

[wshytle]

Allen-

Apparently your neighbor knows very little about burning wood for heat. I don't know if there would be a way to let him know he's peeing in the wind trying to get some BTUs from pine. The troubles caused by burning "rich in pitch" wood like pine just aren't worth the few quick BTUs it produces. I always ignore pine and won't get it near my stove...not even for starting a fire. I can split oak for 30 minutes and the splinters that are produced are usually enough to almost fill my kindlin box and are what I use for starting fires and "chill knockers" in the spring and fall when I don't need a full fire. I use to relish finding a pine stump full of fat wood while walking in the woods. It will start a fire quickly but if you watch the smoke coming off of burning fat wood it is so thick with soot it will settle and contains solids (which I guess is actually the soot itself).

You might just ask him if he's ever had a chimney fire and then explain what causes them.

 

[aschumacher]

Ahhhh,yes, chimney fire! Dont know if his stack pipe has ever been cleaned out. Will mention it to him soon. Thnx for replys everyone.

 

[bjamison]

FWIW, pine is OK to burn and creosote build-up shouldn't necessarily be a concern - if...

You have a EPA certified stove and the wood is seasoned. Not everyone has access to hardwood and softwoods like pine are burned everyday. As a boy, my Dad had us walking past a pine tree to get to a piece of oak that was over the hill and a far piece from the truck! Now days, if I encounter a pine, I cut it and burn it - no problems. I had a fellow give me a downed pine this Summer and was glad to take it - easy wood. I doubt I will burn it this year, unless around late April - shoulder season burn, but certainly will next fall.

Bottom line - pine is fine!